Germany and Children’s Right to Have a Father

I have said many times that our struggle is not a speed race that will be won in a sudden blow, but a marathon that will be won with endurance and patience.  I have said also that our struggle has to be counted as the sum of many battles that have been won before and that are being won right now.  I have to add now that there are no small battles, that there are no negligible victories.

A man in Germany had a son out of wedlock.  When he requested custody of his son, it was denied because the mother refused.  He challenged the decision and went to the Constitutional Court.  This, the country's highest court, just have ruled that mothers should not be allowed to veto an unmarried father's request for custody, stating that such a veto is unconstitutional and discriminates against his parental rights (“Children Need Both a Mother and a Father”).

Until this ruling, in the cases of separated couples that have never been married, a father could only apply for custody if the mother agreed to.  The court ruled that, while the mother can continue to be initially granted custody, the father should be allowed to request it.

This ruling followed another by the European Court of Human Rights in 2009, which stated that German laws violated anti-discrimination laws and contradicted the European directive on the right to sustain and respect family life.

The German press greeted this judgement as a step forward of German family law.  The article in Der Spiegel that I am quoting quotes several of these enthusiastic responses:

Süddeutsche Zeitung:

"The constitutional court's decision on custody rights has put an end to an older, insensitive period of family law.  More than 60 years after the German constitution came into effect, it has finally fulfilled its duty to put illegitimate children on an equal footing with other children.  The judgement is a good example of the court's power to make the law adapt to changed family structures.  Almost every third child (in Germany) is now born out of wedlock.  The country's highest court is now trying, with much juristic finesse, to give these children the right to a father as well as a mother."

Financial Times Deutschland:

"First of all, a change in the law is required…  Unmarried and married fathers should be automatically given custody rights to their children when they are born, rather than having to apply for it."

"The reality is that the mother has long ceased to be the only important attachment figure in a child's life."

Die Welt:

"The judgement is a step in the right direction.  Unmarried fathers will in future have a better chance of securing custody rights.  However, to get this chance they have to still drag their ex-partner to court.  This is not only an unnecessary burden on the courts, it is also a burden on the relationship between the parents, which provides the framework for any joint custody of a child."

"It would make sense to give both parents automatic custody rights when a child is born -- including if they are unmarried."

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:

"It cannot be the case that the mother can block a father's custody of his child, and in doing so interfere with their relationship.  The law cannot abet these kinds of power games that happen when relationships break down.  This is about the welfare of the child.  And family law is still infused with the spirit of the past, a different family reality.  The new ruling is only reflecting the deep changes in society."

"Children need both a mother and a father.  (…)  Those who bring a child into the world together should share responsibility for it."

Bild:

"Fathers are not per se the worst parent and mothers are not automatically the best.  Uncaring fathers and caring mothers -- these are clichés that since yesterday can be put where they belong: in the garbage can of prejudices."

"Of course the best thing is when a child lives with the father AND mother.  As a proper family.  But this ideal case is (unfortunately) not always reality."

"And if the parents split up, then there should be only one criteria for deciding who has custody: the wellbeing of the child."

For those who still had doubts about the power a lone man could have against the system: watch what just happened in Germany.

Catalonia’s New Civil Code and Joint Custody

Things are changing. 

The Parliament of Catalonia approved on Wednesday the draft law for the Second Book of the Civil Code on the person and the family, which establishes joint custody of the children in cases of separation.

As a promising sign of times, it was a woman, the Councilor of Justice Montserrat Tura, who presented the project that, along with the other codes approved by this legislature, constitute an unprecedented body of civil law in Catalonia.  Tura was enthusiastic to highlight that the law is committed to establish shared custody of children as the default option in case of separation; however, in some cases, in the interests of the child, custody can be attributed to one of them.  "We deliberately removed the term “visits”, we do not want winners and losers, we want children served by both parents," she pointed out.

Things are changing, and changing for the better.  Maybe not at the speed that we would like them to change, but they are certainly changing.  The Fathers Rights Movement is wining important battles worldwide.  We cannot allow ourselves to be discouraged by the fact that there is so much to be done.  We all knew that this was going to be a long journey.  The real important fact is that we are gaining terrain inch by inch, foot by foot. 

Let’s add Catalonia to our growing list of battles won.

Support in Unexpected Places: Gloria Steinem in The Colbert Report

I must confess that I am huge fan of Comedy Central, the cable channel dedicated exclusively to comedy shows. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, with my neighbor from Montclair Stephen Colbert, are my “must see TV.”

Last June 22nd, Stephen interviewed Gloria Steinem (March 25, 1934), the icon of American feminism. Steinem, journalist, social and political activist, was a leader and spokeswoman for the Women's Liberation Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s, and still is a prominent figure and an important referent of the movement.

During the brief although interesting interview, Stephen asked her to comment on her statement that it was unfair to women to ask them to have careers and to raise children too. In her comments, and to my pleasant surprise, Steinem argued in favor of shared parenting responsibilities, pointed out as a social advancement the fact that the men’s rights movement is fighting so that men have a more active role in the raising of children, and complained that the US laws make difficult to men participate as equal parents as women.

I have said before that regarding family law, some forms of feminism are not real feminism, but feminine supremacism, kind of an “inverted machismo” where women want to have over men the same control that men used to have over them. These false feminist want equality in everything but in family matters, and when they divorce, they want to deny men their right to be parents of their children. If these so-called feminist were so, they would have understood that putting on women all the responsibilities of raising children is just a way of preserving gender inequality, and they would be fighting for equal parenting rights for both genders. And if someone asks who said this, you can reply: Gloria Steinem did.

What Do Children Want?

In his article titled “Australian Study Asks Children Their Ideas About Custody”, Robert Franklin, one of the regular collaborators of the Fathers & Families website, reviews a study done by Dr. Alan Campbell of the University of South Australia (Child Care in Practice, 7/1/08).

Dr. Campbell and his team interviewed a group of Australian children between the ages of 7 and 17, all of them children of divorced or separated parents. The study wanted to answer three basic questions:

1. What are children’s views on their ability to participate in decisions that directly affect them following their parents’ separation?

2. To what extent do children’s interview texts reflect an adequate understanding of children’s rights?

3. How do children construct their understanding of the concept of their ‘‘best interests’’ in relation to post-separation decision-making about their futures?

Campbell questions come from previous studies that show that courts tend to ignore children’s views on divorce, separation, and custody, a behavior that is based on the dubious idea that courts know better than children what is in their “best interests.”

The study proved that children not only have very specific views on these issues, but that they also wanted to express them. For example, most of the interviewed children wanted to have some input in the decisions that were being made about their lives, they believed that this was their right; as Franklin writes, “they wanted their voices to be heard.” When discussing the topic of the so-called “best interests of the child,” they stated that being consulted should be part of the concept. They believed that when courts ignore their voices, they are ignoring one of the main things that would guarantee their best interests.

The children were also concerned about the lack of fairness that prevailing custody arrangements represented for their parents and for them. They considered the practice of awarding primary custody to one parent unfair to both the non-custodial parent and them.

Children wanted fair custody arrangements and considered the common practice of primary custody/visitation unfair. They believed that only fair custody arrangements could satisfy the law’s requirement that the courts act in their best interests.

The interviewed children tended to consider that experts appointed by courts (social workers, psychologists, etc.,) interfere rather than serve the process, and that family members, including members of extended family, should be the ones making decisions about custody. Any input from outside the family was considered less legitimate than the advice and counsel of family members. Although this idea would be almost impossible to put into practice, it shows that children understand family as a complete unit, a concept that family courts tend to ignore.

As Franklin writes, maybe it is time already to start listening to our kids.

The Langeac Declaration (2 of 2)

Last week I wrote about Declaration of Langeac. I consider it an important step towards an unified declaration of principles of our movement, towards an universal synthesis. Following is the full text of the Declaration:

Declaration of Langeac

Principles:

1. Fathers and mothers should be accorded equal status in a child’s life, and consequently should have equal rights and equal responsibilities.

2. Where the parents cannot agree, the children should spend equal time living with each parent.

3. Parenthood must be based only on the child-parent relationship, not that between parents. Children have the right to know both parents and vice versa.

1. The interests of the child:

a) The interests of the child will not be viewed as a pre-defined and separate entity from that of parents and family or as something to be defined by the public authorities or professionals. Parents will act as the medium for interpreting the interests of their children except in extreme cases of individual abuse or parental incapacity.

b) The public authorities and third parties can and should be encouraged to support families and individual family members when they need help and if necessary proactively. However in no case except that of severe abuse should they have the right to intervene where parents do not wish this.

c) The child has the right to communicate with his or her parents whatever the situation.

d) Biological parenthood should be established at birth by way of DNA testing. For any DNA test all material evidence and records should be destroyed immediately the conclusion of parenthood (or non-parenthood) is reached.

2. Elective contracts between parents:

a) Parents will be able to sign legally valid contracts which may vary their individual rights in regard to their children, eg: in the case of a family split they may agree to make a non-equal division of time and salaries if both so wish, or incorporate clauses involving spousal maintenance. The governments bureaucracies involved in these areas are charged with creating suitable blank contracts and formulae in order to simplify the choices involved and the cost of such procedures.

b) Parents will have access to advice and structured agreements (contracts) which will in all cases, be it via mediation or judicial intervention, stand as valid instruments permitting the formalization of such methods as division of residential time, etc.

3. Respect for the individual freedom of action of each parent:

a)… will not be modified, except by the minimum requirements of parental cooperation.

b) Geographical dislocation: where one or both parents wishes to move somewhere far away, leading to potential problems of contact, transport costs and disruption to children, may require outside authorities to make decisions affecting the quantities of time spent with each parent. This is because the free adult choice of where to live may be in conflict with the compromises necessary to ensure parental residence. Decisions thus arrived at must take into account all factors, including the need to find a job by moving for instance, and the need to respect adult choices and decisions. Assumptions based on the dogma of stable residence should not be made.

4. Adoptive parents, extended family and significant others:

Children should have the right of access to and information from members of the extended family on both sides and vice versa. The residential parent at any given time should have the right of final decision over children’s contact with other parties excepting extended family, parents and adoptive parents. The child retains the right to know both natural parents, of both receiving and sending communications to them, with proof that this has arrived.

5. The Politico-legal Context:

a) The politico-legal context within which family and gender issues are decided must be clear and fair between the sexes, with neither positive or negative discrimination. Relationships between men, women and children will be treated in such a way as to preclude the development of group competition and polarity between them. There should be no presumption that one group’s needs override the interests of others.

b) The interests of the child are defined by parents, together. In the case of separation they are to be defined by each parent in their residential time with the child. Only in the case where clear abuse against the child is established may other parties or public bodies acquire the right to override parental decisions in this respect In all other cases, their decision-making power should be limited to the ability to offer help and support to families in need.

6. Equality at work:

a) Both sexes should have equal right to parental leave from work.

b) Work structures should be planned so that both parents are able to participate as fully as possible in the life of their children.

c) This indisputably requires the restructuring of employment so that in many ways it reflects the work patterns of primary and secondary school teachers. This proposal is made, of course, within the context of a global reduction in the requirements for workers and in the light of general awareness of the need to enrich the emotional and functional links between the generations.

7. Mediation, Judicial Discretion and Involvement of Professional Third Parties:

a) Mediated cooperation through professional third parties may be preferable where children’s welfare requires it. Residence should not be dependent on the assessment by professionals of parental cooperation or non-cooperation.

b) Certain decisions require joint consent. Structures should be put in place to enable this, whether through third parties or directly. Examples of such decisions: vaccinations (medical care), choice of school, residence timetables, etc.

c) Only in the case that parents are not able to arrive at a mutual agreement will the intervention of mediators in the first instance and of the court as a final resort become necessary.

d) In cases where parents simply do not or cannot reach agreement, either directly or through mediation, judges will have to make the decisions for them. This does not imply that these outside authorities have the right to decide the quantities of parental time, but only the distribution of the quantities of time agreed by both parents or the default of 50 / 50.

e) Justice should not only be done but be seen to be done. In camara proceedings should be avoided wherever possible. Where it is deemed necessary or desirable to protect the identity / ies of the parties, records of the proceedings and justification for the decision should be made publicly available. In order to achieve this, proper stenographed records of all proceedings must be kept.

f) Mediation should be available before, during and after divorce / separation. Mediation must be independent from the courts. It must always be a free public service, optional and gender neutral. Courts should respect mediation agreements and mediation intervention.

8. Finances:

a) If parents are financially capable, each parent is to be held financially responsible for half the costs of childcare. This cost may be pre-determined on the basis of minimum child maintenance and childcare costs, which will be the responsibility of parents in the first instance, and of the state or other responsible bodies where parents do not or cannot fulfill their obligations.

b) Any other agreements or contracts between the parents regarding financial maintenance and other childcare issues may be freely entered into by mutual accord between both parents. That is to say, both parents can mutually sign legally valid contracts varying their basic rights, for example, by giving more or less rights to money or residential time to one or the other parent.

9. Child abuse:

i) cruelty;

ii) negligence;

iii) violence;

iv) sexual abuse

should be dealt with under the relevant criminal law, not the laws of residence and equal parenthood. The presumption of innocence until proven guilty should apply in all cases except those at b) below.

a) Evaluation of child abuse should be without prejudice. The four types of abuse will have no order of priority in judicial decisions. Unless accusations are of such gravity that they affect the immediate safety of the child, no decision to suspend residence with either parent should be made.

b) Where accusations exist and residence has been suspended, immediate provisional investigation to assess dangers of residence should take place, with a maximum of a two weeks’ delay permitted before 50 / 50 or other agreed double residence is restored. Separation should not be used as an opportunity for revising the residence rights to one of the parents.

c) False accusations or perjury should be severely dealt with under the criminal law.

d) As parental alienation damages the child-parent relationship, it is detrimental to the best interests of the child, and should be viewed as a form of child abuse. Actions by state authorities which damage child-parent relationships should also be viewed as a form of child abuse and carry corresponding penalties.

10. Cases which do not concern equal parenthood:

EP does not directly address cases where one or both parents refuse or cannot take up their parental responsibilities in respect of their children, to care for and maintain them. It only addresses those cases where both parents want to look after and be responsible for both of their children. Within EP it is recognised that to force a parent to look after their child physically when they state they do not wish to is probably inadvisable. However, given that financial obligations to care for the child exist, the need to provide care for the child are available, either through the parents or the state. Equally, child abuse is under EP, regarded as a distinct and separate question.

Definitions

Parents

… are defined as the biological parents or in the case of severe abuse by biological parents or where children are orphaned, the adoptive parents.

Child

… is taken to mean a human being from birth to the age of emancipation or majority, whichever is the lower.

Family

…is a child and it’s biological or adoptive parents.
Extended Family

… are the blood relatives of the child or his or her adoptive parents.

Clarification: Each part of this declaration is integral to the whole and cannot be applied outside the context of the other clauses.

Grandparents and Joint Custody

Recently I received news from Spain (“Los abuelos por la custodia compartida piden a la UE poder ver a sus nietos”) that reminded me of one of the many faces of the tragedy lived by many families after divorce.

Representatives of the Grandfathers and Grandmothers pro Joint Custody Association (ASACCO) of Catalonia will meet in Brussels with members of the directive board of the European Commission of Civil Justice, to whom they will expose their impossibility of seeing their grandchildren on a regular basis after the divorce of their children.

The Association considers that their right to have a relationship with their grandchildren is not respected, and that the Spanish courts allow “a biased juridical practice that hinder the consecution of authentic justice" in these cases. The Association believes that the current Spanish law against gender violence "causes damage” in the life of these families, depriving children of divorced parents of a healthy relationship with their extended families.

We should never forget that current family laws affect not only divorced parents, but the totality of the involved families, uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, who after divorce lose their loved ones too. It is for this reason, because we all have divorced couples in our families, that not only fathers, but also everyone should be committed with the fight for a reform of family courts and of the laws that rule them. Thank God for people like the member of ASACCO, who have realized that when a member of a family suffers, all the members of that family suffer too.

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.

Connecticut Takes a Step to Protect Men’s Rights

The basic principle of due process is that a defendant whose rights the state wants to limit is entitled to notice of the charge against him/her and a hearing before an impartial arbiter. But in the area of domestic violence law, those two basic rights are usually ignored. The mere allegation of domestic violence can be enough to deprive a person of constitutional rights (refer to my two previous posts).

Connecticut resident Fernando A., whose full name is not released in court records, was divorcing when his wife fabricated the attack story to gain leverage in family court proceedings. He never got a chance to object to the order of protection issued against him that removed him from his house and prevented him from seeing his children. His lawyer, Steven D. Ecker, of Hartford’s Cowdery, Ecker & Murphy, asked for an evidentiary hearing, but Superior Court Judge James Bingham denied the request. Ecker then challenged the denial up to the state Supreme Court.

The Connecticut Supreme Court then ruled an opinion in which states that, in order to award a restriction order, a defendant must be granted an evidentiary hearing at which the state must consider both sides of the story and must prove, by the civil standard of a preponderance of evidence, that the order is necessary. The defendant may testify or present witnesses, and may cross-examine any witnesses against him. The order may be issued initially on little evidence and with no notice to the defendant, leaving the defendant with no opportunity to defend himself, but that order can now remain in force only for a "reasonable" period of time (what constitutes a reasonable time remains gray area).

This is small but very important step towards a fair treatment of those who are accused of domestic violence, which in turn is a step towards a fair custody awarding system, because, as we all know, domestic violence accusations are one of the instruments most commonly used to block fathers from having custody and visitation rights.

This court opinion has its setbacks. Judges have an extremely broad discretion and can emit restriction orders based on little evidence, relying only on the written materials and hearsay to continue their restriction order. How long a defendant may be deprived of his home, his belongings, access to his children, bank accounts, etc., is not specified. The standard of proof required is, instead of the more restrictive criminal standard, the civil one of "preponderance of the evidence," which means that if the prosecution produces barely more than half of the evidence submitted to court, it wins and the defendant's children may face an indefinite time apart from him.

Again: this is a small step, but a small step in the right direction. Hopefully, this Connecticut court opinion will serve as a deterrent against false accusations and as a shield to protect men’s basic constitutional rights. Hopefully this court opinion will save many men from living in constant fear and intimidation.

British Conservatives and Joint Custody

Robert Franklin published in the online men’s journal Men’s News Daily (http://mensnewsdaily.com) an article titled “British Tories Favor Shared Parenting After Breakup” (http://mensnewsdaily.com/glennsacks/2009/10/13/british-tories-favor-shared-parenting-after-breakup/), on the support of British conservatives of public policies that favor joint custody.

Tim Loughton, UK Shadow Children's Minister, said at a meeting hosted by the charity consortium Kids in the Middle, that his party (the Conservative and Unionist Party, “Tories”) preferred a system that presumed shared parenting following divorce, even if the couples could not reach an agreement and needed mediation to do so. Loughton said:

"At the moment we have got an incredibly adversarial system when parents split up. It is crazy we have so many acrimonious cases. (…) From the start of the process there should be a default mechanism for shared responsibility unless there is a welfare reason not to."

His comments come as a reaction to the growing concerns in British society over the adverse impact of conflict between parents on children. Several issues compound these concerns:

-The generalized rejection to the current adversarial nature of divorce processes.

- The growing acceptance of a presumption of equally shared parenting for custody awards.

- The understanding of the importance of mediation in divorce processes.

-The generalized idea that both parents should be involved in their children’s education.

Even though there is no concrete law project in favor of joint custody in the United Kingdom, the fact that the powerful Tory Party favors joint custody should be considered a milestone in the attainment of one. This should be read as a sign of the profound transformations that family relations and gender roles are undergoing in many countries around the world, transformations that in the end will bring healthier families, happier children, and stronger communities.

I would like to finish this post quoting the last paragraph of the article, on which, after mentioning all the possible barriers against the concretion of a pro-joint custody law in the United Kingdom, says:

“But those are all things to be dealt with, to be fought over when the time comes. Final victory never comes; movement toward greater father-child bonds is always a work in progress. It is now and always will be a process of becoming.”

Colombia: A Law in Favor of Joint Custody and Against False Accusations

The webpage of the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, published last October 15th of 2009 an article by Andrea Linares Gómez titled “Pérdida de custodia por falsa denuncia o si un padre daña imagen del otro, plantea proyecto de ley” (“Law Project Proposes Loss of Custody for False Accusations or If a Parent Damages Image of the Other). (http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/justicia/perdida-de-custodia-por-falsa-denuncia-o-si-un-padre-dana-la-imagen-de-otro-plantea-proyecto-de-ley_6335647-1). The article discusses the law project that wants to establish joint custody in Colombia. This project responds to a tendency in Colombian society. According to family judge Ana Lucía Suárez, although in the majority of cases is the mother who wants the children’s custody, more fathers ask for it with more frequency.

It is always good news knowing that another country joins the world trend in favor of joint custody, especially if that country is as important and has such an influence as Colombia. However, what catches my attention is that the project establishes that if one of the parents damages his/her children’s image of the other parent or makes malicious sexual abuse accusations against the noncustodial parent, that parent will lose custody of the children. The project also provides for taking custody rights from any parent who physically abuse his/her children.

Federico Cardona, president of the Colombian organization Fundación Primero la Infancia (Infants First Foundation), that gathers noncustodial fathers and mothers, states that false accusations are the most common problem among separated couples. These false accusations are used as an instrument to alienate the other parent from his/her children and to create in them a negative image of the noncustodial parent. This dynamic, as we all already know, is typical in Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) cases.

The problem of false accusations during custody disputes is a very serious one. In countries like Puerto Rico and Chile, the phenomenon reaches epidemical proportions. The main reason of this proliferation of false accusations is precisely its impunity: in family courts, anyone can accuse another of any atrocity, knowing that courts, with the excuse of protecting minors, will ban any contact between the accused and his/her children, knowing also that when accusations are proved false, the bond between children and the absent parent would have been weakened, and the accuser will not be liable for his/her malicious accusations. The achievement of this piece of legislation is that, as many pro joint custody groups have been asking for a long time, at last would exist a juridical figure through which the malicious accuser could be brought to court and be judged.

I hope that this pro joint custody law will be approved in Colombia, and that other Latin-American countries follow this example.

Signe Wilkinson, Fatherlessness, and Schools

Signe Wilkinson (born in 1959 in Texas) is an editorial cartoonist best known for her work at The Washington Post and the Philadelphia Daily News. She was the first female cartoonist to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. She was served as president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists from 1994-1995.

In one of her cartoons, published last September 29th (http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=4273), on which she depicts a classroom where every student chair has been labeled with one of the causes of American school system failure, and the most prominent has been labeled with the word “Dadless”. The fact that such a mainstream voice points out fatherlessness as one of the factors of the current school system debacle (right now, the US schools’ performance compares to those of third world countries) is an achievement in itself, but that that voice points in as the most relevant, is a true accomplishment.

We teachers know (I was an elementary school teacher for nineteen years) that schools are microcosms of the communities and societies where they stand. It is true that fatherlessness is one of the main social sources of student failure at schools, it is also true that fatherlessness is one of the sources of failure in life for so many children who have been risen without their fathers.

Very recently, the Sundance Channel aired a five episodes series titled “Brick City,” on the current struggle to revitalize the once extremely vital, now extremely violent city of Newark. In one of the most telling scenes, a teacher, in a classroom full of high school boys, asked them to raise their hand if they had little or no contact with their fathers; the vast majority raised their hands.

There is an admonition in this: If we want our societies to fail, the only thing that we have to do is to remove fathers from the lives of their children. But if what we want is give our world a chance to succeed and survive, let us allow that fathers to be an integral part of the lives of their children.

We, the believers in joint custody, have already chosen what we want.

The Poisoned Well

These days, life has reminded me, in a violent way as it always does to me, that struggles like mine never end, that every overcome test is nothing more that the preparation for a bigger test, that every battle won is nothing more that the preamble for a greater battle, more brutal, bloodier.

Life is a hard and unending training.

I say this, because as many that have been or are now in my situation have already discovered, solving in court the problem of the custody of our children is not the end of the war, but the beginning of an incessant sequence of big and small skirmishes, which only purpose is to sabotage the initial victory, to prove that joint custody does not work by making sure that it will not work (and so think the evil ones: if we suspect that our prophecy will not be fulfilled, we will force its fulfillment).

I say this, because in the same fashion of the wars of antiquity, on which and army poisoned the water that would be drunk by the other one, so many people, when they lose the sole custody of their children and see themselves forced to share it with their ex-spouse, from that moment on they commit themselves to provoke, to defy, to make the other parent’s life as miserable as possible.

I say this, because we cannot give up.

Always Dad, by Paul Mandelstein

The book Always Dad: Being a Great Father During & After Divorce, by Paul Mandelstein, is a very useful book for divorced fathers. Finalist for The Publishers Marketing Associations Benjamin Franklin Award, this book aspires to be a guide for those fathers who want to remain being fathers during and after divorce.

Mandelstein, a divorced father of three, founded in 1999 the nonprofit organization Father Resource Network (www.father.com), where he serves as chairman and executive director. This network helps divorced fathers, facilitating workshops and lectures focused on fatherhood in the 21st century.

In his book Always Dad, Mandelstein distills his years of experience working with divorced fathers into down-to-earth ideas and strategies to guide fathers to continue playing a crucial role in their children's lives.

Following is a summary of the chapters of the book:

Introduction - Lemons into Lemonade: Divorce as a chance for growth as a persona and as a father.

Chapter One - Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: On keeping healthy bonds with our children after divorce.

Chapter Two - Creating Your New Home: On how to make a new home and how to make room in it for your kids.

Chapter Three - Daily Life as a Single Dad: A typical day in the life of a single dad.

Chapter Four - The Non-custodial Dance: Establishing the grounds for raising children in two different homes. Earning the trust of your children in the new situation.

Chapter Five - Ex-Communications: 10 Ways to Make Talking to Your Ex Easier: Advice on how to communicate with your ex.

Chapter Six - Settling Up: Legal and Custody Issues.

Chapter Seven - Let's Get Real About the Kids: On becoming the parent you want to be for your kids.

Chapter Eight - Keeping Yourself Together: On recognizing and managing stress and depression.

Chapter Nine - Birthdays and Holidays: Tips for sharing birthdays and holidays with your ex.

Chapter Ten - Kids, Friends, Dating, and Lovers: On how to start dating again, and how doing this relates to your kids and your ex.

Chapter Eleven - Taking a Chance on Love Again: On remarriage and blending the new families.

Shared Parenting, by Burrett and Green

Jill Burrett, a psychologist who helps divorced parents as a counselor and mediator, and Michael Green, a lawyer who runs a private mediation practice, have published the book Shared Parenting: Raising Your Child Cooperatively After Separation.

These two experts, each one with over 30 years of experience, wrote this book as an handbook for separated or divorced parents who want to develop a a successful shared parenting strategy. The authors emphasize the importance of children having significant time with both parents so they can maintain meaningful relationships.

They cite supporting research, which indicates how important it is for children to continue healthy relationships with their parents after family breakdown. They sustain that once a good shared parenting arrangement is working, all the parties involved receive emotional benefits: mothers becoming more comfortable with sharing the children, fathers learn to be truly involved in their children lives, and children are happy for being able to be with both parents. The authors write:

“We don’t think fortnightly weekend parenting is meaningful shared parenting. We think that shared parenting means having real chunks of time engaged with your children for a flexible 35–50 percent or more of their available time.

Sole-mother ‘custody’, with mother doing all the parenting and father merely paying the bills and popping into the kids’ lives from time to time, isn’t really good enough for children – and often not for mothers – in either separated or ‘intact’ family situations”.

Some of the most interesting chapters of the book are:

Chapter 1 Parenting after separation: Shared parenting can produce happier children and more satisfied parents; a few guidelines for making it work.

Chapter 5 Sorting out your motives: How parent’s feelings can interfere with their parenting, and how they can get past their hurt and anger and focus on approaches that will benefit their children.

Chapter 8 Designing a parenting plan: How to design your own parenting plan.

Chapter 9 Sample parenting plans.

Chapter 10 Communicating between households: Tips for communication between divorced parents.

This book than can help all of us who have shared parenting schedules and want them to be successful.

The Absence of Agreement between Parents Is Not a Valid Reason to Deny Joint Custody

Many divorced parents reject the concept of joint custody, and there are many of them who not only reject joint custody, but who also reject arrangements that are usual in sole custody cases. In Pascale v. Pascale (140 N.J. 583, 1995), the case that led to a revision of the child support guidelines in New Jersey, established that:

…many traditional custody arrangements… will include more than one night of parenting a week for the secondary caretaker of the children. 140 N.J. 611 (1995)

These parents reject even what would be considered a small variation of the traditional arrangement. Having said this, it should be said that in Beck v. Beck, the landmark joint custody case in New Jersey, the mother also rejected the idea of a joint custody arrangement, but that fact was not an obstacle to grant joint custody. To the objections to a court ordered joint custody, Dr. Clark, one of the experts used as consultants, replied that:

…the ideal joint custody arrangement would be one arrived at by agreement between parties. Nevertheless, in the absence of such an agreement, joint custody could successfully be carried out by Court decree, provided the parents put the best interest of the children first and were provided with certain “ground rules” governing the custody arrangement. 86 N.J. 492 (1981)

If both parents are responsible parents, joint custody will work, no matter if this arrangement has been ordered by court. Beck v. Beck dissipates any doubt that a court ordered joint custody could arise:

Although joint custody may be less likely to succeed if ordered by the Court than if achieved by the parent’s agreement, court-ordered joint custody is likely to be no more prone to failure than court-ordered sole custody following a divorce custody proceeding. 86 N.J. 498 (1981)

What the child will gain from a joint custody arrangement is so much, and what this child would lose in a sole custody arrangement is so much, that the Court should put all its effort to lead the divorcing parents to a joint custody arrangement, even if one of them disagrees.

Rhonda Gale

I recently read the blog post titled “Dads Are Winning Custody of their Children” by Rhonda Gale (http://mother-2-mother.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html), on which, with admirable motherly spirit and solidarity, celebrates the recent advancements of fathers on the matter of the custody of their children, and points out in a brief but accurate way the factors that have allowed this achievements to happen.

Two things called my attention in a special manner. First, that the author of the text is a woman that writes in a blog for women. Many times, we the men who fight for the cause of joint custody, tend to forget that there are many women who are also fighting for the cause, women who are wives, grandmothers, aunts, friends, in summary, women who although are not fathers, see and suffer the harmful effects that the current family laws have in their children and their families.

Second, it surprised me the simplicity and the clarity with which Gale enumerates those causes of the advancements of fathers and children rights. I now summarize those that I consider more important:

• Fathers are becoming more involved in their children's upbringing.

• Fathers are educating themselves on how to win the custody of their children, convincing the judge that they are just as fit as mothers are.

• Fathers are using their intelligence and emotional stability to win their cases.

• More men are willing to invest the money on attorney fees preparing for the legal battle.

• Men are forming support groups and learning from other fathers who have won custody of their children.

Take note.

Rejoice with me!

My friends:

God has visited me, again.

You all know how much I have fought for the joint custody of my daughter Sofía.
Last July 17 of 2009 I went court again, and although the judge did not grant me joint custody, he added another overnight a week to the one that I already have, what makes the current parenting schedule a de facto joint custody arrangement. From next week on, Sofía will have dinner with me on Tuesdays and go to her mom’s house afterward, and on Thursdays, I will pick her up at school and will bring her to her mom’s house on Saturday night.

The judge also awarded me vacation time, which I did not had until today (now I can visit my family in Puerto Rico), and at my request, the judge set a schedule to start disclosing to Sofía the fact that she is adopted, an issue that really worried me.

I want to point out two things that should be remarked. First, that during the hearing, both my attorney and the judge acknowledged the major advancements of fathers’ rights in recent years. Although it is true that these changes have not come at the speed that we would like them to come, they are coming, and in sustained and clear pace.

Second, that persistence and faith pay. If I had given up, as many people, including friends, had told me to do, this victory would never have happened. It was my faith in God and my will to fight what gave me the strength an the vision to keep on insisting on the rights of my child and my rights as a father.

So, God has smiled at me and life is good.

Vidal

One Step Forward, One Step Backward: Canada and Australia (2 of 2)

During the past decade, the Australian court system, by means of the Family Law Act of 2006, has supported joint custody as an important way of maintaining family life after divorce. The Act, which surveys in Australia have shown has high levels of support among Australians, presumes that joint custody is the arrangement that works best for both children and parents, and establishes shared parenting as the norm for post-separation custody arrangements.

Recently, an organized movement, formed mainly by government bureaucrats, feminist extremist and the family law industry itself, has opposed these advancements and has requested changes to family law, changes that in practice would bring Australian family law to the previous anti shared parenting policies. This movement argues that the current shared parenting laws put children in harms way, using as example several recent cases on which children have been murdered during visitation time with their fathers.

Several issues have to be discussed here. First, as recent horrendous cases have tragically proved, violence and filicide are not the exclusive realm of fathers. There are violent fathers, but there are many violent mothers too. Second, if the current law has loopholes through which inadequate parents have contact with their children, those loopholes should be corrected without removing the shared parenting concept, as the anti joint custody movement is requesting right now. Being the proved best option for children of divorced parents, shared parenting should be protected always. If we follow the logic of the anti joint custody movement, we would abolish marriage because many married women have been killed by their husbands. Of course, we should not, because marriage, as joint custody, has proved that its benefits for the whole society are far more numerous and important than its setbacks.

This type of step backwards is not new in history. In New Jersey, women were granted the right to vote in 1776, bust they lost it again in 1807, when the right was restricted to white males only, with the excuse of avoiding electoral fraud and simplifying the electoral process. As long as a right is not accepted as right but as a concession, there will be always a chance the forces against it would find a way to take it away.

The case of the Australian Family Law Act proves something important for the shared parenting movement. Having a pro joint custody legislation approved is not, I repeat, is not end of the road. It is just the beginning. Once a country has a good family law, we should stay vigilant, knowing that a law that is not enforced is dead, and that many retrograde forces will try to move back to the previous regime.

Sadly, many people like to live in the past.

One Step Forward, One Step Backward: Canada and Australia (1 of 2)

On June 16 of 2009, Maurice Vellacott, member of House of Commons of Canada, submitted Bill C-422, for a presumption of equal parenting. This bill, if passed, will direct courts to make equal shared parenting the presumptive arrangement in the best interests of the child. On its Preamble, the bill states that among its purposes are to:

(b) encourage divorcing spouses to assume more responsibility for their affairs, with less reliance on adversarial processes,

(c) promote joint responsibility and joint decision-making by spouses in respect of ongoing childcare, nurturing, and development,

(d) establish that the interests of the child are best served through maximal ongoing pa- rental involvement with the child, and that the rebuttable presumption of equal parenting is the starting point for judicial deliberations…

This historic bill is the result of the efforts of many pro joint custody organizations in Canada, especially of The Canadian Equal Parenting Council (CEPC, www.canadianepc.com). The Council is a coalition of 38 pro joint custody organizations encompassing a range of issues related to family and social justice in Canada. In its mission statement they write:

The primary mission of this organization, and the movement it represents, is to secure every child’s right to be equally parented when the relationship between the father and the mother breaks down.

Last week we rejoiced for the triumphs of Amor de Papá in Chile. Now we have to rejoice for the triumphs of our Canadian brothers and sisters. If Bill C-422 is passed, the fight for the right of our children to have two parents would haven achieved a historic milestone.

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.