Dr. Val FarmerDr.Val
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Rural Mental Health & Family Relationships

Reader, Expert Find Fault With Custody Laws

May 13, 1996

Dear Dr. Farmer, Please address the issue of non-custodial parents, primarily fathers, "who want to be involved" in their child's life when you speak of "Fatherless America."

The deck is stacked against them by the system - courts, judges, social service departments, women's centers, etc.!

They are required to pay (often exorbitant) child support while maintaining a home for their children. Any cost of living/wage increase for him means his child support will go up also with no consideration for the new family or attempts to go back to college, etc. There is no accounting for where the child support is spent by the custodial parent and no expectation that the custodial parent could help support this child she helped bring into this world.

If the father is denied visitation or the mother puts any roadblocks up between him and the children, all he can do is go back to court to the tune of $2,000 -$5,000 (his costs). If he misses a support payment, they system goes to her aide, pays for her attorney, etc. and will put him in jail and also call him a dead-beat dad. She has all the power.

Very often, the father would like joint custody. Most often he gets visitation only to have the mom move - further separating the father from his children. Yet he must pay the child support . . . plus he must pay at least half or more of the children’s transportation expense for visitation. This is another "kick in the head" for dad when the mom is the one who moved.

Then society wonders why are men angry? Why do they become dead-beat dads when all they are needed for is the dollars! Yes, they do want to support and care for their children. But they deserve some say in how the dollars are spent and how the child is raised. They deserve automatic one-half custody.

The parent who chooses to leave the area should have to give up their joint custody unless the children are of age to decide to go or stay . . . this would eliminate a lot of the power struggles that parents go through, causing further hurt to the children.

Every child deserves the relationship with both parents. Automatic joint custody would help insure this. Also, both parents would have to work together for the children's sake. The court system as it is now set up is futile at best. The two parents have to be adversaries in "fighting" for custody and mothers often will stoop to any level to obtain custody . . .

The most important issue, of course, is the right of the children to have relationships with both parents and with both sides of the families! - A North Dakota reader.

I contacted psychologist John Guidabaldi, a professor at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio when I prepared my column on "Fatherless America." He walked me through his and other extensive research on the negative adjustment of children when they lose their father’s involvement after a divorce. He thinks the lack of a father involved in their children’s lives is the number one mental health problem in America.

Guidabaldi feels the lack of a father following a divorce is a direct result of failed public policy and poor family law practices that push the father away from his parenting responsibilities. He feels a legacy of bitterness is created in the adversarial situation in which attorneys profit from divorce and generate conflict between parents. He advocates mandatory and gender neutral mediation versus litigation in custody matters.

He also feels many women have financial enticements for divorce and therefore do not try to solve problems. They get the children, the house, half the assets and child support. The more the father makes the more he pays. Courts take a deep pocket approach to child support and create disincentives for the mother to work. Child support should be based on what it ordinarily costs to rear a child and not as a form of disguised alimony. Enforcement is tough when the mother can deny or put up obstacles to visitation with seeming impunity.

Guidabaldi feels judges have unlimited power in divorce issues and some run rampant over the rights of parents. He wants to see more judicial accountability and review with rights of appeal built into the system.

He promotes of the concept of "shared parenting" following divorce. Parenting plans are developed that maximize the involvement of both parents. He would like to see joint legal and residential custody on a 50/50 arrangement with the absolute minimum being 70/30. It is in this way that they maintain an attachment bond with the father. Shared parenting legislation has gone forward in Virginia, New York, Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi.