OpEd: Which group experiences the worst discrimination in the US? Non Custodial Parents

[Fumesucker]

Posted without comment.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_steven_l_070507_discrimination__96_whi.htm

Non custodial parents are the approved 21st century whipping boys (and girls). Non Custodial Parents are the only group where there is next to zero support from those not in our situation. There are plenty of men who fight for women’s rights, plenty of non-blacks and straights who fight for African American and Gay rights. Who stands with Non Custodial Parents?


Our children are torn from us, and more often than not the custodial parent seeks to emotionally isolate and alienate the non custodial parent from the child/children. Two of the three branches of state and federal governments, who should be fighting to protect the rights of all of their citizens, are positioned against us, the legislature and the judiciary. Instead of support or empathy, the only time one of our group is noticed is if they are late in paying or haven’t paid child support, or if they lose it and say or do something they shouldn’t. For the record, I do not know anyone who is in the process of becoming or who is a non custodial parent who hasn’t lost it at some point and I don’t want to meet anyone who hasn’t. If you love and care about your children, I don’t see how you could stay completely sane during this systematic bullying by the system. I don’t see David Hasselhoff and Alec Baldwin the same as the rest of the country and world see them. I’ve been there. My daughter and I were exceptionally close until my ex wife decided to punish me for divorcing her by taking custody away from me. I lost it completely and became incredibly depressed for nearly two years. If you love your child and someone takes them away from you, I guarantee you that at least part of your sanity will not be far behind.


Child Support and every other weekend visits (or less) make the Iraq war look like brilliant policy. There is a simple alternative that is psychologically and emotionally much better for the children, is more fair, and doesn’t encourage one of the parents to use the children as a weapon against the other parent. Its called “Fully Equal and Shared Custody”. One parent has the children for X amount of time, the other has the children next for the same amount of time. They have the children equal amounts of time, thus they each pay for the children’s expenses when the child lives with them, making the arbitrary and capricious amounts set for Child Support unnecessary, inappropriate and irrelevant. The question is, does anyone care?

[JDPriestly]

1. The equal time thing doesn't always work well because children need stability in their lives.

Sometimes it can work. If parents live in the same community and can get along well maybe it can work. But then, parents who get along well usually don't get divorced.

Sometimes child custody issues are just a way to get revenge on a partner for some reason.

In California, the amount of child support the parent pays can depend on how much time the child spends with that parent. That is intended to encourage both parents to try to spend the maximum amount of time possible with their children.

The children's interests are the consideration in deciding how custody should be worked out. The interest of the parents are secondary.

The best thing is for the parents to learn to get along and provide an intact family for their children. Compassion, patience, humility and loving each other and your children is the best custody plan for the whole family.

A lot of parents get into a blame-game in which they blame the other parent for their own failings. That's very sad.

We have far too much divorce in our country. A lot of children suffer from it.

Equal custody sounds great, but if the parents can't get along, no custody plan will work. Equal custody can be a problem if one parent lives far from the child's school.

Best plan for everyone -- no divorce. Learn to get along with your spouse's imperfections as well as you own. If the imperfections include abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse or mental illness, and divorce is really unavoidable, then equal custody is probably not a good idea.

Sorry.

[pnwmom]

2. Children aren't things and can't be split in half.

I have seen shared custody work for a few years before the child is in school. After that, I can't see how it would be good for the child -- whose needs are more important than either parent.

[Orrex]

3. Equal-time custody seems designed to be a 100% disaster

Why should a child have to endure the further trauma of being ripped from one environment and forced into another every six months? Already reeling from the emotional shattering inflicted by divorce, the child then gets to suffer the ordeal of learning a new routine, new schedule, new space, and new rules twice annually?

What if the parents live 100 miles apart? The child will enjoy the additional benefit of getting perpetually yanked out of school, which will keep the "new kid" stigma fresh forever, while more or less guaranteeing that the child won't be able to keep up with the fucked up standards of Common Core testing already burdensome even to children growing up in a fixed, stable environment.

And while we're at it, what will this do to the parents, who will have to completely restructure their own lives for six months at a time? This will be an impairment to career advancement, thereby reducing their longterm financial status which in turn affects the children's well-being also.


Fuck this bullshit proposal.

[Fumesucker]

4. You might want to check out the name of the author

[SamKnause]

5. n/t

[MissB]

6. I've seen equal custody in action.

And for the couple that I know, it works wonderfully. I assume that must be incredibly rare.

This couple had two children together and divorced when the kids were toddlers. Somehow the divorce was amicable. The kids have two homes and spend equal time at each- several days a week at one and several days at the other. The parents live a few miles apart.

The dad remarried when the kids were in early grade school and his new wife brought with her another child. The three children have been raised as siblings and the ex-wife has taken all three kids for various amounts of time as needed. Again, I'm sure the resulting relationships in this divorce are quite rare.

All the kids involved are in high school now with the oldest set to graduate this year. I've always assumed that as the kids get older they would choose to live with one parent over the other but they are still spending equal amounts of time at each parent.

The parents figured out how to be adults. Rare indeed.

[trumad]

7. Divorce sucks for kids.

So many times, courts, parents, forget about the kids and end up screwing them up.

[Chan790]

8. "Fully-Equal and Shared Custody" is actually usually a disaster...but I have seen a great solution.

F-E&SC may be more equitable for the parents but it can be absolute misery on the kids, especially young kids.

There is actually a fair and reasonable solution to this problem but it lies beyond the capacity of the courts to implement; you as joint custodial (or fully-equal and shared) parents need to choose it for yourselves. It requires parents to actually work together and get along, to jointly make decisions and actually be civil...you're going to be seeing a lot of your ex. It requires both parents to agree upfront that they're going to have to make sacrifices...there is no moving halfway across the country for a job offer or moving in with your new "*-friend." It requires you to find ways to deal with conflict with your ex...not always the easiest thing to do when if you could deal with conflict, you might still be married.

You do what my friend Pete's (not his real name) parents did when he and his sister were growing up. After the divorce was final and the assets were divided, the house was sold, each of his parents bought one side of a duplex. (It doesn't have to be a duplex...it could be adjacent houses or houses within the same block.) They had shared custody; both parents had equal access to the kids; there was one backyard with one swing-set and one pool and one sand-box; the kids bedrooms technically were on different sides of the duplex but were accessible from both sides. (actually, a portion of each bedroom was taken and a kids' bathroom was put in the middle.) So, no matter which parent had custody, the kids were always sleeping in their own rooms in their own home; there was no pitting their parents against each other or wanting to go live with the other parent because they had nicer things there. The kids came and went between both sides of the house as they wanted pretty much. More than that, they agreed to actually have joint excursions and eat a weekly dinner together. They made parenting decisions jointly. It was rocky for a few years at-first but once they got over their initial dislike of each other and realized that they both wanted the same thing: the well-being of their kids, it worked fine.

Are there complications and issues? Of course there are. You've got to learn to live with the things outside your control. It gives new meaning to "conflicts with the neighbor." You may not like who your ex-spouse is dating, you may have to come to mutual agreements which limit your autonomy such as agree that you're not going to move away or who is responsible for the pool or come to some sort of compact of how to deal with the reality that you're dating other people. (They didn't bring dates back to the communal duplex until the relationships were serious. They both ended up married to other people while living in the duplex.) You've got to talk about things like "Who's bringing Pete to 6am drop-off for the field trip to DC?" and daily mundane topics like "I'm picking up Katie at 2pm to take to the orthodontist for her braces fitting on my way to work. Here's my half of the co-pay and deductible. You need to be there to take her home before they're done." There are also benefits...it's rarely hard to find a last-minute babysitter when your ex shares an exterior wall. Your kids are happy and get the benefits of a two-parent home while you don't have to be married to that asshole anymore.

[LuvNewcastle]

9. I think some people might have it worse

than the non-custodial parent. Albino hermaphrodite lepers probably feel more left out, for instance. Trans people often get serious pushback from religious families. Maybe it could be instructional to get non-custodial parents to meet people who have serious obstacles to overcome in life. It gives people some perspective about their own situations, and sometimes they even understand that there are many others who are having a harder time in life. A lot of the non-custodial parents might even come to see that their problems are trivial when compared with the tribulations of others.

[missingthebigdog]

10. There is no one-size-fits -all answer to this issue.

There are parents who can successfully share custody of their children, but in my experience as a family law attorney, they are few and far between. People who can get along well enough to make joint custody work could just as easily make their marriage work.

The problem I most frequently encounter is parents who want rights but not responsibilities. These parents want joint custody because they don't want to pay child support, or want equal time but want their half of the time to be free of doctor's appointments and school obligations.

As to the author's assertion that child support is "arbitrary and capricious," that could not be further from the truth. Child support is set by formula, and that formula is applied in the same way in each case. That is the opposite of arbitrary. Child support allows a child to have some semblance of the lifestyle he or she would have had if his or her parents had stayed together. Non-custodial parents see this as unfair because the custodial parent benefits from this "enhanced" standard of living as well. You can't provide your child a comfortable home in a safe neighborhood without allowing your ex-wife to live there, too.

As to each parent just paying the child's expenses when he or she lives with them, how is that in the best interest of the child? When there is a significant difference in resources (and there often is) is it really fair to the child that he or she should have to live on Ramen noodles half of the time? Spend half of his or her time in a spacious home with all the bells and whistles, and half of his or her time in a trailer park with no air conditioning?

Children deserve stability. They are not property that can be divided equitably by the Court. Parents need to figure out how to put the needs of their children first, even if it means giving up some of their own "rights."

On edit: this is a seven year old article, written by another DUer, and seems to have been posted here as part of some kind of agenda. Perhaps divorcing parents aren't the only ones who need to learn to solve their differences like adults.

[BlueJazz]

11. Great, thoughtful, informative post.

[jwirr]

12. I realize that most of the replies are concerning divorce and

custody issue of today. I was divorced in 1965 at the request of my ex who had found someone else and given custody of my three daughters - one severely disabled and in need of total care.

The courts did what they thought was the best for us. But back then there was no program to chase the deadbeats. My ex never paid more than $20 a month child support and he complained about that. I did not ask for alimony for myself because I did not believe in it. The $20 a month was the amount the court allowed for my disabled daughter. They did that because the court understood that I was going to need help from social services for her and all of us. He never paid one cent of the child support he was supposed to pay for the other two girls.

We lived on opposite ends of Iowa and he would visit and take the two healthy girls to visit his mother for one afternoon. This was maybe two times a year.

When I got a chance to attend college I moved to Nebraska and he visited once a year. He and his wife would take the girls to a hotel for one day and to the cheapest shopping center he could find. Then the girls told me that the rest of the time he would brow beat them into coming to stay with him in another state for two weeks. They would come back crying every time and tell me that they had to go with him. I would direct them to start packing and he would come in to watch. All this time they are crying. Finally he would realize that they really did not want to go and would storm out of the house. He would go to the welfare office and complain. Every year the social worker would visit to ask the girls what went on and they would tell her. He finally stopped coming at all.

I will confess that I was glad that they girls did not want to go with him but I did not discourage them. In those days and maybe even today. The laws allowed the non-custodial parent to take the children across the state lines and go to court for custody. There was not much that could be done. I do not know if I could have trusted him or not but I am glad that I never had to find out.

As to the child that he actually paid something for. The last time he had anything to do with her was a day he came to pick the other two up - she had a seizure and I was helping to pack the girls things to visit their grandmother and asked him to take care of her seizure. He freaked. From that day on he never asked about her or visited her again. The state of Iowa did go after the arrears that he owed and he tried to fight it. But the times they had been changing. The courts no longer ignored the deadbeats.