Conference quokka::non_custodial_parents

Posted with permission of the author.  Originally published in
Foster's Daily Democrat, Dover N.H.  pg. 9 December 28, 1991

	The Importance of Fathers in Child Development

	         By Michael J. Geanoulis Sr.

  A growing body of evidence from such organizations as the National
Council for Children's Rights and the Rockford Institute shows that a
good post-divorce relationship with dad helps a child avoid such prob-
lems as delinquency, teen pregnancy, educational failure, and poverty.
  Fatherhood, considered by modern research to be a valuable and ne-
glected resource after all, has been rediscovered and gets a lot more
respect these days.
  Promoting father involvement to improve emotional and financial sta-
bility for children is a new focus for human service officials.  Social
scientists everywhere are implementing such programs as shared parenting
and visitation enforcement.  And fathers themselves want to be more in-
volved with their children.
  An Iowa father's rights group was awarded $300,000 to study parental
access problems.  And in Wisconsin, a pro-family Legislature will provide
financial incentives for teen mothers who marry the child's father.
  In the early years, though, divorces based on maternal preference and
tender years doctrines put dad in the back seat of the family bus.  One
emotionally powerful decision said, "There is but a twilight zone between
a mother's love and the atmosphere of heaven." (Tuter v Tuter Ct App.
1938)  The implied message for dad?  His usefulness might, henceforth, be
mesured only in terms of his earnings ability.
  A mother's love is important, for sure.  But child development special-
ists claim, nevertheless, the misery index of America's children reflects
a growing need for paternal involvement.  The twilight zone for father-
less children, it seems, is not very heavenly. (The Garbage Generation,
Ch1 Annex, Amneus, 1990)

			A Change in the courts

  Recently, some courts found there is no basis in psychology, or law, for
tender years or maternal preference.  Modern reseach on the father's role
render these concepts defenseless.
  But an influential decision from West Virginia has fathers complain-
ing about unfair feminist goals to perpetuate the heavenly myth asso-
ciated with sole custody to the mother.  The case required minimum
standards for a primary caretaker.  (Garska v McCoy, W. Va. 1981)
  These minimum standards are: (1) preparing meals; (2) bathing &
grooming; (3) purchasing & care of clothes; (4) medical care; (5) ar-
ranging for social interaction; (6) arranging alternative care; (7) putting
child to bed, tending to child at night, waking child; (8) teaching disci-
pline, manners & toilet training; (9) cultural, social and religious educa-
tion; (10) teaching reading, writing & arithmetic.
  Never mind that divorce creates a change in caretaking circumstances,
fathers assert that the sexist caretaker list misses very important
child growth considerations.

			The Least Desirable Option

  Michael E. Lamb's editon of "The Role of The Father in Child Develop-
ment," for example, provides an impressive array of research on human
development.  In most categories, surprisingly, the father's function is
critical.  Of all the shared parenting options available to the courts, sole
custody to mothers might yet prove to be the least desirable:
  Item: As with sons, the quality and warmth of father-daughter relation-
ships is crucial for sex role development, (Johnson, 1963)
  Item: Fatherless children are twice as likely to become criminally
involved. (Margaret Wynn, 1964)
  Item: Fathers were more instrumental than mothers in achievement and
and intellectual development. (Peters & Stewart, 1973)
  Item: Fathers dominated in families with normal adolescents, but
mothers dominated in families with disturbed adolescents. (Alkire, 1969)
  Item: The time fathers spent in supervisory capacity with their young-
sters was positively related to cognitive skills.  It was noteworthy that the
supervisory time spent by mothers was negatively associated with those
same ratings. (Ziegler, 1979)
  Item: To develop a higher motivation to achieve, a boy needs more au-
tonomy from his dad than from his mom. (Rosen & D'Andrades, 1959)

  Maybe the pendulum of justice should encourage closer paternal re-
lationships.  Fathers are more important to their children than those
degrading visitation order led them to believe.

  Michael Geanoulis of New Castle is a researcher for and director of the
of the National Congress for Men & Children.

Gary,
 Great idea, I think I spend far to much of my time complaining 
about the system, rather then looking for ways to change it for the
next generation of ncp's. I have some that I'll dig up to post and
I'd like to find the an article by the same author if I can that
shows how absurd Pamela Smart's notion that she would lose everything
in a divorce would be, Given the current NH court system and Judge Grey's
bias.
 I would also suggest a further step to start a letter writing campaign
to news papers and legislators on these points and as well as a list of 
support groups for that geographical area.

 The sad fact is I can fight for equal treatment and some times win, but
I would rather my child and his friends be accorded equal treatment from the 
start, if we can do this one thing we have not saved the world but 
we have done a lot.

    I am posting this with the permission of Ken Brown, who mailed
    it to me.

	This article was in the New Hamsphire Supplement of the
	Boston Globe, May 19, 1991.  I keep it around as a reminder
	of the inequities of the legal systems.  It is being documented
	without permission. 
	
	I have written to the author of this article to see the other
	side of a non_custodial_parent several times.  But have never
	received any response from her.

	Ken Brown 



        NEW VIEW ON WHO GETS CUSTODY OF CHILDREN.

	By Claire Kittredge - Special to the Globe.....

	CONCORD - Kim Sopel beat the odds when she ignored her doctor's 
	office to have a hysterectomy and gave birth to a premature
	"miracle baby" seven years ago.  She beat the odds again when
	she bore a second son.

	But her former husband beat the odds when he won sole custody
	of the two children last year after a bitter and prolonged
	divorce and custody battle.

	Sopel, who says she cannot have any more children, can now see
	her sons one weekend a month, at Christmas, spring vacation,
	and six weeks in the summer when they fly up from Virginia where
	they live with their father.  She was not able to reach them by 
	telephone on Mother's Day, she said last week.

	Divorced mothers in New Hampshire usually get physical custody of 
	their children.  State statistics show only minor fluctuations in 
	custody awards in recent years, except for a slight increase in
	joint and split custody awards, according to State Registrar Charles
	Sirc.  But some legal specialists say New Hampshire are
	increasingly awarding custody to fathers with unblemished records 
	who put up a fight.

	"In the mid-to-late 1970s, it was virtually impossible for fathers
	to get custody without proving the mother was unfit to take care of
	child," said Ellen Mussinsky, a law professor and and attorney with
	the Civil Practice Clinic at the Franklin Pierce Law Center who 
	represented Sopel on appeal.  "That's not the case anymore."

	"I don't believe I've seen a case yet where people totally reversed
	the assumption that the primary caretaker was a woman," said Betts
	Davis, a Dover Attorney.  "But it's sometimes suggested to me that 
	if a father goes to a PTA meeting or really watches a child, he's
	next to a saint, when it's standard operating procedures for most
	mothers."

	Despite this, many divorced fathers say the scales are tipped
	against them. "If I'm hired to represent a man in a custody case,
	unless the facts show otherwise, I usually tell my client he is 
	going uphill," said Renal J. Carrion, a Manchester attorney who 
	represents Sopel's husband.

	I'm not of the opinion it should be 50-50, but certainly these days
	with drug problems and women's equality in the workplace, there
	should be equality in custody situations," said Richer Parker, a
	divorced father with custody of one of his two children.

	Mothers have long done most of the child care.  But children before
	1900 were considered the father's property, according to "New 
	Hampshire Practice, Family Law" by for former State Supreme Court
	Justice Charles G. Douglas 3d.  In child custody cases, courts
	preferences for mothers emerged earlier this century with the
	"tender-years doctrine," Douglas wrote.

	JOINT CUSTODY PRESUMED

	New Hampshire courts now presume that a divorcing couple will
	have joint legal custody of children, legal specialists say, but
	their physical custody usually go to the mother.

	By law, no preference should be given to either sex, according
	to Pamela Eldridge, one of the State's nine fill-time marital
	masters who make recommendations to Judges.

	"The tradition of woman getting custody of children comes from
	the dying tradition -I HOPE-of one parent being the only parent,
	which is the old social fact of most traditional families and
	that's disappearing," Eldridge said.

	But the goal of any custodial order should not be to award a
	prize, she said, but to minimize disruptions in a child's life,
	to maximize each parent's opportunity for contact with each 
	parent and to avoid giving one parent too much control over
	the other.

	In 1980, fathers got custody of children in 6.3 percent of
	contested divorce cases, mother's got it in 74.6 percent of
	cases, and custody was joint or split in 16.8 percent of cases,
	according to state statistics. In 1989, records show that 8.3 
	percent of physical custody awards in contested cases favored
	fathers, 76.2 percent were joint or split.

	Some legal specialists say the statistics do not entirely reflect
	reality.  "Statistics aren't telling the whole story," said Bruce 
	Friedman, Director of the Civil Practice clinic at the Franklin
	Pierce Law Center. "In post-divorce modifications, men are doing 
	pretty well."

	"In what I consider true custody cases, men are getting custody
	more often than they used to," Musinsky said.

	Mothers lose custody of their children for various reasons.  
	"Either they were bad mothers or they were the victims of bad
	abuse and gave the children up and were at a disadvantage or they
	were very bad at allowing visitation or they made what they perceived
	as false allegations of sex abuse,"  Friedman said.  "Then you have
	economics, and sometimes the scarlet letter 'A' if the woman's
	actions ended the marriage."
	
	Sopel of Hooksett got temporary physcial custody of her children
	in 1988 after seperating from her husband, an Air Force captain 
	now posted in Virginia.

	BOY TOLD OF ABUSE

	But when one of her sons told a psychologist his father had
	sexually abused him, she said she "did not always cooperate" with
	court-ordered visitation, according to her appeal to the state
	Supreme Court.

	In August, a marital master, Alice Love, recommended giving sole 
	legal and physcial custody of the children to the father.  In her
	recommendation for a final decree, approved by Justice Margaret
	Flynn, Love wrote that awarding sole custody to the father was
	justified, given the mother's articulated desire that the children
	sever all ties" with their fahter and her interference with 
	visitation.

	"More probably than not," Love wrote, "the abuse did not occur,
	or if it did occur the defendant was not the abuser."

	"It hurts so badly," Kim Sopel, choking back tears in a recent
	interview.  "it's one of the worst feelings you'll ever feel in
	your entire life.  When it happens, you can't breathe, you can't 
	think.  There's nothing that replaces that emptiness.  Nothing can
	replace being there when they come from school, nothing can replace 
	what I'm missing.

	"They just tore two little boys from their home in New Hampshire,
	and now I'm deprived of all my rights as a mother.  I don't think
	I'll ever learn to deal with not having my kids."

	MATURE ENOUGH TO DECIDE

	In the 1986 case of Butterick vs Butterick, the state Supreme
	Court upheld a lower court decision giving physcial custody of
	his oldest son because the 13 year old expressed a strong desire
	to live with him and was deemed mature enough to decide.

	A year later in Place vs Place, the state's high court upheld a 
	lower court's custody award of two daughters to the father because
	of indications that the mother was "psychologically unstable" and
	could transfer this instability to the children, according to 
	court documents.

	Last fall, in the case of Webb vs. Knudson, the state Supreme
	COurt reversed a lower court's award of joint legal custody of
	two children to both parents after sole legal and primary physcial
	custody had already been granted to the father.  The father got 
	custody of the children after his wife left him for a man she
	said was her husband "in another life", according to the State 
	Supreme Court decision.

	It was a landmark case, Friedman said, because the state Supreme
	Court reversed a final custody order of the Superior Court and
	because the mother lost.

	In reversing the lower court's decision, the high court noted that
	both children had refused at one time to live with their mother,
	that one child complained of excessive corporal punishment by
	her, while a therapist said she inflicted "emotional abuse"
	on the other.

	The high court admitted a lower court's finding that the father
	had interfered with visitation and had tried to alienate the
	children's natural affection for their mother, but she said
	the lower court ignored the children's preference as well as
	"key, uncontroverted evidence" of the mother's volatile conduct
	and temper.


	PUNISHED FOR PROTECTING

	Kim Sopel, whose appeal to the state Supreme Court was denied in 
	February says she was punished for protecting her children, a claim 
	the attorney of her former husband denies.

	"What Kim Sopel ran into was a total lack of creditability," says
	Caron.  "Tim Sopel was denied custody of his children for months
	because of allegations of sexual abuse that never occurred.  He is 
	the victim in this case."

	Kim Sopel faces a $30,000 legal bill.  She says she is in arrears
	on the $257-a-month child support payments the court ordered her to 
	make, but she only makes $19,000 a year as a csecurity officer at
	a Manchester college.  Although she says she wants to see her
	children and is allowed monthly visits, she says she cannot
	afford to pay half the cost of flying them north every month as
	ordered by the court.  Compounding her woes, she said, is the 
	social stigma of losing her children.

	"The minute you say you're a mother without her children people
	say you must've been a beastm you must've been a beast, you 
	must've been a horible mother," she said, tears welling up in her
	eyes, "and that's not easy to bear."

			Reprinted without permission	

   While I don't believe I can comment about this particular case, because
   there isn't enough information presented, I do feel I can comment about
   one of her quotes. 

	"It hurts so badly," Kim Sopel, choking back tears in a recent
	interview.  "it's one of the worst feelings you'll ever feel in
	your entire life.  When it happens, you can't breathe, you can't 
	think.  There's nothing that replaces that emptiness.  Nothing can
	replace being there when they come from school, nothing can replace 
	what I'm missing.

	"The minute you say you're a mother without her children people
	say you must've been a beastm you must've been a beast, you 
	must've been a horible mother," she said, tears welling up in her
	eyes, "and that's not easy to bear."

   I *know* exactly these feelings.  I thought I had died when I heard the
   psychologist recommend that my children live with their father in spite
   of all that had gone on before.  I *chose* to go along with his
   recommendation instead of fighting it out in court, because I could see
   the effects the fighting (no matter how civilized it may have appeared)
   had on my children.

   I still have nightmares about my decision.  I still hope that my
   visitations have enough positive effect on my children to at least
   balance the negative effects of my ex's behaviors.  And maybe, someday,
   they will come to live with me.  And, they are learning first hand about
   their father, not being biased by comments from me.

   I think I made the best decision I could given all the circumstances. 
   (And knowing how involved my own circumstances are, I know that a single
   newspaper article could not possibly cover it, which is why I have strong 
   suspicions of articles about other cases...)

   But it still hurts sometimes.  A lot.


   							Terza

   							Terza

    From the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinal  (I'm sorry I don't have the
    date)
    
    TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Divorced parents can be banned from bad-mouthing
    each other in front of their children, the Florida Supreme Court ruled
    Thursday.
    
    Putting a lid on the hate and acrimony does not violate the parents'
    First Ammendment rights to free speech if it is meant to protect the
    children, the court ruled.
    
    In a 5-1 decision, the justices upheld a lower court's ruling ordering
    a Dade County woman to stop brainwashing her children against her
    ex-husband.
    
    The lower court had ordered the mother to nurture a relationship
    between the children and their father after finding "the blind,
    brainwashed, bigoted belligerence of the children toward the father
    grew from the soil nurtured, watered and tilled by the mother."
    
    Laurel Shutz appealed the order, claiming it violated her rights. 
    Instead, the state's highest court found that it is in the state's
    interest to promote meaningful family relationships between all
    parties. 
    
    The justices told the mother to make a good-faith effort to encourage
    visits, telephone calls and letters between the children and their
    father -- and refrain from doing or saying anything likely to defeat
    those results.
    
    The state's highest court said any burden on Laurel Schutz's First
    Ammendment rights is "merely incidental".
    
    "We must balance the mother's right of free expression against the
    state's ... interest in assuring the well-being of th parties' minor
    children," Justice Gerald Kogan wrote for the majority.

    The following commentary (printed, I think, in the San Antonio Light)
    was sent to me by my ex wife about two weeks ago.... 
    no accompanying letter... just a written comment "Quite interesting, 
    don't you agree??" in the margin.
    
    I wonder what your impression of this person's point of view is?
    
    the article is titled:
    
    	Divorce is the root of educational problems
    
    "I have been following the Light's articles on our schools with interest
    as well as what your readers have to say.  I can tell you that the
    focus of the articles and their conclusions are wrong.
    
    From the '50s to the '80s I have worked with your children in four
    different states as a teacher, then as a media specialist and finally
    as an administrator.  I have been concerned enough and loved your
    children enough to acquire four advanced degrees in order to serve them
    better.  Finally I did my own research, but when I discovered the
    answer, there was nothing I could do!
    
    Money will not cure our schools' ills.  If it would, we'd have the best
    schools in the world.  We spend two to three times the amount of money
    per pupil than any other industrialized nation.
    
    Lengthening the school year or day will not help.  If it would, then
    why is it that most high school and college children have difficulty
    reading and understanding a sixth-grade McGuffy's Reader that was
    discarded in the 1920s?
    
    Dickering with the curriculum will not help.  We offer more choices
    than any other country and our children cannot spell, find their way on
    a world map or locate countries in the news.
    
    Our schools are in trouble because men (aided and abetted by some
    women) have abdicated their role as heads of the household and as
    fathers.
    
    My research made me face the fact that 89-percent of the children
    referred to my office for discipline or emotional problems came from
    households with no father present or a stepfather in residence.  We
    have at last count about 46 million children in our public schools and
    16 million children with no father in their homes.  Visitation can
    never replace daily contact, as need for protection and mentoring
    cannot be scheduled.
    
    If you want to do more than pay lip service to the plight of our
    children, make your children your No. 1 priority and say no to yourself
    when your actions affect your children's emotional or financial
    well-being.  Recognize divorce for what it is - just a socially
    acceptable form of child abuse.
    
    If we cannot change ourselves for the sake of our children, then
    nothing will change; their plight will only grow worse, taking us all
    down with them.  
    
    If you can't do it for them, do it for yourself!
    
    				Grace Andersen
    				Horseshoe Bay

  Notes 194.7-194.15 very moved to 199 for futher discussion. 

  Please continue to post newspaper articles here...


  Thanks,

  Kenn

Fatherless Families Our #1 Problem

Don Feder

Boston Herald on or around January 23, 1992

  Louis W. Sullivan, secretary of Health and Human Services, may be 
the saviest guy in Washington.
  Last week, the secretary gave a speech to the Council on Families in 
America wherein he identified "male absence from family life" as the 
greatest challenge of our generation.
  Noting that one-third of the nation's children live apart from one 
biological parent and 60 percent will spend part of their childhood in 
a single-parent household, Sullivan cited some grim statistics.  These 
children are "five times more likely to be poor and twice as likely to 
drop out of school" as those from intact families. "Approximately 70 
percent of juveniles in long-term correctional facilities did not live 
with their father growing up.
  Princeton sociologist Sara McLanahan cautions against putting undue 
emphasis on fatherlessness, claiming the economic condition of 
children is at least as important.  Which is akin to saying that a 
man's death is at least as significant as the bullet in his brain, as 
if there were no casual connection between the event and condition.
  Almost every vexing social problem (crime, poverty, drug abuse, even 
declining productivity) is related to family dissolution.  Nationally, 
the poverty rate is just 6 percent.  Yet fully one-third of all 
female-headed households are in poverty.
  Children from these homes are far more likely to fail academically, 
commit crimes, use drugs, and become sexually active at an early age.  
More than half of the teens who've attempted suicide live in 
single-parent families.
  The ghetto is a terrifying testament to the social pathology 
produced by the flight of fathers.  While the poverty rate for intact 
black families is only 12 percent higher than for their white 
counterparts, nearly half of black families headed by a woman are 
poor.
  By making the low-income breadwinner obsolete and persuading young 
women from impoverished backgrounds to make welfare babies of their 
own (as a ticket to independence), we've created a climate where 60 
percent of black children are born out of wedlock.
  Blacks comprise 46 percent of the prison population.  Statistically, 
a young black man is 10 times more likely to commit a homicide than a 
young white.  That our inner cities are festering sores of drugs, 
crime, illegitimacy and dependency is due to a national shortage of 
black fathers on the scene.
  What AFDC has done for the underclass, no-fault divorce is doing for 
the middle class.  Nearly two-thirds of today's marriages will end in 
divorce or separation.
  The average income of women declines 73 percent after divorce.  Half 
of all new welfare recipients are recently divorced women and their 
children.  Says Michael Schwartz, director of the Center for Social 
Policy of the Free Congress Foundation: "Divorce is an even more 
efficient generator of poverty than socialism."
  As strong families are absolutely essential to social cohesion, one 
would think that government would do everything in its power to 
promote family stability.  If, that is, one were naive enough to think 
of the American welfare state as: A) well-intentioned or B) rational 
in relating means to ends.
  In fact, government and society have conspired to fashion an 
environment inimical to families.  To the damage done by welfare and 
divorce-on-demand add a tax code which penalizes families with 
children.  Between 1960 and 1984, the percentage of income paid in 
taxes by singles and married couples without children stayed the same. 
 For married couples with four children, it soared into the 
stratosphere - by 233 percent.
  Legitmizing so-called alternative lifestyles further undercuts the 
family.  Providing spousal benefits for homosexuals, condoning 
cohabitation, removing the stigma from out-of wedlock births reduce 
families to the status of mere preference.
  Feminism has made its own inimitable contribution.  Says Schwartz, 
"Feminists, of course, take the position that fathers are largely 
irrelevant.  In terms of child rearing, mothers are all that matter.  
Whatever feminists say the media dutifully echoes."
  As a result, many men are confused about their proper function.  
Gender roles? They're sexist.  Man as the breadwinner, sole support 
for his family? Out of date. Discipliner of children? They'll grow up 
with complexes.
  Our fathers knew what yuppies never learned, or quickly forgot.  
there is no substitute for paternal affection and discipline.  Those 
deprived of the right role model often choose a toxic alternative.
  To avoid social chaos, we must engender responsibility.  Men must be 
made to want to marry the mothers of their children and not to cast 
off their families.  This will require nothing less than a total 
reorientation of current government policy and social attitudes.  
Secretary Sullivan has identified the problem.  Embracing the obvious 
solutions will take considerably more courage.

  Don Feder's column appears Monday and Thursday

   I really dislike generalizations.  Yes, Don Feder has some good points,
   but some of his statements are absurd.  I.e.,

>  Feminism has made its own inimitable contribution.  Says Schwartz, 
>"Feminists, of course, take the position that fathers are largely 
>irrelevant.  In terms of child rearing, mothers are all that matter.  
>Whatever feminists say the media dutifully echoes."
>  As a result, many men are confused about their proper function.  
>Gender roles? They're sexist.  Man as the breadwinner, sole support 
>for his family? Out of date. Discipliner of children? They'll grow up 
>with complexes.
>  Our fathers knew what yuppies never learned, or quickly forgot.  
>there is no substitute for paternal affection and discipline.  Those 
>deprived of the right role model often choose a toxic alternative.
>  To avoid social chaos, we must engender responsibility.  Men must be 
>made to want to marry the mothers of their children and not to cast 
>off their families.  This will require nothing less than a total 
>reorientation of current government policy and social attitudes.  
>Secretary Sullivan has identified the problem.  Embracing the obvious 
>solutions will take considerably more courage.

   Even if "feminism" had only one voice, I would have a great deal of
   trouble believing that "they" think "fathers are largely irrelevant."

   I also have a great deal of trouble with "Whatever feminists say the
   media dutifully echoes."  What?  Really?  If only George Bush could have
   this kind of power!

   The second paragraph above is totally bogus.  I'm angry that writers like
   Don appeal to emotions with no facts whatsoever.  I feel like he is
   subtly (and not so subtly) blaming women for our society's mess.  Sorry,
   Don, it's just not that simple!


   							Terza

  I received this article from Fathers Rights and Equality Exchange.
It is being reposted here without permission.

By Kim Estep, SNG News Service

Each year, several hundreds of mothers nationwide are being added to a
growing list of social deviants.  Deviants?  Mothers?

Given the importance society puts on the role of mother, some divorced women
are classified as deviants when the husband gets the children.

"It is assumed that a mother who does not have her children must have done
something wrong," said Jennifer Isham, president of a national organization
called Mothers Without Custody (MW/OC).

She cites a variety of reasons mothers may not have custody: voluntary
relinquishment, coerced voluntary relinquishment, court rulings, children
being abducted by the father, state intervention, children opting to live
with the father, or attorney incompetence.

However the separation came about, many people will believe that the mother
must have abused her children because it goes against the traditional
beliefs of society to think she could give them up, Isham said.

The stigma attached to the mother can have far-reaching effects on her
relationships, including her relationship with her children.

Once a mother finds herself without custody, Isham's organization is there
to guide her.  Mothers Without Custody is a non-profit, self-help
organization that focuses on helping mothers with their relationship with
their children.  For more information about Mothers Without Custody, write
to P.O. Box 27418, Houston, TX. 77227 or call (713) 840-1622.

Even though Isham estimates that 2 million mothers are non-custodial,
individual mothers are ashamed to talk about it, she said.  One of the
reasons may be the reaction of the people around her or society in general.

Historically, according to Sy Moskowitz, family law professor at Valparaiso
University, there was a presumption that children of tender years (a legal
term), were to be awarded to the custody of the mother.

Isham finds another reason for the increase in non-custodial mothers.  "A
lot of attorneys do not know how to fight for women's rights," she said.

Moskowitz disagreed, calling Isham's statement a "generalization." The -
court is supposed to decide custody based on what is best for the child, he
said.  "I would say that the vast number of cases still wind up with
children in the mother's custody," said Moskowitz.

Isham argues, though, that in the case where fathers ask for custody as
well, they win more often.  "More fathers are being told to ask," she said.

Moskowitz said he thinks custody battles almost invariably produce losers,
not winners.  He believes that voluntary, mediated agreements -- approved by
courts -- produce the most healthy environment.

 
Federal Government Again Confirms: Rights + Access = Support
 
A recent (October 11, 1991) U.S. Census Bureau report entitled "Child
Support and Alimony: 1989" has once again confirmed what fathers'
rights advocates have been saying for years (i.e., frequent and
consistent access to both parents, emotional involvement, and the
preservation of basic rights for both parents following divorce
produces an excellent rate of compliance with court ordered support
payments). Unfortunately, the message has been routinely ignored by an
enforcement bureaucracy dedicated solely to the coercive extraction of
funds from "absent" fathers. It is hoped that those with the power to
implement change realize that the present system is costly, marginally
effective, and for the most part unnecessary, if all states had a
presumption of joint legal custody, plus equal enforcement of access
and support.
 
Major findings of the report:
 
v       Fathers with joint custody pay 90.2 percent of the child
	support owed.
 
v       Fathers with visitation (access) pay 79.1 percent of the child
	support owed.
 
v       Fathers without either joint custody or access pay only 44.5
	percent of owed support.
 
v       Fathers have joint custody only 7.3 percent of the time.
 
v       Fathers have visitation (access) only 54.9 percent of the
	time.
 
v       Fathers have neither joint custody nor visitation 37.8 percent
	of the time.
 
It is relevant to note that: 1) all income data above was provided by
mothers with custody; and, 2) another federally funded study (Survey of
Absent Parents - by the Urban Institute and the University of Chicago
for the Office of Child Support Enforcement) previously reported that
"there were substantial differences between custodial and noncustodial
parents in terms of reporting levels of payment."
 
It would have been very valuable to have collected corresponding data
on the amounts paid or received by other groups separately (i.e.,
fathers without custody, mothers without custody, fathers with custody,
and joint custodial parents). However, this report does serve to
highlight the symbiotic relationships between joint custody, access,
and compliance: MOTHERS WITH CUSTODY REPORT THAT VISITING FATHERS PAY
79.1% OF OWED CHILD SUPPORT, AND THAT JOINT CUSTODY FATHERS PAY 90.2%.
It seems clear that when fathers are guaranteed time for emotional
involvement, the vast majority provide financial support willingly, so
why not redirect the efforts of the child support enforcement program
towards keeping noncustodial parents involved emotionally?
 
[Copies of the Census Bureau Report are available from the U.S.
Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402 for $2.50. Ask for
"Consumer Population Report on Consumer Income," Series P-50, No. 173
(Order No. 803-005-30020-O-W).
 
SOURCE: A News Release from the Texas Fathers for Equal Rights - P.O.
Box 15795, Austin, TX 78761
 

    
    
    My wife noticed in the Pueblo Colorado paper this morning that
    7 out of 8 custody cases listed in the Vital Statistics were
    awarded Joint custody.  Did not say whether that was Joint Legal
    or Joint Physical.  Probably Joint Legal. --- But it's a start.
    
    fred();