Child support as a dissuasive for fathers

In this very moment, in Massachusetts there is a legal battle on the laws regulating child support payments.

On January 1, 2009, Massachusetts instituted new guidelines which incremented child support payments, even though this state already had among the highest guidelines in the United States.

The new guidelines raise substantially child support payments in almost all cases, in many cases increasing them by 20%, but in some cases tripling them. Under these new guidelines, if a recipient and payer earn the same amount of money, the recipient will enjoy a standard of living almost double that of the payer.

In 2001, Fathers & Families, the national organization that advocates for a family court reform that would establish equal rights and responsibilities for fathers and mothers (www.fathersandfamilies.org), won changes in Massachusetts child support laws that lowered payments by 15%. The new guidelines are, in fact, the anti-father forces counter attack to this victory. In response, Fathers & Families filed a lawsuit in federal and state courts. They presented their case in federal court in January and in state court April 13, and are currently awaiting a decision.

This case should be followed closely by all non-custodial parents. While we all joyfully recognize our financial obligations towards our children, we also know very well that child support is widely used by custodial parents (and by the courts that represent them) as a weapon against non-custodial parents. Many times, when fathers think about claiming their rights, they think twice before going to court, because they fear that if they do so they will be punished by incrementing their child support payments. In these cases, the state instates itself as the guardian of gender inequality by implementing child support laws as a fear tactic for preserving the status quo. It can do so because child support laws tend to be imprecise, and in many occasions, unfair. And since the punishment for not paying child support is prison, you can all imagine how many people use this weapon just for the fun of seeing their ex-spouse in jail.

I strongly believe that the current state of child support laws is the fuel that powers the current state of child custody laws. In places like Puerto Rico, where I am from, it has triggered a whole industry based on child support money. The legal battle in Massachusetts is an extremely important battle in the struggle for our children.

On the Virtue of Patience

Turbulent river, fishermen gain.
Hispanic proverb

Provoking your enemy to make mistakes is an ancient war tactic used by strategist throughout history. Illustrious generals have done actions against their enemies with the only purpose of forcing them to react in a disorganized manner, allowing them to use that disorganization in their favor. A surprise attack or an act of exemplary humiliation has many times been the difference between victory and defeat.

But this tactic has many applications beyond the battlefield.

Muhammad Ali used to insult and to slap his opponents with harmless blows, just for making them lose their patience. During this moment of chaotic reaction, his opponent would lose also the rational control of his actions, making mistakes that under normal circumstances he never would have made, and Ali would perform then an attack that he had planned thoughtfully, wining easily over an extremely difficult opponent.

This tactic is no stranger to the field of family relations, especially when the subject under discussion is the custody of children. Many divorced men have been lured into situation of disorganized reaction with the only purpose of using their reaction to block their contact with their children and, ultimately, to cancel their possibilities of having their custody.

The most common avatar of this tactic would be as follows: A divorced father meets his ex-wife for any reason (picking up their children for parenting time or bringing them home after, a phone call between parents, etc.), his ex-wife inflicts him some kind of physical or verbal violence, the father reacts accordingly in an analog manner, the ex-wife goes to court to place a restraining order because the father was violent and threatening, the father cannot get near his ex-wife, and since she has custody of their children, he cannot get near his children neither. Mission accomplished. Her real purpose was never putting barriers between her and her ex-husband, but between her ex-husband and their children.

Be aware. Expect the hidden snake.

Though I know that it is easy to say and hard to do, the only adequate response is the old virtue of patience. Having your children in mind, envisioning the happy future that you will have with them, realizing that the current moment is just an entrapment to make you loose everything that you love, will make think twice before reacting to any provocation, to any challenge. And if you are Christians, and even if you’re not, meditate on Jesus’ words:

A woman has pain when her time to give birth comes. But after the child is born, she doesn't remember the pain anymore because she's happy that a child has been brought into the world. (John 16:21)

Patience. It will come a day when everything that you are suffering now will seem little, even laughable. Live for that day.

On the Equality of Parents’ Rights

Although in reality, it has nothing to do with the way that New Jersey courts deal with family issues, the fact is that the body of family laws in New Jersey establishes that the both parents have equal rights to the custody of their children. In Ali v. Ali (279 N.J. Super 154, 1994), a seminal case on which the divorced parents battled for the custody of their only child, the courts clearly stated that both parents have equal rights to the custody of their children:

There is no mechanical presumption that either the father or the mother is entitled to custody at a fixed age. Thus, New Jersey’s standard of the “best interest of the child” recognizes “that the paramount consideration is the safety, happiness, physical, mental and moral welfare of the child. Neither parent has a superior right to custody… 279 N.J. Super 168 (1994)

This case of 1994 reaffirms what Beck v. Beck had already clarified in 1981:

…parents involved in custody controversies have by statute been granted both equal rights and equal responsibilities regarding the care, nurture, education, and welfare of their children. See N.J.S.A. 9:2-4. (…) …this clearly related statute indicate a legislative preference for custody decrees that allow both parents full and genuine involvement in the lives of their children following a divorce. This approach is consonant with the common law policy that “in promoting the child’s welfare, the Court should strain every effort to attain for the child the affection of both parents rather than one. 86 N.J. 485 (1981)

The fact that sole custody decisions are usually awarded to mothers indicates that in many cases courts tend to forget that in the development of a child, both parents have different but equally important tasks. One of the most important statements of Beck v. Beck is:

…that although defendant’s care of the girls was more than adequate, she is limited by an inability to be both a father and a mother. 86 N.J. 493 (1981)

In other words, fathers are only capable of being fathers, but also mothers are only capable of being mothers, and their children need both: “there is a real purpose in fatherhood as well as motherhood.” (86 N.J. 493)

When New Jersey family courts award sole physical custody to mothers in the absolute majority of cases as they do, they only repeat a gender biased prejudice that should be eradicated from the courts, especially when the laws have done it already.

The Lucifer Effect

Social Psychologist Philip Zimbardo directed in 1971 the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which volunteer college students randomly assigned to be guards or inmates in a simulated prison. Those students playing guards found themselves enacting sadistic, cruel, authoritarian, and abusive behavior.

In his book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Random House, 2008), Zimbardo connects to historical examples of injustice and atrocity, especially the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He found that almost anyone, given the right "situational" influences, could be made to abandon moral scruples and cooperate in violence and oppression. He insists that in cases like Abu Ghraib ,we should blame the situation and the system that constructed it.

Any group that has power without supervision or accountability for their actions, will do the same thing that the student of the Stanford Prison Experiment did, becoming sadistic, cruel, authoritarian, and abusive. Remember when Arian Germans were allowed to do whatever they wanted to German Jews without any legal consequences. Remember the horrors of Rwanda, when Hutus where allowed and encouraged to murder Tutsis. We, human being, are a dangerous animal.

I have said this before: the problem with family courts is not women, is attaching almost absolute power to a specific gender in family courts, establishing a hierarchy that in this case is based on gender, but it could be based (and it has been before) on race, ethnic group, religion, etc. The problems that fathers now confront in the Western World, are confronted in an even more terrible way by mothers in the Eastern World and in Africa. The problem is not women, is the social, legal and political structures that sustain gender inequality.