Family court needs a over haul in the USA

The movement for Shared Parenting continues to gain momentum around the world. We are seeing more public commentary on the destructive effects of current laws and policies and an ever increasing awareness of inequities between mothers and fathers when it comes to their children. In this newsletter we bring you two articles and the text of a speech by England’s top family court jurist. Also included are preliminary results from a sampling of family law cases in Tennessee and a request for your stories for consideration in an upcoming book about the family courts.


Articles and Speech

Over the past 10 days several pieces of note have been published regarding shared parenting, roles of the court, and government’s role in undermining family stability.

Dr. Stephen Baskerville, author of ‘Taken Into Custody’ and former ACFC President, was quoted extensively in this article from The Philadelphia Bulletin yesterday. The article title; “No-fault Divorce Greater Threat to Marriage Than Gay Marriage” is a bit off the mark. Baskerville’s primary point is that government policies and resulting statutes and programming are themselves the source of society’s family breakdown problems. In inimitable Baskerville style he goes on to ‘connects the dots.’ While Baskerville chides conservatives for not properly understanding the underlying issues his message is one people of all persuasions should hear.

National Post columnist Barbara Kay is a long time friend of fathers and critic of Canada’s family law system. In an article last week she once again makes the case for shared parenting. The National Post is one of Canada’s top ten newspapers with a circulation of just under one million. At the link you will also find additional Barbara Kay writings on misandry (man-hating) and feminism.

Keep coming to this blog and I will keep giving you new information.


I will document the resulting problems with our family court in my personal case and the destructive outcome of out of control lawyers and Judges on our children.

Please post your comment, idea or story below;

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Get involved to fight the wrongs of family court

A week ago Tuesday on September 14 the United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) hosted an all day conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
The conference was titled: A New Era: Defining Civil Rights for the 21st Century. It was covered by C-SPAN. My first report to you is that our messages on Fatherlessness are getting through. The primary theme of the conference was the breakdown of the African American family. Crucial to the theme as a subtext was father absence. Not from the perspective of 'blaming' fathers for being absent but actually discussing how misguided government policy is contributing to father absence and declining marriage rates.

Links to a number of social policies which serve to devalue fathers contribution to the family were identified including; only considering fathers worth on the basis of their financial contribution, welfare programs encouraging the formation of female single parent headed households, a misdirected child support program and the negative impact NOW has had on family stability.

While panelists did not draw direct links to the family courts, it is inevitable that the role of juvenile, probate and family courts will come under closer scrutiny.

The various panel discussions are available for viewing online. This link will take you to a discussion of "The Role of Family Structure in Perpetuating Racial and Ethnic Disparities." I recommend forwarding the presentation to the 26:35 minute mark and listening to the comments of Heather MacDonald from the Manhattan Institute.

ACFC and its affiliated organizations will continue connecting the dots for legislators, policy makers and the public at large. Much of the commentary from panelist's throughout the day could have easily been coming from the likes of many of ACFC's directors, officers and advisors. For years Dr. Stephen Baskerville, Dr. Warren Farrell, Dr. Gordon Finley, Dr. Linda Nielsen and many other allies have been researching and communicating the correlations between, and effects of, fatherlessness and negative child outcomes.

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Have fun today. See how the stuff below fits your life

A "paraprosdokian" is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect.


• Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

• I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.

• The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.

• Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

• If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

• We never really grow up; we only learn how to act in public.

• War does not determine who is right -- only who is left.

• Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

• The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

• Evening news is where they begin with "Good evening," and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.

• To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

• A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. My desk is a work station.

• How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

• Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.

• I thought I wanted a career; turns out I just wanted pay checks.

• A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it.

• Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says "If an emergency, notify:" I put "DOCTOR."

• I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

• Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?

• Why do Americans choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?

• Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.

• A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

• You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

• The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!

• Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won't expect it back.

• A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.

• Hospitality: making your guests feel like they're at home, even if you wish they were.

• Money can't buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.

• I discovered I scream the same way whether I'm about to be devoured by a great white shark or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot.

• Some cause happiness wherever they go. Others whenever they go.

• There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.

• I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not sure.

• When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.

• You're never too old to learn something stupid.

• Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

• A bus is a vehicle that runs twice as fast when you are after it as when you are in it.

• If you are supposed to learn from your mistakes, why do some people have more than one child?

• Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

Everyone needs to lighten up at times and smile, have a great day today my friends, the sun will come up in the morning :)


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Child Protection and Family Court

 I couldn’t agree more with this piece in Lisa Belkin’s Motherlode blog at the New York Times (New York Times, 8/26/10).


It’s written by an attorney named Chris Gottlieb who defends parents in cases in which the child protection agency accuses them of abuse or neglect and wants to take their kids and put them in foster care. In short, Gottlieb works in the trenches of one of the most emotionally difficult areas of law, and, having done so, she’s got some things to say about CPS and the courts that adjudicate those matters.

And what she says is much like what I and so many others have been saying for years. Judges and caseworkers are supposed to figure out which parents truly are a danger to their children or are unable to care for them. No one pretends that that is always an easy job; it isn’t. But that job has morphed into second-guessing legitimate parental decision making. As Gottlieb says,

One judge wants more discipline; another wants less. I have heard caseworkers criticize mothers for everything from giving their children Chinese takeout food or Kool-Aid (the mother told me orange juice was too expensive for her) to having beer in the house to letting a child get wet under a sprinkler. A judge ordered one of my clients to take her child to the park every day. Every day!

As Gottlieb points out, there is nothing in the law that permits that type of micromanagement of parents by government officials be they judges or caseworkers. The Constitution doesn’t permit it, but it happens every day, thousands of times a day. The camel’s nose is under the tent and it’s not going away. At the rate we’re going, the beast will be sitting down to dinner with us any day now.

And what gave the camel its opening? “The best interests of the child,” that’s what. As Gottlieb points out,

[O]nce government intervention in family life is authorized, the legal standard often becomes “best interests of the child.” How do courts and caseworkers determine what is in a child’s best interests? The same way the rest of us do: subjectively, inconsistently, and often erroneously.

She said a mouthful there. As it happens, I’m currently reading a book by Canadian academic Paul Millar in which he quotes clinical psychologists W. O’Donahue and A. R. Bradley on the subject of “the best interests of the child,” thus:

There is no useful operational definition of what the best interests of the child actually are. There is inconsistency across states of legal criteria for assessing the best interest of the child. There is a lack of consensus within the field of psychology as to what the relevant variables should be… The validity and reliability of standardized tests for use in custody assessments are largely unknown.

That’s the state of psychology on “the best interests of the child,” and yet how often do judges, who know far less about the matter than do psychologists, intone the mantra as if there were some certainty about the matter?

As Gottlieb makes clear, the vast majority of CPS cases don’t involve any form of abuse; rather, they’re about neglect, some of which of course is serious, but much of which is of the “Horrors, you gave the child Chinese take-out!” variety.

Governments tend to arrogate power to themselves when they can, and the breakdown of the traditional two-parent family has given states a golden (literally) opportunity to do just that. They’ve seized on family breakdown, not just to intervene in families in which children are truly at risk, but to substitute their own decisions about childcare for those of parents. ( Yakima County Commissioner Swanhart) “Kool-Aid? No, I think orange juice is better.”

There’s a reason that strangers on the train criticize Gottlieb for holding her baby too close to a newspaper or not dressing him to suit them. The loss of the two-parent family has absolutely terrified us, and with good reason. Children overwhelmingly do better in intact, two-parent families than anywhere else. And when that family system broke down, as it did years ago, governments, primarily in the form of CPS agencies and courts, stepped in.

That may be understandable, but it’s not right. What’s right is for governments to educate people about the importance to children of parents staying together if at all possible. And when it’s not possible, governments must do all they can to promote equal parenting after the split-up. Those two things will do far more and be far cheaper than all the micromanagement of parents done by all the caseworkers and judges in the world.

...Pretty simple huh?
Until you involve lawyers that are only concerned about billing for their hours and Judges that have their own agenda and prejudices.  

Family court is huge business!

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Court Trial

"In a desperate attempt to maintain a relationship in the only ways possible (identification and alliance) with the parent who is, at the end of the alienation process, the only parent from a psychological and sometimes physical point of view, the child will mirror the personality and the distorted perceptions of the alienating parent. The blame for anxiety consequent to the insecurity of attachments will be externalized and attributed to the other parent."--social worker Leona Kopetski

Last week I had to attend a full day hearing/trial on child support. My ex wife Linda had a motion for such at an earlier hearing and the same commissioner that stole my children from me granted it to her.


What were the issues?

Linda did not believe I have cancer. This would affect her child support payment.

Linda did not believe I am divorced. This would affect her child support payment and I think what upset her most is that, she no longer has a reason to stalk Jan in an effort to get child support from her.

Linda had no evidence or facts to present to the judge and while not sworn in, continued to lie about the situation and facts. Bi polar disorder was very apparent as she attacked me.

She had her married live in boy friend and her girl friend that lied in statements to the court with her. They huddled together at recess like vultures circling to pick the last meat from a dying carcass.

These people are just low life scum that for what every reason have very low self esteem and by talking bad about or putting down someone else, seem to get a rush or boast to their egos in some twisted way.

Even as I was leaving the court room her boyfriend, that has destroyed him own marriage and family by bedding down Linda, mumbled this words to me; “thank god for the IRS.” I did stop and ask him what? What did you say? Like the worm he is, his head dropped and his mouth didn’t seem to work anymore. Trash gathers trash.

If your ex is like mine, protect all your love ones and do not think that the courts will be fair. You fight tooth and nail from the start with no holds barred because this will not be a fair fight and right will not win by default.

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