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How To End Father-Absence When Divorce is Necessary June 13, 2005 by David R. Usher Both parties have propelled legislation designed to expedite the divorce process, as if it could somehow make “no-fault” divorce a painless, socially-productive institution. Expedited procedures include a filing method in which a parent “claims custody” at the time of filing, and then the other spouse is presumed to be the “noncustodial parent”. The subsequent child support order is also expedited via tables presuming an amount, and processes discourage tailoring the support order to the real needs of the parents involved. This has had the effect of increasing the numbers of children of divorce, and ensuring that the vast majority of them lose their fathers in divorce. The custody problem and the tremendous problem of father-absence exists because we have been asking the wrong question all along: How do we split the children in half? Such Solomonic acrobatics have propelled many pro-child activists and states to adopt policies attempting to instill various forms of joint custody as an option to the court. For a variety of reasons, these are perceived not to work, or may in practice be facile on a limited basis. So courts often settle for a primary custody order, sometimes glazed with the words “joint legal custody” or “joint physical custody” to make everyone feel better. This is the dysfunctional model that leaves the majority of children fatherless by fiat. I have spent fifteen years studying the courts, political systems, and the various interest groups involved in the gender war, which is longest-running war in American history. I have done most of my work pro-se successfully, and played a substantial role in passage of many statutory reforms to divorce law in Missouri. The purpose of this article is to set forth the concept for a new custody model called “Time-Shift Shared Parenting” (TSSP),which addresses the major, chronic problems of divorce: such as litigiousness, dissatisfaction, and unnecessary abridgement of parental and children’s fundamental constitutional rights. TSSP involves concepts based on a large body of credible reports and studies too extensive to cite in the context of this article. Readers studied in these issues should already know the citations without me stating them. Therefore, I am leaving the citations and their discussion for future articles and papers by myself and others. We know we can never make divorce a functional equivalent to marriage when children are involved. But we certainly have a moral, ethical, and legal duty to ensure that we never again intentionally reject good fathers or deny children half the love, guidance, discipline, and experience available to them. Our failure to develop and adopt policies which prevent automated father-absence when divorce takes place is why father-absence continues to be the greatest problem we face. Readers are reminded that father-absence is the single primary predictor of a tremendously expensive array of intractable social problems including teen pregnancy, teen truancy, teen violence and crime, teen drug abuse, serious child psychological problems, poor school performance, poor integration into adulthood, paternal suicide, personal bankruptcy, and child support noncompliance. These truths are now well known as established in many credible works published over the past decade. The Problem First, I will briefly itemize the primary factors why joint custody has not become the norm:
The Answer
TSSP ends nearly all the problems listed above. It creates a presumed custody order affirming the parental rights of both parents and creates a landscape not fertile for predatory chessboard litigation. It meets the needs of children as closely as is possible in divorce, and removes perverse incentives so evident in existing policy, while allowing for proper handling of situations involving real child abuse or neglect. TSSP involves relatively straightforward concepts, as follows:
Legislation Needed To Effect This Tested Model According to Daniel Lee, President of Child’s Best Interest in Tennessee, the concept of time-shifting was introduced and debated in Tennessee shared parenting bills as early as 2003, and is pending in one today. These legislative proposals rotate primary decision-making once prior to the child reaching majority, or in long-term multi-year blocks (such as 4). Even before being passed into law, this rotating arrangement was ordered in a number of cases, which were all upheld on appeal. No problems surfaced from these rulings, and yet a later appellate opinion put a stop to it. This indicates the concept must be put into statutory law. Daniel further states "Parents equally sharing raising their child comes from constitutional law. The strict-scrutiny test must be applied under the U.S. and state Constitutions before fundamental parental rights can be diminished or removed. Divorce is not an exception to this long-held tenet. This test prevents parents from being arbitrarily placed into widely-disparate classes as permanent custodial and non-custodial parents, precognized by sex, and without a showing that a parent is unfit or an immediate threat to the child. At law, courts should never have allowed the present custodial arrangements. They are plainly unconstitutional. An overwhelming body of studies and anectodal reports prove the current system is very damaging to children and parents. TSSP ends this serious anti-family due-process error commonly practiced in all state family law courts. Related Pro-Marriage Improvements of Law The success of TSSP requires refocusing of certain federal and state laws. There are two major areas of federal and state policy which drive predatory divorce. The high-level view of the changes needed is as follows:
What TSSP will accomplish TSSP will deliver many badly-needed social benefits for children, and a variety of very substantial social and economic benefits for taxpayers and the general public. TSSP will result in the following benefits:
Other suggested policy transformations will enhance the above benefits. Political Analysis: An Historic Conservative Pro-Family Political Opportunity The benefits I have itemized comprise a very substantial body of items that all politicians should be falling all over each other to latch on to. Pro-family politics wins elections. This is because most voters know what is going on out there, and most voters are sick and tired of hearing the words “responsible fatherhood” being bandied about by politicians trying to figure out yet another sneaky way to fund the nanny welfare/child-support state. The plethora of omnipresent problems caused by record levels of father-absence has cost the American taxpayer more than the national debt since 1963. This nanny-state has been increasingly treated as a reviled necessary evil that is never directly discussed in conventional politics. Economic conservatives must pay particular attention to the fact that it is entirely possible to fight the ongoing war on terror on a balanced budget if we simply ensure that most children of divorce can have two parents actively involved in childrearing. TSSP, along with other developing Marriage Movement concepts, will make this entirely feasible. Voters want politicians who will actually do things that will make their lives better, not wimps who pussyfoot around the issues. Republicans have been avoiding social issues like the plague because they watched Newt Gingrich get tarred and feathered for pushing orphanages and making a number of rather strident and well-intentioned, but sadly misdirected statements about his social policy ideas. Read my lips: Newt had the right idea, but the wrong ideas. It put Republicans in control of Congress, but backfired when the details were found to be mistaken politically incorrect. The issue is as tractionable as ever. Just make sure you have the right goals before turning it into a party platform. Therefore: I predict that the large majority of voters will respond very positively to those who adopt pro-family legislative and policy goals along the lines I am recommending. The 2008 Elections What could divorce and welfare have to do with the 2008 elections? It could easily become the tipping point. The conventional Republican approach is this: politicians, the ACF, and other government agencies don false marriage-movement masks by pretending the “Responsible Fatherhood” slogan is just another word for “child support”. Democrats are more than happy to ring this bell too. The rest of America knows that money is just a bunch of green stuff, and that “Responsible Fatherhood” is a social function and a necessary social creation invented a couple of millennia ago, aborted in the latter half of the last century by government. This is classic symbolism-over-substance. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of it. Their failure to deal with the issue is the one thing that could actually power a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Folks are not going to put up with endless crime, violence, starving kids, and wailing single mothers crying all over the major media outlets all day, while the war on terror is perceived to be leaving the poor behind.. The fact is this: Republicans are tragically weak on social policy, because they don’t have one (other than same-sex marriage). They simply do whatever the Democrats want to do. This is suicidal in the long term because it does not fix anything. It lets the myriad of problems falling out of epidemic father-absence grow and fester. Democrats can raucously blame all the problems on Republicans in 2008. Mark my words: this is exactly what Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Democratic party will do. If Republicans fail to let most Americans have what they want and need in the next three years, they might find themselves overrun by these hyper-emotional social issues. If it weren’t for gay marriage in 2004, Democrats might well have won the last election. Republicans will be at increasing risk in the next few years, unless they step out with their own social policies that give the majority of American men and women what they want and need. Political analysts should pay particular attention to the fact that about half the voting population is divorced or living in fatherless families. Many of those who are not divorced have a relative disemboweled by the system. These people have been there and lived it, and they don’t like it This is a tremendous voting block, not necessarily aligned by gender or age. Those who cater to this block of voters will win races. Those who ignore it, will lose. Most divorced women I have interviewed would gladly give up their child support to get the government to stop disemboweling their new husband. Point: the most important aspect in divorce is not child support. Child support has the effect of destroying the economics of remarriage – and most women know this. A strong political focus on making divorce less warlike and keeping family economics intact, with a primary focus on preserving parenthood, and an eye towards making remarriage (absent constant governmental manipulation) a reality for both men and women, will win many elections in the future. The concept is this (for all the economic conservatives who are still finding their sealegs in social issues: We should view divorce like we view employment figures. Divorce should be handled as “frictional non-marriage”, with government supports provided during the interim, leaving marriage the most attractive economic model. When we do this, everything else will take care of itself. When viewed in this light, we immediately see that Moynihan was right when he pointed out that permanent welfare entitlements cause permanent non-marriage. Today, child support and alimony are the contemporary funding vehicle causing high divorce rates, high non-marriage and “live-in” rates, and low remarriage rates. Those who ply antifamily politics in elections often do not do well. John Ashcroft tried to retain his Senate seat in 2000 to a dead man, by finally sending the Violence Against Women Act to the Senate floor. He thought this would get him the women’s vote (I know this is so because I spoke with his top aide). What it did was to alienate his conservative voter base. His constituency was not happy, and there were protests at his office over it). He lost the election. I have witnessed many other local and state campaigns where the incumbent tried to play the “child support” card, either by launching a screeching child-support enforcement campaign or some sort of awful legislation sought by the National Organization of Women. There have been many surprise upsets in these races because most voters simply are not that stupid. Here is why: Most women just want a decent marriage (or a decent second marriage). Few women vote “child support” as the litmus test. Most men hate the system that regularly replaces them with an extorted check. Moral: the votes aren’t there to support nanny state politics any more. Pro-family politics are extremely salient in this day of boring cookie-cutter liberal vs. conservative politics-as-usual campaigns. Watch one and you have seen them all. Nobody stands out in the pack, and races are often won by a hair because of it. Political Stumbling Blocks
David R. Usher is a Legislative Analyst for the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, Missouri Coalition. |
Judges, lawyers, psychologists, feminists, and men’s rights activists have been at loggerheads for as long as we can remember over what to do about children of divorce. Liberals want to pander to it and fund more divorce. Most conservatives say all the right words, but usually end up doing what the liberals want for lack of any real “marriage movement” leadership.|
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