In what may be seen by many as  a surprisingly candid review of child support Rachel Alexander, editor of the Intellectual Conservative, lays the obvious on the line (see http://equalparenting.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/8a/).

Instead of reflecting the changes of today, where both men and women (mothers and fathers) go out to work in order to arrive at a “family wage“, the law has lagged behind, continuing to favor mothers over fathers – as if mothers never went out to work.

Eliminate child support (CS), suggests Rachel Alexander, in all but the most severe or onerous situations, and most of the fighting that clogs up our family courts would all but cease.

Neither parent wants to be penalised by having to pay CS. Some parents want it as a source of income to use as they please and avoid having to go out to work, especially when there is little monitoring of how it is spent and we are in an economic  recession.

• “The laws generally award primary custody to the parent who spent more time at home with the children and less time working, even if the difference was miniscule. The other parent is then ordered to pay a crushing amount of child support, sometimes on top of alimony.”

All this is premised on the adoption of shared parentingas the default arrangement for child custody awards, and how shared parenting would be implemented is still a matter of discussion.

For, in addition to passing shared parenting laws, Rachel Alexander believes there must be tougher requirements for issuing restraining orders [ a feature of US more than UK divorces - Ed], and reform of child support laws. Although the precise defintion of ’shared custody’ has yet to be agreed, where custody is shared 50 / 50 then obviously it should not include child support. This simple logic has yet to occur to legislators [1]  but has not been overlooked by women’s groups opposed to shared parenting.

Child support creates an incentive to continue fighting and currently marriage is about the only kind of contract where one party can unilaterally end the contract (and also be rewarded). A recipe for diaaster, Alexander believes.

It is rumours that the US Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement believes the solution lies in renewing the importance of marriage. To that end, consideration is reccommended to eliminate no-fault divorce laws and to require couples where only one spouse wants a divorce to work out the divorce agreement themselves.

This, it is thought, would disincentivize divorce, since couples could no longer simply run to court to end the marriage, but would be forced to work with each other to come up with a custody situation they both agree to.

A similar consequence is likely in Britain with the DWPs 2011 propsoals to have couples work out their own CS payments. (http://equalparenting.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/5/).

END

New Zealand has joined the list of countries that within the last 2 to 3 years has recognised that its Child Support system isn’t working and is proposing some changes (Sept 2010).

A paper by Stuart Birks, Senior Lecturer in economics at Massey University, New Zealand, highlights some of these problems and should readers require further analysis it is available in full at: http://cppe.massey.ac.nz/issues/scpsub.pdf 

For all the differences in the mathematics, waivers and exemptions, every country which has implemented a child support (CS) regime has a model where the overriding objective is to recoup all or most of the costs incurred following the unilateral decision made by parent to separate.

Having made fatherlessness easy by slack divorce requirements, governments then faced the on-set of the long term financial drain that inevitably resulted, namely the economic non-viability of a mother and her child as a unit.

Either the state would ‘put its money were its mouth was’ (i.e. step up to the plate) and live with the consequences of its decisions, or it would back away.

Invariably the state decided on the coward’s way out and to welsh on the deal. Nations off-loaded their financial liability onto any father in sight (who by this time had no home and no children to call his own).

In Britain we have a variety euphemism for the male parent who is left ‘asset-less.’ He is called the non-resident parent or the absent parent. But New Zealand’s terminology hits the nail on the head. There, the disenfranchised parent (usually the father) is pointedly called the Liable Parent.

A New Zealand (NZ) government paper,” Supporting Children”, maps out the envisaged new child support formula which is essentially one based on the approach already adopted by Australia.

The Australian approach to child support is a formula using a Standard of Living measure to estimate the cost of children. However, this approach has problems conceptually, and in terms of data and estimated costs.

In common with all other models of child support, certain ‘assumptions’ are made and herein lies the flaws of all such models.

Domestic Purposes Benefit

In the proposed NZ system (which is now in use in Australia) the living standard assumption is somewhat irrelevant as an objective where the recipient parent (the mother) is already claiming Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB.) [1]

In this situation, there is no possibility that child support alone is intended to maintain a child’s pre-separation living standard, rather it serves as a means for the state to recover its initial outlay.

It has to be noted that in the NZ context, other financial benefits are available to mothers including, “Working for families” and an “accommodation supplement” benefits, plus other income-related government assistance.

Viewed as a basket of subsidies, child support (CS) is only one component of several received by a care-giving parent.

For comparison purposes, CS payments in the UK are set and paid (to the CS agency and not directly to the mother) regardless of state benefits claimed by the mother. CS payments are made as a set percentage of the ex-husband’s income which only varies with the number of children involved.

Liable parent

As always it is the man / father who is seen in law as the liable parent – the one who will be made to pay irrespective of whether he caused the crisis or not. [2]

With the DPB in play the liable parent in effect supports the care-giving parent, i.e. the mother, as well as the child(ren), while having no say in any decisions.

The Achilles heel of all CS regimes is that funds intended specifically for the child are diverted to the caregiver, and in this way the child’s living standard is effectively lowered.

These are the same two complaints heard time and again in the UK and in other countries; firstly that the amount set for child support exceeds the sum required for that particular task and in effect subsidises the mother’s living standards and secondly there is no control over how it is spent.

Nowhere is there space in the CS debate regarding the efforts mothers should also be making to contribute to the material standard of living. (SOL) [3]

So on the one hand we have the ‘parent with care’ lowering the child’s living standard in an attempt to maintain or increase hers (i.e. SOL), while on the other, the liable parent – the father – has his funds depleted more aggressively than they need be.

Metaphorically, there is a second mental equation in play, one that makes equally large and dangerous assumptions. This involves the all-pervading assumption that mothers know best and accordingly an implicit faith that CS money will be spent (by all mothers) as intended.

The other side of the equation is made up by policy makers displaying an equal and opposite degree of mistrust in liable parents, i.e. fathers. A total absence of parity exists in the minds of the legislators towards the two parties. This blindness can only influence any choice they make and corrupt any conclusion they reach.

The result is a repetition of that which is seen in divorce courts when custody is first decided. There is no incentive for the one party to enter into amicable talks with a view to sharing the child’s time between both partners. One parent (the parent-with-care) has the upper hand and can be excused for seeing no point in sharing what does not need to be shared, i.e. the child.

Similarly the one-sided policy of post divorce child support measures is likely to lead to strains. The relationship between the two parents is adversely affected from Day One and, consequently, negatively affects thereafter the relationship between liable parent (father) and his child.

Implementation

The above could be described as the conceptual flaws in any CS model but there are flaws at numerous other levels.

For instance, on the level of method of implementation there is no by-pass valve, no pressure release mechanism. So that in the case of a NZ father where he has a share of the child’s care costs, say, for up to 145 nights, he still has to pay a sum equal to or in excess of the total estimated cost of the children (allocation of funding is based solely on the share of nights). This non-relief applies in the present NZ regime and although its proposed replacement has a shared care element for less than 40% of nights spent with the father, the impact on payments will be limited. The actual costs of sharing care will, in practice, not be reflect in the taxation applied to liable parents (see Supporting Children).

Not only does the existing formula demand that a liable parent must pay a sum equal to, or in excess of, the total estimated cost of the children, but the recipient parent has complete freedom to use the use the money in any way she thinks fit.

NZ’s proposed new regime – as sketched out in “Supporting Children” – does not address the issue, namely, the freedom to spend CS money in any way thought fit.

Enforcement mechanisms

In Britain, the initials ‘CSA’ has become synonymous with complexity and rigid enforcement procedures, even suicides.

NZ is no different from other nations benighted by CS in having a plethora of penalties and enforcement mechanisms for liable parents.

By contrast, the recipient parent is not accountable for the use of the funds and there are no sanctions intended to be used against her. How different it all would be if there were no sanctions against men (liable parent), or if there were sanctions that were freely and readily used against parents-with-care.

Voluntarily contributions

An idiosyncrasy of CS models is that they are unable to take account of voluntarily payments made by a father – and the new option for NZ is no exception. Voluntarily payments, over and above CS payments, are often the only way a father, rendered powerless by the system, can ensure his child receives what it most urgently requires.

Inflexibility, inherent in all known CS regimes leads to a harming of relationships. A simple example is where a child asks its father (the liable parent) for Item X that they simply “must have.”

Dad then replies, “I’ve already given your mother the money for Item X” only to be told that “She says to ask you…”

What is to be done ? Pay a second time ? Or choose to have the child believe by refusing to pay you don’t care enough for them ?

Whatever choice is made, the liable parent looses and the mothers gains.

Moreover, if the liable parent wants money to be spent in some particular way for the benefit of a child and the recipient parent disagrees, then, despite having paid the necessary child support, the liable parent then has to find additional money to achieve his goal.

Stuart Birks’ critique of the new proposals are summarised in his paper and listed below. Here he describes some of the serious weaknesses in the current legislation (Child Support Amendment Bill 2001), which are worthy of repetition here:-

6.1. The failure of the formula to consider the income of the other parent (so how can contributions be equitable?).

6.2. Failure of the formula to consider direct costs incurred by a liable parent in relation to the children (in particular, in terms of the 40% of nights threshold and the distinction between costs of “enabling” and “enjoyment of” access).

6.3. Weaknesses in the use of gross income as a basis for child support, e.g. in cases of student loans.

6.4. Lack of a clear, meaningful basis for the formula in terms of the true costs of children.

6.5. Lack of any specification of the purposes to which child support, received by a parent with care of a child, is to be put.

6.6. Lack of any accountability to the liable parent for the ways in which child support is used.

6.7. Lack of any clear indication that the legislation is to be guided by the “best interests of the child”.

6.8. The need for child support reviews to be conducted by people with the relevant knowledge of possible income levels, costs and benefit entitlements.

These very same shortcomings and failures within the system (listed above) were again presented in a submission dated 24 Feb 2006 and because they had not been addressed were included in a submission in Oct 2010 for the Child Support Amendment Bill (No.4).

If parity and equality is the stated aim of governments then more attention has to be paid to other less obvious aspects of inequality. The whole CS debate needs to be broadened to include the rights of men. Otherwise the whole matter descends into a programme of creating a bigger meal ticket for women with children.

The “power balance” factor between the genders has been ignored, not just in NZ but in every country with a CS system. The whole discussion is being framed with implicit assumptions about patriarchal power and control which are as irrelevant in the jet age as Noah’s Ark.

Its time to ‘move on’ and treat women as if they were men – if equality is really the goal ?

END

Divorce facilitating legislation has brought with it downstream problems over custody and child support payments.

These problem are so severe, so gross, and so obvious, that it makes one wonder what was going on (or not going on) in the heads of the people who voted this ‘good idea’ through. They must have been convinced by something.

It would be forgiveable if the fit of madness had lasted only one year but legislation affecting divorce, property and children has become an unending conveyor belt of amendments and reforms. This is a syndrome that afflicts all countries with modernised divorce regimes.

Take Child Support payments. At first blush, it might appear to make perfect sense to legislate for a child to have the same standard of living after divorce as before divorce. Wouldn’t it be nice if the child could have the same standard of living in both parents homes ?

Visiting Dad at weekends wouldn’t be to plunge into a life of luxury and wealth. And returning home to Mum on Sunday night wouldn’t be like returning to a cold shack with no coal for a fire and no food in the cupboard (a false image fostered by those seeking reforms).

Arizona has looked at this problem, ie the stereotypically economically struggling Mum. In June 2010, the Judicial Council reported and approved the Child Outcome Based Support (COBS) model. The Arizona Supreme Court has not yet given the guidelines final approval but COBS might prove attractive to them because it seeks to ‘equalise the incomes in both households’.

Up until now Arizona and other US states have based Child Support (CS) on the amount of money it takes to raise a child – unlike other jurisdictions where a percentage of earned income (usually the fathers’), is the sole measure of taxation.

‘Income Share’ System

 Arizona’s present child support system for the non-custodial parent pays factors in a monetary contributions for a). income, b). the number of children and c). the amount of parenting time. Each parents’ monetary contributions are a proportional share of the total.

This, the Income Share model was devised by the Child Support Guidelines Project of the National Center for State Courts. The aim of this child support model is to ensure that the same amount is spent on the child as if the parents were still together.

‘Child Outcome Based Support’ Model

In contrast, the COBS model, seeks to approximately balance the economic standing of each household. Often this will mean quite large support payments from the non-custodial parent to the custodial parent.

Under the COBS model when the custodial parent earns more than the non-custodial parent, child support would still be paid by the non-custodial parent, but not quite as much.

In Arizona where parents are divorced (or were never married), it is the mother who becomes the custodial parent -  a default position, ie a preset option. The custodial parent is the person who has more parenting time with the child and in most heterosexual relationships, it is the father who is the higher earner of the two (the parent with less parenting time).

If the Income Shares System is ditched in favour of the COBS Model, many mothers will be better off as many fathers will be forced to pay a good deal more than they are paying at present.

In the present worldwide economic recession more and more non-custodial parents will be forced to ask the Arizona courts to lower their Child Support (CS) payments. As commofity prices increase and look set to continue to increase, higher levels of CS payments, which the COBS Model will bring, will be increasingly difficult to maintain.

How the COBS model came to be proposed

During the winter of 2008, Ira Mark Ellman and Tara O’Toole Ellman published a paper called “The Theory of Child Support” in the Harvard Journal on Legislation. The paper argued that current Income Shares models do not fulfill the purposes of “protecting the child’s well-being, ensuring that both parents contribute to the child’s support and protecting the child from a living standard that is grossly disparate.”

The paper proposed that raising the custodial household’s income above a certain level would raise the child’s well-being accordingly.

Professor Ira Ellman teaches law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and is a member of the Arizona Child Support Guidelines Review Committee. He was appointed to this position by the Arizona Supreme Court, which is the body that has the power to implement the COBS support model.

The COBS model aligns with the American Law Institute’s ideas on how child support should be distributed, although most states follow the Income Shares model. The Arizona Supreme Court has evaluated the COBS model and has tentatively approved it.

What Critics Say

Critics argue that the COBS model encourages divorce by offering the lesser-earning custodial parent (the mother) a bigger monthly payment (this ‘encouragement’ factor has failed in over 10 years to gain any traction in Britain).

Child Support would tend to replaces ‘alimony’ as the principal income of  ex-wives. Whilst the sum gained may not be significantly different for the ex-wife the fiscal implications for the state might be enormous. Any funded weekly/monthly benefit multiplied by the many thousands of ex-wives might cost the state millions of dollars per year. Far better is this liability can be off-loaded onto someone else.

That someone else will be ex-husbands – it usually is in these types of ‘brave new’ schemes.

Coupled to the prospect of all ex-husbands paying either marginally more or considerably more is the detail that whereas alimony payments are tax-deductible, child support is not.

A similar slight of hand was performed in Britain when Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer (the minister in charge of government finances), repealed the tax concession divorced fathers enjoyed when paying money to the children of their former marriage.

In 1999 the Chancellor abolished the Married Couples’ Allowance and tied the tax system to children and mothers and the family in which they are brought up regardless of status, i.e. legitimate, illegitimate, married or never married (SMH). State funded subsidises and benefits were to be paid to female parents only through a newly created Working Family Tax Credit system. [1] Essentially, the system depended on the father’s income and the male parent was reduced to the status of a cash cow.

The system proved a disaster. It was so cumbersome and so over-elaborate that within a few years it had collapsed under its own bureaucratic weight costing the taxpayer in the process million of dollars on top of the millions of dollars wrongly paid out when it was working.

Controlling the backlash in Arizona will be accomplished, as in other states and certainly in the UK, by pretending that the changes are for the children’s sake. Loading the ‘guilt monkey’ on to the back of fathers has so far been a very effective ploy and will, like as not, be as efective this time around.

Launch day

These new COBS guidelines are set to be implements on January 1, 2011, unless the Arizona Supreme Court decides not to put them into effect or defers their decision.

END

Ref:

• George Piskor
• The Baker Law Firm LLC, (Arizona) www.bakerlaw-az.com

Reports that Israel will henceforth apply the Child Support laws as they were written and intended must come as welcome news.

For decades it was fathers’ incomes, but not mothers’, that were attacked in order to pay the required child support.

This week a Family Court, in the town of Ashdod (near Jerusalem), has overturned this blatant sexual discrimination and ruled that the parent who earns the most should pay the most. the ruling that a father has to pay not 100% but only 70% is a glimmer of light not on the Road to Damascus but on the road to enlightenment and equality.

In the Child Support world this is little short of “revolutionary” thinking.

Observed more in the breach

In recent years, rulings from Israel’s Supreme Court regarding the division of child support payments have pointed to a more equitable division based on total family income. Despite these rulings, Israeli courts generally have almost never applied them.

The law states that child support should be assessed on total family income, i.e. the mother’s income and father’s income be added together.

It would be amazing if international jurisdictions could show such a consistency of even handedness but that hope is some years away.

What is not amazing but is instead very true, is the discrimination shown towards men internationally. All jurisdictions display a slovenly disregard for equality before the law and a wilful misinterpretation of how child support is determined and administered

The ruling by the court in Ashdod puts an end to:

• Child Support rulings on the basis of a definition that discriminates against men
• corrects an injustice that has lasted decades on the basis of archaic and obsolete law

It is a breakthrough that sets a precedent for change and therefore we can expect it to be challenged and overturned by the dark forces of radical feminism.

An article dealing with this news is featured below.

END

Precedent ruling: Father to pay only 70% child support

The Ashdod Family Court ruling is based on the parents’ total income.

by Globes’ correspondent, (Globes – Israel’s Business Arena) 14th Dec 2010

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000608186&fid=1725

Ashdod Family Court Judge Sarit Golan today set a precedent in a divorce case by ruling that a father will bear only 70% of child support instead of the normal 100%. The court calculated the parents’ income ratio and ruled this would be the ratio for income support.

The case involves a couple, both residents of Ashdod, in their forties and with three children, aged three, five, and seven, when the divorce proceedings began two years ago.

For decades, fathers, but not mothers, were required to bear child support. Today’s ruling overturned that norm. The father’s attorney, Adv. Gil Shahaf, said, “This was a courageous decision by the Ashdod Family Court. There are Supreme Court rulings from recent years, which mention the division of child support should be reviewed on the basis of total family income.

“Despite these rulings, Israel’s courts have almost never applied them. For the first time, the Ashdod Family Court has applied the idea that the parent who earns more should bear a larger share of child support. For me, this is an amazing ruling, which does justice, puts an end to child support rulings on the basis of a definition that discriminates against men, and corrects an injustice that has lasted decades on the basis of archaic and obsolete law. It is a breakthrough that sets a precedent for change.”

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news – www.globes-online.com – on December 14, 2010

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2010

A tyranny, not a civilisation, treats people as if they were a disposable commodity – yet that is how the United States allowed Dr. Laine, a nuclear physicist, to be treated.

Mark Antony’s eulogy of 2,000 years ago is as true today as it was then – when we bury men the good they have provided for society is often interred with their bones, and their superficial legacy is one of faults – often grievous faults.

Dr. Laine was no ordinary physicist. For a longtime he was a consultant to the government with a security clearance so high that the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) considered he merited a personal “minder.”

But his value to the security of the entire nation made little difference to ‘Maximus’, the child support enforcement company in Tennessee. It made no difference to a Ms. Devonne Moore, employed by ‘Maximus’, that his value was far greater than her’s could ever be and significantly more important to the ‘defence of the realm’ than a mere child support enforcement company.

Why does this matter ?  It matters because Dr. Laine is now dead and in the opinion of Charles E. Corry, Ph.D,  Ms. Moore and ‘Maximus’ literally hounded Dr. Laine to death.[1]

It is barely credible that Maximus used bogus court orders issued by a court that doesn’t exist in the fictitious town of Maricopa, Tennessee, but that is the assertion made.

Had it not been for the huge scam in America of false bank foreclosure notices (i.e., counterfeit home repossessions), issued overseas to cut down on the bank’s cost (as revealed on CBS and ABC), the matter of Dr. Laine and false court orders would be entirely incredible. But sadly it is not – it is all too real.

Reportedly, Maximus and Ms. Devonne Moore ‘hounded’ Dr. Laine and they repeatedly jailed him until the FBI told them enough was enough and to desist. Maximus had allegedly pursued Dr. Laine for child support he had already paid long ago !

This is a story repeated the world over wherever child support mechanisms, be they state run or privately owned companies working for the state, operate to fund a government that has decided to make divorce cheap and easy (but now realises it can’t afford such a policy).

In Britain we have had our own ‘Dr. Laine’ – he was Dr David Kelly, the internationally renowned expert on biological warfare. As a WMD weapons inspector he was hounded to death by politicians, many believe, for taking an ‘independent of government’ view. He was found dead – an apparent suicide but one doubted by many – in July 2003.

How the state and its apparatchik-like agencies toss men aside as if they were valueless and easily replaceable is astounding. In the 1990s when hundred of men committed suicide after receiving their ‘interim’ CSA assessments hardly surfaced as news worthy story (they had no idea that the ‘interim’ assessment was always 2 or 3 times the actual final assessment. All all they could see was the impossibility of living on £5 or £50 a month).  Yet when 3 or 4 women are mis-diagnosed with breast cancer at a clinic it received wall-to-wall coverage in the media.

The past 2 decades are littered with the corpses of the known and the unknown. People like Roger Whitcomb who established the radical UKMM. Knowing he was dying of cancer he divided his money and estate between a cancer research foundation and the newly emerging Men’s Movement.

There are others like the late Daniel Amneus author of “The Garbage Generation” who educated a whole generation. Who in the father movement could not know and appreciate Richard Gardner who brought Parental Alienation Syndrome to the world’s attention but who took his own life in May 2003 rather than live through the pain of reflex sympathetic dystrophy (a painful neurological syndrome)

The men’s and fathers’ movement is lucky in the calibre of men it attracts. All men regardless of income or social station in life are adversely affected by policies pursued by governments and thus they make common cause. The result is a unifying of diverse talents on an unparalleled scale.

We have the prodigious output of Warren Farrell (”The myth of male power”, and many other books), George Gilder’s perceptiveness (“Sexual Suicide”), the awesome analytical skills of Ivor Catt, people like Peter Tromp, in Holland, who translates in 5 different languages and many, many others around the world all now linked together by the internet.

END