Cathy Young and the Gender War

Cathy Young (Moscow 1963), an author, a public speaker, and a regular columnist for The Boston Globe and Reason, her articles have also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday, The American Spectator, Salon.Com, National Review, and The New Republic. She published in 1999 the book Ceasefire! Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality.

In her book, Young states that there is no war against women, and rebuts a series of controversial issues, from the incidence of domestic violence (it is not as frequent as the feminist media wants us to believe), the nature of domestic violence (she states that domestic violence is a two-way street: University of New Hampshire researchers consistently report women as often as men initiate physical violence. Furthermore, recent studies reveal that lesbians have also high rates of violence toward their own partners) Mainstream media hides or misreports these facts, fomenting this way legislation constructed on false assumptions), that male violence is directed primarily against women, or that girls are ignored in classrooms.

She offers evidence that these and other basic feminist credos are mistaken, mainly due to a feminist propensity for exaggeration, stereotyping, and over-generalization based on little or no evidence.

Young argues that the battle for equal rights is not an excuse for portraying men as fundamentally malevolent. She explains that in the '80s, a radical sector of feminism became mainstream, and equality for women began to mean inequities for men; is at this moment when she and many others became part of a new brand of feminism that looks for true equality.

One good example of this attitude towards an unequal equality, and the one that for our cause matters the most, is these feminists’ attitude toward joint custody. While they condemn men for not contributing enough in raising the kids, at the same time they demand that women should automatically have child custody following a divorce, because they have an inherent capacity to nurture children, while men do not. Young make an interesting point here: as Victorian morality believed, these feminists believe that women are the fragile guardians of good who must be placed on pedestals and protected. Young cleverly points out this "strange convergence of radical feminism and patriarchal conservatism - and the alienation of both ideologies from real life." Weirdly enough, the arguments of the Christian fundamentalist Promise Keepers and the National Organization of Women are based on the same premises.

Young believes that women and men need to learn to get along. Women have sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers. Because we have families, we cannot battle each other, we have to work together, and we have to look for each other’s wellbeing. In the final chapter of Ceasefire, Young proposes a twelve steps program for de-escalating the gender wars. These steps include:

-Do not assume sexism is the root cause of all women's problems.

-Rewrite sexual harassment law.

-Demand that husbands and wives serve as equal parents.

-Take gender politics out of the war on domestic violence.

-Stop acting as if women’s claims were more legitimate than men’s were.

In summary, the book is well written, well argued, and carefully reasoned, a book that should be read by anyone interested in real gender equality.

On Baskerville’s “Divorced from Reality” (1 of 2)

In the January/February of 2009 issue of the Christian magazine Touchstone, Stephen Baskerville published the article “Divorced from Reality” (http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=22-01-019-f), on the family crisis in the US. I would like to summarize its content, but strongly recommend my readers to read the full text, due to to the extension and depth of Baskersville’s analysis on the issues discussed.

According to the author, the decline of the family structure has reached dangerous proportions, and it is the major source of social instability in the Western world, and a major threat to civic freedom and constitutional government. Quoting G. K. Chesterton, he sustains that the family structure serves as the principal check on government power, and that today family and state confront one another as the primary social organizing factor. He believes that today’s divorce laws are used by the state to erode family primacy, and to enhance its own power as social control. He writes:

“Indeed, many are devastated to discover that they can be forced into divorce by procedures entirely beyond their control. Divorce authorizes unprecedented government intrusion into family life, including the power to sunder families, seize children, loot family wealth, and incarcerate parents without trial. Comprised of family courts and vast, federally funded social services bureaucracies that wield what amount to police powers, the divorce machinery has become the most predatory and repressive sector of government ever created in the United States and is today’s greatest threat to constitutional freedom.”

Baskerville’s main concern are the laws regulating “no fault divorce”. When four decades ago laws were passed to legalize “no fault” divorces, these laws enabled the government, at the request of one spouse, to dissolve a marriage over the objection of the other. Divorce today, he states, seldom involves two people mutually deciding to part ways, but are unilateral in nature, prevailing over the objection of one spouse. He writes:

“Under “no-fault,” or what some call “unilateral,” divorce—a legal regime that expunged all considerations of justice from the procedure—divorce becomes a sudden power grab by one spouse, assisted by an army of judicial hangers-on who reward belligerence and profit from the ensuing litigation: judges, lawyers, psychotherapists, counselors, mediators, custody evaluators, social workers, and more.”

Unilateral divorce generates political and costitutional problems because by its nature, it requires constant government supervision over family life. Divorce expands government power because it involves state functionaries to enforce the divorce and the post-divorce order.

The implications of unilateral divorce are terrible: it allows the government to remove innocent people (usually fathers) from their homes, to seize their property, and to separate them from their children, even if they are innocent of any legal wrongdoing. The state seizes control of his children with no burden of proof to justify why; the burden of proof (and the financial burden demanded by it) falls on him. Baskerville writes:

“By far the most serious consequences involve children, who have become the principal weapons of the divorce machinery. Invariably the first action of a divorce court, once a divorce is filed, is to separate the children from one of their parents, usually the father. Until this happens, no one in the machinery acquires any power or earnings. The first principle and first action of divorce court therefore: Remove the father.”

The divorce machinery can take an respectable parent, block him for seeing his own children without government authorization, arrest him for failure to conform to a variety of additional judicial directives that apply to no one but him; arrest him for domestic violence or child abuse, even if no evidence is presented that he has committed any; arrest him for not paying child support, even if the amount exceeds his means; he can even be arrested for not paying an attorney or a psychotherapist he has not hired.

The growth of the divorce machinery has generated a series of hysterias against fathers so hideous that no one dares to defend those accused: child abuse and molestation, wife-beating, and nonpayment of child support. The accused of these offenses, even in the absence of any formal charge, evidence, or conviction, loses his children and is isolated from everyone, since no one wants to be associated with a “pedophile,” “batterer,” or “deadbeat dad.”

An while all these happens, there is no evidence that the family crisis is caused significantly by fathers abandoning their families, beating their wives, and molesting their children, but there is irrefutable evidence indicating that this crisis “is driven almost entirely by divorce courts forcibly separating parents from their children and using these false accusations as a rationalization.”

Review of "The New Star Chamber: The New Jersey Family Court and the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act" by David N. Heleniak. Part 1 of 2

David N. Heleniak is an attorney in New Jersey. Holding a MA degree in Theological and Religious Studies from Drew University, he is the vice president of RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting), a non-profit organization that works to improve the effectiveness of the approach to domestic violence (http://www.mediaradar.org) and the senior legal analyst for True Equality Network, a group dedicated to educating on how the failures of numerous federal programs and the abuses of federal funding systems affect the sovereignty of the American family (http://www.true-equality.org).

He is the author of several works, one of which is titled The New Star Chamber: The New Jersey Family Court and the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act, published in the Spring of 2005 issue of Rutgers Law Review, adaptations of which were published in the New Jersey Law Journal, New Jersey Lawyer, and The Liberator, America's Shared Parenting Quarterly (PDF: http://www.njccr.org/Articles/Heleniak2006NewStarChamber.pdf) (Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwsgT_Yu008). It is this text that I want to summarize on this and next week posts.

The text starts with a disturbing quote by Dean Roscoe Pound: "The powers of the star chamber were a trifle in comparison with those of our juvenile courts and courts of domestic relations." From there, Heleniak develops an exposé on how the family court system, particularly in New Jersey, violates basic constitutional rights.

The title of the text refers to the Star Chamber, so named because of the star pattern painted on the ceiling of the room in Westminster Palace, where the king of England's council met, that was intended to be a more efficient alternative to the common-law courts, but that in fact, it became the embodiment of unfair judicial proceedings. Heleniak argues that through The Prevention of Domestic Violence Act, the New Jersey Legislature has been allowed to create, in the Family Part of the Chancery Division of the New Jersey Superior Court, a modern day Star Chamber.

The Act permits a self-proclaimed victim to file a complaint alleging the commission of an act of domestic violence, and to request a temporary restraining order. If the court determines that an act of domestic violence has occurred, it can authorize any of the following reliefs:

- An order giving the plaintiff exclusive possession of the marital home.

- An order requiring the defendant to make mortgage or rent payments.

- An order restraining the defendant from making contact with the plaintiff.

- Temporary custody of a minor child.

- The suspension of parenting time for the defendant or limitation of visitation to supervised visitations.

- Monetary compensation for losses suffered by the plaintiff to be paid for by the defendant.

- An order requiring the defendant to receive professional domestic violence help.

- An order requiring the defendant to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

- The award of temporary custody of personal property, such as an automobile, checkbook, and other personal effects of the defendant.

The Act also provides for imprisonment for any person convicted of a second or subsequent nonindictable domestic violence contempt. As it is easy to see, the potential for abuse of the Act is immense. The advantages of a restraining order to the complainant are a temptation hard to resist: exclusive possession of the home, temporary and probably permanent sole custody of the children, and the opportunity to make the other person’s life miserable.

The Prevention of Domestic Violence Act authorizes a chancery judge to bar a defendant from ever setting foot in his house again, yet make him pay the mortgage payments; make him pay large sums of money to the plaintiff; bar him from seeing his children; force him to see a psychologist and/or psychiatrist against his will; temporarily give the plaintiff exclusive possession of the defendant's car, checkbook, and other personal effects; bar the defendant from ever speaking to any individual that the plaintiff does not want him to speak to; force him to turn any firearms he has and bar him from ever possessing another firearm in his life; and make the defendant pay a "civil penalty" of $500.00, and if the defendant refuses to comply with any aspect of the judge's order, he can be tried for contempt and imprisoned. Lastly, he is labeled an abuser and his name is put on a list of domestic abusers known as the New Jersey Judiciary's Domestic Violence Central Registry, a societal stigma that will follow him the rest of his life.

Knowing all this, it should not be a surprise that in many divorce cases, allegations of abuse are used for tactical advantage.

A Victory in Chile

Amor de Papá (Father’s Love, www.amordepapa.org), a pro joint custody organization that fights to reform family laws in Chile and to avoid Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), has achieved an important victory in court (www.amordepapa.org/declaracion_20090708_David_Abuhadba.php).

Last June 30th of 2009, a Chilean court declared admissible a Motion of Inapplicability for its Unconstitutionality of Article 225 of the Civil Code, submitted by the President of Amor de Papá. This motion requested the court to declare unconstitutional this article, that states on its 1st and 3rd sections that: “If the parents live separated, the personal care of the children will be awarded to the mother", since that precept is considered is contrary to Article 19 No. 2 of the Chilean Constitution, that states that: “Equality before the law. In Chile, there is no privileged person or group. In Chile, there are no slaves and anyone who steps on its territory is free. Men and women are equal before the law. No law or authority could establish arbitrary differences.”

The motion affirms that "the imperative of l article 225 section 1A of the Civil Code results discriminatory regarding men, since for the processes and activities of ‘personal care of the children’, in other words, those processes by which the parent or parents should adopt decisions that allow to secure the best spiritual and material fulfillment possible of the minor, as to secure that children can exercise the essential rights that emanate of human nature (…) it has not been proven, nor determined that women are necessarily in a better position than men or that they have an expertise, abilities, capacities or aptitudes different from other gender to do so.”

David Abuhadba, president of Amor de Papá (see picture), affirmed that “this resolution is historic in Chile. It is the first big step to end the daily violation of the human rights of children and fathers at the family courts of our country.”

The fight for the rights of our children is one that is built day by day, step by step, battle by battle. Victories like these are the ones that will give us the final victory, and the ones that encourage us to keep on fighting.

To the brothers and sisters of Amor de Papá, congratulations for their achievements, that are many already, and a hug in solidarity. Keep on fighting.

The singularity of fathers

On this Father’s Day, first I want to congratulate all those fathers who read this blog and who fight for the cause of joint custody. Second, I want to use this celebration to highlight the singularity of fatherhood.

In days like this, always someone, in all good faith, approaches us to congratulate us for being father and mother at the same time. Although I almost understand the goodness behind this congratulation, I should object it because it is born from a radical confusion between the roles of the father and the mother. Being father and mother simultaneously is impossible. Those of us who believe in joint custody, we do so precisely because we know that the roles of father and mother are not, I repeat, are not interchangeable. A child needs to have a father and a mother, and if one of them is not there, no matter how much the other could try to fill his or her space, filling it is impossible. Fathers and mothers bring absolutely different but equally important elements to the lives of their children.

Another face of this confusion is that many expect that fathers to be nothing more than a mother with testicles. The differences between men and women are not a mere cultural construction, but they are born at the root of male and female natures. Men are and should behave like men, in the same way that women are and should behave like women. We should not feel less for being men.

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, the 1981 case that set the foundation for joint custody in New Jersey, 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 courts award sole physical custody to mothers, the mother, they only repeat a gender biased prejudice that should be eradicated from the courts, especially when they are deciding the well-being of the children these courts are supposed to protect.

Padres Sí Somos (We Are Fathers)

At this moment, when after so many years of struggle, Puerto Rico at last is at the doors of having a so needed law of joint custody, appears the pro-joint custody group Padres Sí Somos (www.padressisomos.org). The organization has the purpose of grouping Puerto Rican single fathers to serve them as support, bringing them orientation and help to deal with the daily problems and situations that they confront as head of family, in summary, to promote the development of men in their role as fathers.

The group was established by José Raúl Morales. Morales is a single father who is raising his son 7 years old son Arnaldo Raúl Morales since his first year. The problems that he has confronted as a single father served him as motivation for the creation of the organization. Currently, Morales seeks to establish alliances with diverse government agencies so they could help to provide professional services for the fathers who his group represents.

This group is an important effort that could crystallize advancements in the struggle for equality between fathers and mothers. Apart from its function as support for fathers, the group has assumed a star role in the lobbying in favor of the law of joint custody that is now under the consideration of the Senate of Puerto Rico. Padres Sí Somos is part of a new paradigm in the Puerto Rican society, paradigm that assigns equal importance to fathers and mothers in the raising of their children. In a country like Puerto Rico, where divorce is a true social epidemic, efforts to integrate divorced fathers to the lives of their children are urgently necessary.

It amazes me the wholeness of their approach and strategy. The services that the organization offers include orientation, meetings in support groups, contacts with health professionals, contacts for legal assistance, lectures, family recreational events, and workshops. Even at the purely geographical dimension, the group as structured its expansion in stages, being the first one the metropolitan zone and its surroundings (San Juan, Bayamón, Carolina, Guaynabo, Toa Baja, Trujillo Alto, Cataño, and Caguas).

Currently, the organization has 300 members, and is growing fast. I firmly believe in the power of organizations, and I have insisted from the beginning that those of us who believe in the equality of fathers and mothers should get organized in order to articulate efficiently our efforts. Organizations like Fathers and Families (www.fathersandfamilies.org) in the United States and Amor de Papá (www.amordepapa.org) in South America have been determinant factors in the advancements that the cause of joint custody has had in the recent years. I encourage all to support those groups like Padres Sí Somos that make effort to organize fathers in their struggle for our children.

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.

Gender Roles and the Status Quo

Fact #1: Women are in a disadvantageous situation in the workplace.

Fact #2: Men are in a disadvantageous situation in family courts.

Fact #3: The legal system political purpose is to preserve the status quo.

The issue of the inequality between genders is in fact an issue about how societies develop their approach to gender roles. The traditional roles assigned to men and women, on which men were assigned to the workplace and women were limited to the domestic realm, are ruthlessly preserved by our legal system and the network of social structures that support it.

Someone would reply that the legal system has passed laws that state the equality of genders at the workplace and at family courts, but the reality is that the same legal system that passed those laws is the one that blocks their enforcement by the intricate placement of financial and procedural roadblocks, with the only purpose of discouraging the victims of discrimination of claiming their legal rights.

It is time already to update not only laws, but also the legal system processes of enforcing them, so that courts procedures match the current stage of modern societies’ development, on which women are a necessary part of our workforce, and men take care of their children in households headed by married couples. Genders should be equal in every field of our lives.

So let us fight for gender equality. The times demand it. And our children are waiting for it.

Joint Custody and the Rights of the Child

The basic goal of joint custody is not protecting the parents, it is protecting children by preserving their natural attachments to their parents. Beck v. Beck states that:

At the root of the joint custody arrangement is the assumption that children in a unified family setting develop attachments to both parents and the severance of either of these attachments is contrary to the child’s best interest. 86 N.J. 487 (1981)

Sole custody not only violates the rights of both parents to be considered equal before the Law, but also violates the rights of the child. New Jersey adopted the Bill of Rights of Children from decisions of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the Family Court of Milwaukee County. Among the rights of children mentioned in there, right number ten affirms that children have:

The right to recognition that children involved in a divorce are always disadvantaged parties and that the law must take affirmative steps to protect their welfare… (N.J.S.A. 4:10-11)

Trying to see things from children’s point of view, trying to get for them what they need and crave, should be the primordial task of any court. By awarding sole physical custody, the Court evaded this responsibility disregarding that:

…the paramount consideration of any Court is (…) to insure the safety, happiness, physical, mental, and moral welfare of children. In evaluating this concern, the Court must “strain every effort to attain for the child the love and affection of both parties rather than one.” (New Jersey Practice. Family Law & Practice, p. 445)

The court should try since the very beginning of its procedures to award joint custody, if not for the parents, for the child who is the most vulnerable party of this painful process.

Fighting for our children is more than fighting for equality between men and women. Our fight is the fight for the rights of our children. That is why we cannot afford to give up. Our children are waiting.

For an unified movement

Last February 11 I received the news about the merger of Sacks Media Group and Fathers and Families, and the appointment of Glenn Sacks as Executive Director of Fathers and Families. The announcement states that the merger “gives the family court reform movement an excellent chance to build the powerful, well-funded national advocacy group it has long needed to effectively drive our agenda forward”, “a giant step towards the unification of this movement” (http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?p=1461).

Fathers and Families (http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/), a 50,000+ members Massachusetts based organization, promotes a family court reform that would establish equal rights and responsibilities for fathers and mothers, and, by doing so, would protect the children of divorced parents’ right to the love and care of both parents. A very successful and well-organized group founded by Ned Holstein (nedholstein@fathersandfamilies.org), MD and MS, Fathers and Families has a highly successful history both in the media and in family courts.

Glenn Sacks (GlennSacks@FathersandFamilies.org), a happily married father of two with a Master's Degree in Latin American Studies from UCLA, distinguished schoolteacher in Los Angeles and Miami, is a men's and fathers' issues columnist, commentator, and radio talk show host. His radio show His Side with Glenn Sacks, which has received extensive media attention, discusses gender and family issues from a perspective sympathetic to men and fathers. He has made hundreds of radio and TV apperances, and his columns have appeared in dozens of the largest newspapers in the United States. He has been quoted in dozens of major publications, and his work has been covered by hundreds of radio and television stations, as well as in articles. His opinion columns and his works have been reprinted and/or discussed or quoted in numerous books. And last but not least, Sacks publishes an E-Newsletter with 50,000+ web traffic (http://www.glennsacks.com/).

This merge is an example to follow. Glenn could have followed his path as a solitary prophet and continue to achieve as many goals as he had already achieved. Fathers and Families is an organization strong enough to continue its history of achievements without having such a visible media personality as Glenn. But the greatness of their decision is the realization that uniting their separate forces they would create a new force that will be much stronger than the mere sum of both.

We need more people willing to sacrifice protagonism and personal glory with the purpose of strengthening our movement. There is a given behind the decision taken by Glenn Sacks and Fathers and Families: our children are more important than us. No matter how big or prominent we could be, we should subordinate each and every one of our efforts to the goal of securing the happiness of our children. It is already time for the different pro-joint custody organizations to concentrate forces, to leave behind their individual interests and tiny differences and work toward a cohesive and strong movement that could have a visible presence and a loud voice at a nationwide level. I, as a member of such an organization, already signed to be a member of one of the Fathers and Families Action Squads (http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?page_id=1347).

Let us work together. Let us have one voice. Our children are waiting.

Four Trends for the Next Decade

Four trends has been taking place during the last years, four trends that will radically change the way in which we conceive couple and family relationships. They are the following:

1. The gradual, albeit delayed, loss of prestige of the until now untouchable figure of the single mother – Several weeks ago, I publish in this page the article titled “The Single Mother Industry”, in which I accuse the social canonization of the single mother as responsible of great part of the social disaster to which the family has been submitted during the last decades. I was pleasantly surprised to find that in the recently published book by Ann Coulter, Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America (Crown Forum, January 6, 2009), the second chapter is dedicated to demystify the single mother and to show how these supposed victims are really victimizing society and causing irreparable harm to their own children. It is good that it has been precisely a woman the one who has taken bull by its horns.

2. The standardization of the prenuptial agreement as normal part of the processes to get married - Books as popular as “Think Big: Make It Happen in Business and Life” by Donald Trump and Bill Zanker, (Collins Business, September 30, 2008) and “How Come That Idiot's Rich and I'm Not?” by Robert Shemin (Crown, March 4, 2008) identify divorce as one of the biggest economical disasters that a person could suffer, specially if that person is a man, automatically taking at least half of their income and assets. As preventive measure, prenuptial agreements allow to avoid the most disastrous economical results of divorce.

3. The normalization of single fatherhood as a family model – CNN published recently on its webpage the article “One and only dads: Numbers, challenges grow for single fathers” by Andrea Harry (http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/18/single.dads/index.html), on which the author documents that families headed by single fathers are the fastest growing household form in America. Currently, one in six families is headed by a father, compared with one in 10 in 1970. Of that number, only 5% are widowed, 42% are divorced and a surprising 38% have never been married. Is this last group the most socially significant, because speaks about the growing movement of men who opt to be single fathers, among many reasons, because in this way they avoid the risk of losing their children in case of a divorce. This movement is the answer to the slow pace in which laws are changing to agree with the times and the changes that have happened in the structure of nuclear family, and to correct the discrimination by reason of gender that exist in family courts.

4. The gradual but consistent standardization of joint custody as the predominant arrangement among custody arrangements – As we discussed in this page a few weeks ago in the article “Two articles on Newsweek,” joint custody arrangements have been slowly gaining territory in the American society, what should encourage us to continue the fight.

We should keep our eyes open to these phenomena and watch how they will be changing or daily lives on the next years. And we should keep fighting. Our children are waiting.

Two articles on Newsweek

I want to call your attention on two articles that appeared in the prestigious magazine Newsweek, on its December 15th issue. One is a panorama of the most recent developments in the relationships between divorced parents and their children. The other one is a personal testimony of a 14 years old girl, raised on a joint custody arrangement.

In “Not Your Dad's Divorce. How changes in child support laws, and a push by fathers for equal time, are transforming the way this generation of ex-spouses raise their children” (http://www.newsweek.com/id/174790), Susanna Schrobsdorff starts narrating how she and her ex-husband agreed a joint custody arrangement of the two daughters at the moment of their divorce (in their case, the arrangement included that the girls would spend several nights a week with their Dad), and how this arrangement, albeit sometimes complicated and demanding, has proven to be the best for their daughters.

From that point Schrobsdorff summarizes the advancements, slow but sustained, in custody laws, towards joint custody arrangements, as opposed to the “every other weekend wit Dad” of the traditional formula. The author quotes Dr. Leslie Drozd, editor of the journal Child Custody; skating joint custody arrangements are far more frequent now than 20 years ago.
Although nationwide, the proportion of divorced spouses who have joint physical custody is a low 5 percent, in California and Arizona , where statutes permitting joint physical custody were adopted in the 1980s, a decade earlier than in other states with similar statutes, the joint physical custody rates reach up to 27 percent.

A very interesting point in this article is that it links the increase of joint custody arrangements to state readjustment regarding child support. I have already establish the link between them, and I firmly believe that the current child support laws are the financial support to the current state of gender discrimination at the family courts The laws governing child support have also evolved and affected child-custody arrangements. In the last 15 years, most states have passed legislation that ties child support payments to how much time a child spends with the non-custodial parent.

Another crucial point of this article is that it points out that many fathers don’t fight in court their children’s custody because the legal system and their lawyers discourage them from doing so (I have been in that situation, and it seems to me a serious ethical problem for the lawyers that take that position), because the process is too long, too expensive and results are uncertain. All this, even though that the numbers show that those men eager to fight for the sole custody of their children are wining in the same proportion than women.

The article finishes saying that the only way to end the horrors that litigation imposses to fathers seeking the custody of their children, is that courts Stara with the presumption that joint physical custody will be the first option, mainly because evidence shows that a majority of kids who have grown up in joint physical custody arrangements prove to be healthy and satisfied with the relationship with their parents, as oposed to those raised under sole custody regimes.
The second article, less academic but far more moving, is titled “How I divide my life between my divorced parents' homes” (http://www.newsweek.com/id/174698) written by Charlotte Juergens, a 14 years old girl raised on a joint custody arrangement. In this article, she tells how her parents divorced when she was only 2 years old, and how from that moment until today spends her nights at each parent house every other day, spending equal time with each one.
She believes that this arrangement has made possible that she is a healthy person, because in a certain way she has lived as she would have if her parents had lived together, seen them every day.

I advise everyone to read both articles in their entirety, so you can feel like I felt, encouraged to keep up the fight.

We cannot stop. Our children are waiting for us.

Keynes, Germany and Domestic Violence

In 1919, the British economist John Maynard Keynes published The Economic Consequences of the Peace. In that book, Keynes sustains that the reparations imposed to Germany after its defeat in World War I would have the effect of an unstable German economy, which in turn would have unpredictable terrible consequences. The book includes the ominous prophesy:

"But who can say how much is endurable, or in what direction men will seek at last to escape from their misfortunes?"

Keynes knew that it was impossible to dispossess a nation and to stop this nation to eventually seek revenge for the affronts suffered: the economical situation to which the defeated Germany was submitted after World War I was the foundation of the German aggression of World War II.
“Respecting other’s people rights is peace,” says the Mexican patriot Benito Juárez, and His Holiness Paul VI said, “If you want peace, work for justice.” Only justice, equal rights, the opportunity to live with dignity can ensure a life without violence. It is no accident that the poorest social classes are the ones that generate more violent and criminal behavior. It is no accident that in the South Africa of the apartheid was rich in urban violence, violence that was exacerbated during the immediate years after the apartheid was abolished; violence that now that the equality of rights has matured has decreased enormously.

Inequality and injustice give birth to violence. I have always asked myself why no one has connected the la violence that many men inflict on women during and after divorce, and the conditions to which divorce impose on men in many countries. I have always asked myself why government agencies, professional organizations, and higher education institutions do not produce statistics that try to explain this terrible phenomenon. Everybody complains about the tragedies, everybody says that they want to solve the problem, but nobody looks for its roots.

In Cuba exists an efficient law of joint custody. I understand that the cases of domestic violence are almost inexistent.

To Whom It May Concern

One of my purposes in writing this blog is to encourage other parents to share their stories about their ordeals with the family courts system. To lead by example, allow me to share my story.

On August of 2002, I moved from Puerto Rico to New Jersey with my ex-wife. During the last months of 2003, due to my infertility, we started an adoption process. In April 18 of 2004, my daughter Sofía was born, and ten days after her birth she moved with us; the following year, on July 21 of 2005, the adoption was completed. The following month, on August 28 of 2006, my ex-wife tells me that she wanted to end our marriage. My ex-wife deserted me and abandoned the apartment shared by us on March 18 of 2006, taking with her our daughter, without my consent. Since then, I have tried to convince her that the joint physical and legal custody is the best for our child and for us, but the she rejects the idea, since she does not believe in the concept of joint custody. To break the impasse on which we were, on September 22 of 2006 I submitted a motion asking for a court order for a Best Interest Evaluation and a Custody Visitation Evaluation. I hoped that this evaluation would have given the Court reasonable criteria to decide the award of custody. The motion was denied on October 20, and unexpectedly since custody was not in question, that same day judge Claude Coleman decided the custody and awarded joint legal custody to both parents and physical custody to the my ex-wife. I appealed the decision on December 1rst of 2006, and my appeal was denied by the judges Gilroy and Lihotz of the Appellate Division on August 9 of 2007. I then filed a petition for certification to the Supreme Court, and it was denied on February 4 of 2008, with Judge Stuart Rabner as witness.

I object this decision for several reasons. First, the custody award ignores the state policy favoring joint custody. Second, the order shows that the trial court disregarded or ignored the basic facts of this case. Third, the fact that Sofía is adopted makes physical custody indispensable to create a healthy parent-child relationship.

The public policy of the State of New Jersey is to favor joint custody arrangements. My case meets the conditions for such an arrangement: both parents are fit, both have a close relationship with the child, they live close to each other, both can cooperate with each other, and both are willing to accept custody. To deny a parent the custody of his/her child, that parent has to be proven unfit, and this is not the case. On the contrary, the very same court that denied me joined custody, affirmed the fitness of both parents.

The decision awarding physical custody of my daughter to my ex-wife was based on an absolute lack of knowledge about the case. In the Final Dual Judgment of Divorce (January 2007), the trial court’s judge, Claude Coleman, refers to the my ex-wife as “the natural mother” of Sofía, who had breastfed her, when since the very beginning of this process has been stated clearly that Sofia is an adopted child and therefore, my ex-wife was not her natural mother, and it was biologically impossible for her to breast-feed Sofía. Furthermore, the trial court made up speculations on who had been the primary caregiver of the child before the separation, and on how strong was the bond between my daughter and me. This erroneous affirmation reveals one of three equally terrible things: that the judge lied about the case, that he had no knowledge whatsoever about the case he was dealing with, or worst than that, he did not care enough to get that knowledge. All these choices require the reversal of a custody award based on such incompetence and lack of knowledge. Evidence of this was submitted to judges Gilroy and Lihotz of the Appellate Division and judge Rabner of the Supreme Court, and they deliberately ignored it, following the unwritten law of “one hand washes the other.”

The fact that Sofía is an adopted child makes this situation especially delicate. In the absence of a bloodline between a parent and a child, like in the case of adopted children, sharing the dynamics of day-to-day life is what creates the bond between them. For an adoptive parent, the physical custody of his child is not one of the ways to create a bond with his child: it is the only way. Since Sofía is an adopted child, depriving her from one of her parents will take away, for the second time, what life has already taken once: the love, comfort, and security that only her father and mother can give her.

There are even ethical connotations that the Essex County Bar should consider. Judge Stuart Rabner, who served as witness when the petition for certification that I filed to the Supreme Court was denied, has the same last name as one of the attorneys of my ex-wife, Rabner, Allcorn, Baumgart and Ben-Asher.

I have never asked sole custody of my child. I haven’t because I truly believe that sole custody is a something that harms children by depriving them of one of their parents, something that should be avoided and that should be granted only if one of the parents represents a danger to his/her children. What I ask is for the joint physical custody of my daughter, so that my daughter could stay with each parent the same amount of time.

At this moment, since custody cases are never closed, I am still looking for a new opportunity to present again my request for joint custody before another judge, a judge sensible and compassionate enough to award a custody arrangement that protect the well-being of my daughter. I ask for a change of judge, because judge Claude Coleman, who has been in charge of the case since the very beginning, has shown no interest whatsoever on dealing responsibly with it, even when his decisions have no relation with the facts of the case, even when my ex-wife has taken our daughter out of state, even when my ex-wife has broken the parenting schedule, even when my ex-wife has moved our daughter out of town without discussing the issue with me.

I will never give up in my fight for joint custody. I cannot. My child is waiting for me.