Courts are sexist against men -- this must be changed!

Pontus

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Fri Oct-31-03 03:17 AM
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Courts are sexist against men -- this must be changed!

Unfortunantely this article seems to be the case -- I have seen it happen over and over again with friends of mine. We hear moans and groans from feminists and politicians, and movies made about, when some Arab or Iranian father (married to an American seeking divorce) just gets his kids and moves back to the Middle East -- where women are treated like men are in the USA by the courts. I can hardly blame th�se men. In fact, I'll bet if there were an English-speaking country that would offer refuge to men who wished to set up residence there with their children, in defiance of whatever a court said about their rights as fathers, many, many American men would go there. I think that our system of institutionalized sexism against men (family court) should be abolished and a new, more fair, system be established.

"Child Support Nightmares
The Destruction of Fatherhood

By Kenneth C. Wiggins
A Good Father And A "Bad Dad"

"Inalienable rights, equitable treatment, due process, evidence, and trial by jury somehow died, beginning about thirty years ago. False accusation, extortion and debtor's prison are alive and well, living here in America.

We call it Child Support. Hidden behind three decades of propaganda for our "children's best interests," behind the doomsayers of "higher welfare costs", our government has suspended our Rights. Nevermind that these Family Laws are now costing us substantially more than we spent ever before. Nevermind that we are branding men as criminal, driving fathers into poverty, and, often, throwing "second families" into that same abyss with them.

We are destroying Fatherhood, and creating a nation of fatherless children.

It is a pretty simple scam game. If money is the root of all evil, federal funding is the root of this extortion. "Decide" that money is owed, and use the authority and power of the court to start collecting, under the "color of law", in the name of "our children's best."

First, "who's the daddy?" You would think that in today's technology of blood and DNA testing that should be a simple matter. Forget it. A woman "accuses" a man of paternity, and the courts start to collect. While murderers and rapists are now regularly set free by this marvelous DNA science, most courts will not allow this evidence past the door. Laboratories that do DNA testing have testified that 25-30% of these tests are not a match for paternity, even among married couples.

In any other court, lying, false accusation, or "fraud upon the court" would carry some stiff penalties. Paternity fraud is common in a Family Court. A woman pays no penalty whatsoever. Should a man manage to get a DNA test order past the courts, proving undeniably, that he did not father these children, more often than not, the courts will ignore that evidence. Of course, he gets to continue to pay. It is the only court in which lying and cheating are rewarded.

Child Advocate agencies go by different names in different states, but they operate pretty much the same. A caseworker "determines" custody, income and "parenting time". Most commonly, women are given custody by default (90%), no hearing, no investigation necessary. Judges rubber stamp the caseworker's determinations. Due process and evidence just went out the door.

Common practice is to "impute wages." That's another term for "making it up." Jacking the price up is standard operating procedure to "create leverage." Of course your first instinct is to hire a lawyer and appeal this "mistake." First, the "court rules" prevent your lawyer from arguing for your rights or for things like examining evidence. In fact the Child Advocates never bother to show up with anything like evidence. Your lawyer's sole role is to broker a deal, usually somewhere between their exagerated demand and the truth. Lawyers that don't "play along" are quickly put out of business by Child Advocate offices and judges who abuse all of their clients in retribution.

At your appeal hearing, no evidence of income is presented by the Child Advocate prosecutor, no evidence of earning ability, no evidence of hireability. You do get to present your records. The judges get to make up their own evidence and enter it outside the courtroom, and, if that isn't good enough, they can, and do, just ignore your evidence.

Illegal? Unconstitutional? Absolutely. Court rules again "require" that your first two appeals be through the very court you just came through. Denied, of course, and you will have spent $7-8,000 with one of the "good ole boy" lawyers to do that. The next step is the state's Court of Appeals, so you can add another $15-20,000 in legal costs. That is exactly the point. The government is already collecting money from you at an inflated rate, plus the costs of a lawyer so far. Is it cheaper to pay their extortions or to pay their buddy lawyer to finally get responsibility and justice in a courtroom? You can guess the answer is by design.

Men are driven into poverty, often unable to afford basic medical, dental and optical needs. Sometimes driven to living in the streets. Fathers are driven from their children, sometimes physically being forced to "go on the run" or sometimes having to move to another area to get an income that allows them the simple ability to stay alive and out of jail. Often, the simple emotional trauma is enough to alienate father's from their children, and it is often also readily used by spouses to portray father's as unloving and uncaring towards those children.

Courts seem to not want to be "bothered" with parenting rights. Men, commonly are kept from seeing their children, even when court orders exist. The courts don't even try. A man, making only $70 a week has been jailed until he can pay $28,000 in back child support, and never likely to from his jail cell. The courts had refused to help him see is children for more than six years.

Men who have gone through divorce are more than five times more likely to commit suicide. "Murder on the courthouse steps" has become a more and more common event. Recent events with a sniper along the East coast terrorized millions. All these events can be traced directly back to our Family Courts.

Fathers are being destroyed by a system that seeks to squeeze every ounce of money possible before discarding them, with abject disdain for both the health and welfare fathers and their essential roles as nurturing parents, protectors, role models, and caretakers of their children.

The worst of this moral and legal criminal scam is the destruction be wreaked upon our children. Children from fatherless homes comprise one of the largest and fastest growing segments of all our our other social ills. We teach our sons to distrust women, fear marriage and hate government, and we teach our daughters to lie, cheat and use marriage to steal money.

What have we done, what have we done?

Kenneth C. Wiggins "

www.cryforchildren.org/cfdocs/51cs.cfm