Married to the State
How government colonizes the family
By Stephen Baskerville
In 1947, with the baby boom in its infancy and few disposed to hearing of family crisis, Harvard sociologist Carle Zimmerman saw the long-term reality: the family had been deteriorating since the Renaissance and was nearing the point of no return. Whenever the family shows signs of dysfunction, Zimmerman observed, “the state helps to break it up.” During the 19th century, “law piled on law, and government agency upon government agency” until by 1900 “the state had become master of the family.” The result, he wrote in Family and Civilization, was that “the family is now truly the agent, the slave, the handmaiden of the state.”
Today we might regard 1947 as a golden age for the family. Without perceiving it, each generation has become acculturated to family deterioration and added to it. We now accept as normal what would have shocked our grandparents: cohabitation, illegitimacy, divorce, same-sex marriage, daycare, fast-food dinners. Indeed, shocking the previous generation is part of the thrill of filial rebellion.
What should shock even the liberal and the young—but today does not much disturb even the conservative and the old—are destruction of constitutional protections and invasions of personal freedom and privacy by the government’s family machinery. Some four decades ago, the Western world embarked on the boldest social experiment in its history. With no public discussion, laws were enacted in virtually every jurisdiction that ended marriage as an enforceable contract. Today it is not possible to form a binding agreement to create a family.
Few stopped to consider the implications of laws that shifted the breakup of private households from a voluntary to an involuntary process. Unilateral divorce involves government agents forcibly removing legally innocent people from their homes and seizing their property. It inherently abrogates not only the inviolability of marriage but the very concept of private life.
The most serious consequences involve children. Through involuntary divorce, a legally unimpeachable parent can be arrested for seeing his own children without government authorization. He can be charged with domestic violence or child abuse, without evidence that he has committed either crime. He can be hauled before a judge for not paying child support without proof that he actually owes it. He can even be arrested for not paying an attorney or psychotherapist whom he has not hired. No formal charge, no jury, no trial required.
To justify this repression, the divorce machinery has generated hysterias against fathers so inflammatory that few dare question them: child abuse, wife-beating, nonpayment of child support. The accused parent simply loses his family and finds himself abandoned, with everyone terrified to be associated with an accused “pedophile,” “batterer,” or “deadbeat dad.”
Our passivity before repression this serious is stunning and the starkest example yet of the erosion of that civic virtue that has been integral to American political thought since before the founding of the Republic.
Conservatives have labored this idea into a cliché. We preach that people must be more virtuous, less selfish, and more devoted to the public good. But these exhortations earn us nothing but contempt when we remain silent in the face of real tyranny, which, as usual, has appeared where we least expected it and are least equipped to resist it. Instead of resisting, we lament a decline in “culture” and declare there is very little we can do.
But as Linda McClain writes, families are “seedbeds of civic virtue” and “have a place in the project of forming persons into capable, responsible, self-governing citizens.” The family is where parents and children learn to love sacrificially, to put others’ needs before their own desires, to sacrifice for the welfare and protection of the whole. If this does not begin with one’s own home and loved ones it, does not begin at all. People unwilling to sacrifice for their own flesh and blood will not do so for the strangers who comprise their country. In the family, children learn to obey authorities other than the state—God, parents, clergy, teachers, coaches, neighbors. By accepting these, some of whom they love, children learn that government is not the only authority and is one that can and must be limited.
Conservatives have recently been eager to declare marriage and the family to be “public” institutions, largely in response to homosexual insistence that families are purely private and therefore may be defined according to the whims of individuals. But it is more precise to say that the family mediates between the public and the private, ensuring each its proper sphere. In the family children learn to distinguish and defend private life from encroachment by public power. Involvement in public affairs, which is important, begins as an extension of private responsibilities as parents, homeowners, neighbors, and parishioners. Citizens participate in public life as amateurs with a stake in their families, homes, and communities, not as professionals with a stake in a government program or ideology.
Children raised without intact families do not as readily absorb concepts such as family privacy, sacrificial love, parental authority, limited government, or civic virtue. For their rules and values come not from parents but from government officials, who have ultimate sovereignty over their lives: courts, lawyers, social workers, forensic therapists, public-school bureaucrats, and police. These are the figures they must obey rather than their parents. Thus children whose authority figures are government officials cannot distinguish the private from the public and come to see the public sphere as a realm not of civic duty and community leadership but of abstract ideology, government funding, professional employment, career advancement, and state power, in whose growth they acquire a vested interest.
It is no accident that the traditional family is described as patriarchal and that civic virtue traditionally suggested masculinity. It is also no coincidence that fathers are the ones marginalized by family decline.
Enormous attention has been devoted to the crisis of 24 million fatherless children, a phenomenon directly linked to every major social pathology from violent crime to substance abuse and truancy. Because these ills justify almost all domestic government spending, fatherlessness has resulted in a huge expansion of state power. The Obama administration aims to promote virtue with programs preaching “responsible fatherhood” and nagging men to practice “good fathering.” The Bush administration used similar schemes to argue for the importance of marriage. The result is the same: bewailing other people’s moral failings at taxpayer expense.
There is certainly truth in the connection between fatherhood and civil society. “Fathers play a key role in developing and sustaining the kind of personal character on which democracy depends,” writes Don Eberly of the National Fatherhood Initiative. Government therapy, on the other hand, cannot create virtue because it requires no sacrifice. Federal funding only gives officials incentives to perpetuate problems, so it is hardly surprising that not only have these programs done nothing to improve either fatherhood or marriage, they have exacerbated the breakdown of both.
Eberly’s point connecting fathers and freedom contains a larger truth. While families require sacrifice from all members, it is fathers whose sacrifice may extend to their very lives. Children deprived of their fathers by state officials therefore lose more than a parent. They lose the parent who connects them with the civic order. When the father protects and provides for his family, he will resist the state’s efforts to assume those roles. Under his leadership, the family is a force for limiting state power.
The single mother does not resist the state’s encroachment. On the contrary, she is our society’s principal claimant on a vast array of state services, without which she cannot manage her children. When the state usurps the roles of protector and provider and disciplinarian, the state becomes the father.
This is the story of modern politics: increasingly centralized police, plus the regulatory and welfare states that also promise various forms of protection. These paternal—and increasingly maternal—substitutes brought massive bureaucracies, fulfilling Tocqueville’s prophecy that democracy would lead to increasingly bureaucratic intrusion into private life. These agencies expanded by creating problems to solve. As police functionaries, they had to create criminals and newfangled, nonviolent crimes that most people (such as juries) could not understand and required “experts” to adjudicate—crimes that were safe for female police, crimes that could be committed only by men.
Fathers whose children are taken away by state officials do not heroically rescue them or organize opposition to the divorce machinery because the enervating power of the bureaucratic behemoth makes resistance pointless. Men are thus politically neutered and, as a result, often despised by their own children and the rest of us.
That most people do not regard these practices as tyrannical may be the most alarming aspect of all. Government agents seize control of children and property of vast numbers of law-abiding citizens through literally “no fault” of their own, and we accept it because of jargon that makes it all appear banal: “custody battle” and “division of property.” Fidelity to one’s word—let alone one’s spouse—is disdained. Basic civilities become irrelevant because family members can be made to obey through court orders. Family wealth—traditionally used to leverage both obedience from children and limits on government—is useless for both purposes. In divorce it is simply confiscated.
So vast numbers of children now grow up believing from the earliest age that it is normal for government officials to assume control over their family life, to order their parents about as if they were naughty children. This is causing more than social chaos. It is destroying our freedom and our will to defend it.
Stephen Baskerville is associate professor of government at Patrick Henry College and author of Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family. A longer version of this essay will appear in The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy.
Another expertly written article by Dr Baskerville. Those who have lived this nightmare understand every word. What I have learned is that those who have not lived this nightmare cannot even believe it happens. It is just too bizarre. It denies everything we believe about American freedom. So, I will put this in simpler words. What would you do if you were told that you were no longer a parent? That you would only be a visitor able to see your children 15% as much time as you had before? And that 50% of your wages would be confiscated to fund this horror? And that there does not exist any where you can go for help in staying in your children’s lives? That, in fact, society has been brainwashed to believe that if you are a divorced man you must be punished. My best friend of my whole life took his own life when faced with this unbelievable loss. When it later happened to me–I fought like a man fighting for his life. I have won, but it cost me 5 years in court and $32,000 in legal fees. And this just to continue what I had always done and what my children consistently asked for. There are prejudiced government forces that receive federal funding to destroy families in favor of single moms. The truth is that women and government have many financial incentives to remove you from your children’s lives. Please read Dr Baskerville’s book. When I read it was when I first realized what I was up against. Before I read the book and even as I lived through it I didn’t realize how bad it was. I just couldn’t believe it could be that bad. Thank you Dr Baskerville for opening my eyes. It made a real difference in my children’s lives.
I have been railing against the state involving itself in every aspect of family life for the past 25-30 years. I have said that the domestic relations courts are a microcosm of the tyranny that is coming for the rest of us. Well, that tyranny has arrived and everybody is beginning to realize that fathers were right. No more conspiracy theories, no more accusations of “deadbeat dads”, no more one-sided domestic violence issues, but more investigation into balancing domestic violence issues. etc.
As we see demonstrations of millions across the country against tyrannical government policies, it was heartening to see fathers’ rights signs among those millions. People are taking notice of the problem, and rightly so. Fathers are the taxpayers and backbones of this country. When we realize that the Constitution is no longer viable, and that our country has morphed into a dictatorship, all bets will be off and the revolt will be on (whether peaceful or not).
This is a very concise report of the plight of the American family. The ‘divide and conquer’ agenda will not stop without a return to our Constitution. Thank you Stephen Baskerville, you are indispensable to the Family Law reform movement.
Thanks to Stephen Baskerville’s book “Taken into Custody”, the truth about divorce and family courts is finally getting out. I have been engaged in an ugly battle with my ex-wife for almost eight years now.
Just a few weekends ago, on a friday night, I went to pick up my son for my weekend visitation. I had not been allowed to see him for a few months. A police officer was parked in front of my ex’s house and he arrested me for driving while suspended. Apparently my ex had obtained a court order, without my knowledge, for me to pay for some bogus unreimbursed medical expenses. My driver’s license had been suspended just 2 days earlier, but I had not received any notice of it.
I ended up spending 3 days in jail and am now trying to sort it all out. Both Democrats and Republicans are oblivious to the injustices committed against divorced fathers.
[...] Baskerville, , in “Married to the State,” a must read column in The American [...]
It’s interesting that for all their blathering about “family values”, neither of the major political parties has done anything to stop this trend towards the destruction of the family. Of course, it is in the interests of the managerial-bureaucratic elites to create an atomized society of demoralized individuals dependent upon or otherwise subject to the government. This is one more branch of Sam Francis’ “anarcho-tyranny” — the criminalization of law abiding citizens while the state becomes ever more lawless and repressive.
Still, there is some resistance. Google “Fathers for Justice” or “National Coalition of Free Men” for people who are fighting back.
“Fathers whose children are taken away by state officials do not heroically rescue them or organize opposition to the divorce machinery because the enervating power of the bureaucratic behemoth makes resistance pointless…..”
Some Father’s try desperately to heroically rescue their children, but then they get stopped because of an ‘Amber Alert’.
It would be interesting to have statistics as to how many children are actually stranger abducted or rescued by their own Father’s.
Well said Dr. Baskerville as always.
I think that love is so close to filiation (being in love, making love, loving our children) and to the basic principle of generation, the key factor belonging to Life. And this is exqactly the target of the war against father that is running since thirty years already. So the crime is commited against the deepest, most butifull and sacred factor of the humain creature.
Divides to reign, that is what is happening. It is so bold and the finnancing of this war so huge, we wonder why so few (only the one who got trapped into family court) realize it.
And I wish to reminds that if actually fathers are the main target, it is because men could build a rebellion, but once derpived of everything, women will be easy to strip from their righs, assets and children.
Thier must be a conspiracy because the phenomenum could not have spread through all western countries as it did in such a few decade otherwise..
I think this should be read in conjunction with Dr Atkinson’s article on the Frankfurt School at http://www.newtotalitarians.com/FrankfurtSchool.html. I’d be very interested in Dr Baskerville’s comments on that article.
What Baskerville has concisely described here is precisely the number one problem facing America today. Government is relentlessly destroying the family in order to grow the size, power, and control of the state, primarily by attacking fatherhood.
You can either lie about it (Democrats) or hide from it (Republicans), but there is no denying it.
While many other groups are now comprehending the eminent demise of The Constitution at the hands of our own government, fathers have lived this reality for decades.
Many people simply cannot fathom the fact that my children were seized by the state, with “custody” turned over to a group of known pedophiles, while government ransacked everything I lived and worked for all of my life, justifying it on what was proven to be fraud and perjury.
As this unbelievably massive expansion in size, power, and control of the state deepens, soon all will realize what it’s like to have no Constitutional rights whatsoever.
But the solution then is the same as the solution has been to most of America’s problems for decades – reinstate The Constitution of the United States for fathers, or in other words, decriminalize fatherhood, and start prosecuting the government officials and bureaucrats who have sworn to uphold, protect, and defend The Constitution, while doing everything they possibly can to usurp and destroy it.
The family courts do not target fathers only, as they also target mothers.
In fact, if you witness carefully- it is clear that the targets are loving families- wherever the state agents see Love- it is like they have to get in there and wreck it.
Divide and rule, turn parents against each other, turn children against parents, lie to children that their parents are in prison, lie to children that parents do not love them and wont be coming back for them- in truth the children are in state custody- souls fragmented- while their parents also suffer soul fragmentation- but the state agents do not care- that is another wrecked soul for them.
If you check the marriage cert- we are married to the state in that- and to get a divorce- we have to ask permission from a corporation court.
Free sovereign human beings do not sign contracts with corporations.
In olden days- we just did our own ceremony- our word was our bond, but no money is the name of the game and power over all children from birth to death.
Even the birth cert is traded on the stock exchange- so our children are real slaves- bonded to the state who owns them and we signed them away- because we knew no different- now we do.
It is up to all fathers and mothers to unite against this Patriarchal force, so that our children can be free .
Stephen Baskerville has masterfully articulated the issues related to fathers and fatherhood. No advancement of civil rights in this country, even in its very forming, occurred without the component of armed or violent resistance. That is a historical fact. The feminist cabal is no exception. It simply acquired the pseudo-legitimacy of unconstitutional law and at that point unleashed the violence of police power against a large but defenseless and mainly innocent segment of the nation’s population. It is time, high time, to become actively resistant to this travesty–whether that resistance be non-violent or violent. Either way it is a waste of time to write letters to the editor or to petition lawmakers. Both the media and legislatures are ensconced in bureaucratic embrace of the enemy.
The frustration, the anger, the heartbreak, the criminalization, and the complete disenfranchisement of men who have been court ruled to have “no fault’ drives these recognized innocent men to commit suicide in the U.S. in numbers approaching 20,000 per year. Partial documentation of this figure can be found at http://www.suicidology.com.
And, yet, our media, even the radical media, is dead silent on this issue. These men are victims for the fattening of Baskerville’s “bureaucratic behemoth”. It is a domestic family policy of progressive gendercide.
Another great & hard-hitting Baskerville column.
As always, I agree with, and have experienced, most of what Stephen describes, including alienation from my kids, 9 months in jail for civil disobedience to illegal extortion, so-called “child support” orders, bankruptcy, suspended driver’s license, ruined career, poverty, etc.
Still, I do not believe enforcement of marriage contracts is the answer because the state should not require a license to marry or in any way regulate family life, except for the enforcement of the right to be a parent to one’s children, regardless of marital status. Marriage law is a relic of centuries of state domination of every aspect of lives of the masses. The way to promote and maintain families is by abolition of marriage as a legal status or class.
Ending the current reward system for those who instigate divorce and sole or unequal custody petitions so that there can be no “winner”, will incentivize couples to stay together because they’ll stand only to lose by breaking up the family. The prevailing but illegal practice of ordering unequal custody against fit, willing parents drives the family destruction industry.
Our family court systems, and Congress, are under seige by fascist corporatists — thugs who daily trample on the Constitution. The solution is light, the best disinfectant: more oversight with electronic recording of all family court proceedings, and getting money out of politics. Buckley v Valeo means those with more money have more free speech rights, thus rule by the rich, the very thing our founding fathers wished to prevent. Is it we the corporations, or We, The People? That’s what we have to decide.
The family court should not exist.
The intricacies and fate of families and children should not be decided by an adversarial court, or any court.
This is where it all goes fundamentally wrong, in 3000 ways.
Once again Dr.Baskerville knocks it out the ball park! It seems like fathers are now the main target of the government and they are using CPS to do the dirty work. The government nor CPS should have no right to break up marriages, Correct me if i am wrong but isnt Marriage a holy union? Since when should Government have the right to go against god?? Its time to take a stand and put an end to all this, Fathers like myself are being attacked almost daily! Character Assassination,False Accusations Of Child Abuse,Molestation, Rape and more. This really sickens me! We as fathers are extremely important in the development of our children, Our Children need us as strong positive Role models and CPS and The Government are robbing us of that right!
Hi there Stephen (c.s.) So true again, the state exploits women&children like a herd, and greedy selfpitying women ‘love’ to be provided,regardless fathers&children they love to misuse for their selfishness. By the way, the head of Dutch adoption-idystry quitted this month because of all the selfishness of women AND macro-economic interest of governments institutes and their informants. At last fatherhood works & delivers best, stop defathering, stop destroying family-life of fathers&children! Sincerely Ad.
While it is often more sad to hear about children of broken homes that are blocked by courts from having contact with fit mothers, this happens so rarely that we can correctly identify the problem as one of systematic removal of fathers from the family by the state. Society has become desensitized to this by spreading panic, hysteria and propaganda that portrays all men as violent, abusive dead-beat dads. This radical feminist ideology has created perverse incentives for women to make false claims against thier husbands or the fathers of thier children, who then become slaves to the state, with no free will choice in the care of thier children, and like slaves, lose control of choices regarding thier labor or income. Women subsidized by the state are perversly encouraged to engage in increasingly immoral and irresponsible behaviors that they otherwise could not afford. In a sense men are cuckold by the state, who force men to pay thier ex-wives or mothers of thier children, who may then recklessly party, booze, or whore about at the expense of the ex-husband or father. The newly formed radical feminist ideology that women are presumed the better care giver to children has proven wrong. History shows us, that prior generations, thru the victorian period, preserved the family with timeless wisdom that placed the father as head of household, and a better care giver and role model for children in the very unlikely and uncommon event of divorce in those earlier times. Back then it was presumed that in a divorce, child care was a fairly unskilled task that men could readily hire, or get help from an extended family. Today it is presumed that child care is still an uskilled task that any day-care center, school or institution can provide. What has changed over the years is the role of the man as head of family, and bread winner. Feminism has taught us the role of men is simply to provide income to women, who are not necessisarily care givers to children, but simply entitled to income from men, due to some ideological claim of superiority and victemization by men and the ‘patriarchy’. Thus men have become slaves to the state, thru this belief.
As long as the ‘awards’ benefit mom and the system masquerades to act in the ‘best interest’ of the children, the machine will continue to devour resources of the families to fatten state coffers and of course the legal beagles who gorge themselves on the fees. It is a money machine. If there was no money to be made the process would not be so efficient at extracting it from Dad. Face it, most of the money that funds this silly game comes from Dad. Dad’s wallet is the target. There is no other concern of the system nor its players. Just pay the money, alive or dead, the system does not care…..just cold hard cash…..American values in its purest form.
In a departure from his traditional quasi-polemical style, Stephen’s excellent article below provides a muted version of his chilling thesis that family laws are merely the tip of the iceberg to the larger institutional struggle for dominance between state and family outlined in detail in his classic text “Taken into Custody”.
This concise article summarizes the first half of his thesis that, with the historical sidelining of the church as a major state player, natural institutional instincts for self-preservation through agglomeration of power has brought us to the showdown between State and Family in the modern era.
The State, aided and abetted by the fortuitous arrival of feminist doctrines, has only been too willing to use them as handmaidens and shills to augment state power by undermining the Family through divorce laws The strategy is simple:
1) Remove the Father from the family by criminalizing him while implementing massive wealth transfer to the mother through divorce laws;
2) Having become the state “father”, addict the mother to perpetual state dependency by additional government programs of adequate sufficiency to achieve psychological dependency while continuing to marginalize Fathers so as not to allow alternatives. State dependency is fostered by restricting funds and making it difficult to break out of the single mother mode to achieve self-fulfilment as an individual.
This is as far as Stephen has gone in this excellent article. As many already know, his book complete the thesis by identifying subsequent steps. Having isolated the father, the state intuitively then proceeds to isolate the mother from her child by progressively more intrusive “best interests of the child” (i.e. progressive encroachment on parens patriae) interpretations that cow the mother into state submission [Comments made by “Portia” touch on this aspect.]by threatening to take away the child (e.g. Child protection services, etc) .and, of course, the attendant state subsidy. As Canadians, we all recall former Justice Minister Cauchon’s famous pronouncement that parents have no rights, but only responsibilities.
The phased transformation results in children becoming wards of the state effectively leased to the parent. The destruction of the family unit is thus complete and statism prevails…the unanswered question being how long before democracy itself is subverted to become some flavour of totalitarianism.
What makes this chilling is that this is not necessarily a premeditated state strategy (although it certainly is the strategy of gender feminists who have opposed the “patriarchical” family), but rather the typical blind institutional response to intuitively seek power to ensure its survival. Feminism serves as a convenient state catalyst which is why it is well lubricated financially and harnessed to institutional demands which welcomes the ideological subversion to perpetuate institutional power.
While the above may extrapolate Stephen’s original hypothesis in some aspects, his other recent articles have been progressively trodding down this road of examining the broader implications on democracy with the demise of the family unit as the only bulwark against statism- be it fascism (i.e. state authoritarianism) or communism(i.e. state ownership of resources) at the extremes , or corporatism as the uncomfortable middle ground (i.e. the direction China is pursuing).
Stephen may well be remembered for being more of a political scientist than a social scientist by the time his final article is written. Either way, he does an incredible job ringing the warning bell for the democratic world. “Whom does the bell toll for?”…”it tolls for thee”.
George Piskor
Co-President
Canadian Equal Parenting Council
[...] To read the rest, go to: http://www.amconmag.com/blog/married-to-the-state/. [...]
Children, who up till now, without court intervention, have been able to see their Dad every day, are told that they can see him under a schedule set by the Family Court, usually every other weekend. Mom and the children are going to need money for housing and the other usual living expenses, and Dad gets to pay these. The amounts of these items are set by the Family Court. The community properties must be divided, and the schedule for doing this is supervised and finalized by the Family Court. When changes and problems in these areas arise in coming days, it is understood that all of them will be handled by the Family Court. If you don’t see it already, the Family Court literally takes control of your family, your time, your budget, and your actions toward each other in your family.
Just who is the “Family Court”? They are a group of very tightly knit judges and attorneys who have no real interest in the well-being of your family. Their motivation is money – your money. Attorneys get huge fees to keep the animosity stirred up, requiring filing after filing with the court. Each time any papers are filed the court shares in the fees charged. Divorce is an industry – 250 billion annually – where the court system and everyone involved profits from the destruction of your family. Families are parted out for profit much like stolen autos in a chop shop.
Divorce is not a solution to any marital problems, according to Dr. James Dobson of Focus On The Family,and is never what is in “the best interest of the children”. Divorce is worse than any bad marriage, and couples experiencing the accrimony, and seeing the devastation which divorce heaps on their children, have risked arrest and jail time for contempt of court, after giving up on the “family” court system and setting up their own living arrangements, in an effort to cause as little harm to their children as possible.
People try divorce as a solution to marital problems almost entirely unprepared, and completely uninformed that the only solution the family court has to marital problems is an uncontestable, endlessly troublesome divorce. There are other ways for a couple that doesn’t get along to deal with their problems without involving the family court, and causing irreperable damage to their children.
……..
The Town Talk, Alexandria, La.
Due process often absent in no-fault divorce cases
By Billy Miller • Guest commentary • December 12, 2008
Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook got their divorce in the state of New York, the only state that does not have no-fault divorce laws. They got to see true justice at work. Justice will not be done in divorces in the other states.
Marriage today, under no-fault divorce laws, has become nothing more than “a private, disposable commitment to another human being,” according to David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values and co-editor of ‘Promises to Keep.”
I have some questions to ask.
- Is marriage a legally binding agreement between two citizens? If it is not, why should it be registered with the legal system, the local courts and the state?
- If it takes two people in agreement to initiate a legally binding contract, and two people in agreement to end a legally binding contract, how do we legally explain what happens to marriage contracts in divorce court?
- The person breaching a contract is generally the one penalized. How is it fair in divorce to punish the one who is not breaching the contract and, at the same time, reward the one who is?
- If the granting of the divorce can be denied due to the legalities of notice not being followed and/or both sides not having a “fair” chance to be heard, why can’t divorce be denied because of an absence of due process?
Due process is: hearing what you did wrong (accusations), with proof; offering a defense against those accusations; hearing the judge’s decision based on the evidence presented, and the right to appeal that decision.
This process is absent in family court. The one objecting to the granting of the divorce is deprived of all rights as the divorce is granted.
Saddam Hussein received more justice than do American citizens who want to keep their marriage and family intact.
The courts are illegal by permitting proceedings in the absence of due process, a right guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution. The Civil Rights Act says that you cannot take away a person’s rights under “color of law” which means that you cannot write laws that deny people their constitutional rights. Divorce laws, however, do that by taking away due process.
All criminals receive due process, but spouses fighting to keep their marriages and families together do not.
- How does a six-month separation prove to be a sufficient time after which to grant a divorce? How is that time long enough to tell if a marriage is broken beyond repair?
- Who is to say when it’s over? I know of people who have called off the divorce proceedings after 2 years of litigation.
- Shouldn’t the state be supporting marriages rather than granting easy-exit divorce?
Judy Parejko, author of “Stolen Vows: The Illusion of No-Fault Divorce and the Rise of the American Divorce Industry,” says “The initial and only intent of no-fault divorce was mutual consent, not unilateral divorce, which is one party filing and being granted a divorce.”
Now, however, no-fault divorce is a mandate. In regular contractual conflicts, information is submitted by all parties involved and a judge resolves the conflict. But not all cases are resolved in favor of the plaintiff. Yet in the case of divorce, disputed or not, one is granted every time. Nothing is fair about the family courts helping destroy a marriage and a family.
The one thing that people expect when entering court is fairness, but it is evident that fairness has been thrown out of family court.
Billy Miller lives in Alexandria and is an advocate for marriage and modifications of family court.
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Divorce profitable for all but parents, children
By Billy Miller, Guest columnist
District Judge Arthur Hunter has called our state’s indigent defense system unconstitutional.
Families would appreciate his taking a serious evaluative look at “family” courts.
Under current no-fault divorce laws, every case has a foregone conclusion — a divorce will be granted. As in the currently broken indigent defense system, rule of law and due process are severely compromised in family court. There is no defense against a divorce. Why? Current laws don’t allow it.
The Civil Rights Act says that rights cannot be taken away under “color of law,” which means that laws cannot be written to take rights away. Every person in the courtroom — including criminals — has a right to their day in court. Why don’t family court judges declare, “No more divorces in this courtroom until state laws guarantee a defense?” Why don’t defense attorneys ask, “What has my client done wrong?” Isn’t justice important to married people?
Two questions Judge Hunter should ask the family court system: First, if we have justice for all in family court, how is it that the one filing for divorce is granted one every time? Where is the justice? The result: divorce on demand without regard to civil rights. And, how can a father, who has never been found guilty of committing a crime, be jailed as a criminal, without a trial, for non-payment of civil court child support? This action creates “debtor’s prison” — pay or go to jail, which is illegal.
Dr. Edwin Cole says, “The lack of effective, functioning fathers is the root cause of America’s social, economic, and spiritual crises,” but that has basically been brought about by the anti-family, anti-marriage judicial mindset and actions, that trash the fathers.
David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute of American Values, adds, “The absence of fathers from family life is surely the most socially consequential family trend of our era.”
Research proves that children raised in homes with their biological fathers have a much higher chance of succeeding in life. Unfortunately, approximately 25 million American children live absent or apart from their fathers. The reason: 75 percent of divorces are filed by moms, and the fathers are routinely cast out of the family by the courts, except for minimum contact with the children, called “visitation rights.” They are also cast out of the house, which the mother needs “to keep the family together,” and for “what is in the best interest of the child.” The family court system parcels out families for profit to that system, like stolen autos in a chop shop. Follow the money.
Tragically, the pages of history are rife with the terrible misdeeds of those who experienced a broken home: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden. Who would dare chance having one of their children joining that bunch by divorcing?
It’s really a divorce court, that takes control of your family, your time, your budget, your actions toward each other in your family, and eventually your house to help keep lawyers in business and feed the family court system.
Who is “family court”? A group of tight-knit judges and attorneys who have no real interest in the well-being of your family. Their motivation is money. Attorneys get huge fees to keep animosity stirred up, requiring filing after filing with the court. Each time papers are filed, fees and court costs must he paid by you. Divorce is a $250 billion industry annually, with your money keeping it alive and well. The “family” court system profits from the destruction of your family.
Research has proven that saving the marriage and family for the sake of the children is what is best. Why? Michael Reagan, in his book, “Twice Adopted,” says, “Divorce is where two adults take everything that matters to a child — the child’s home, family, security and sense of being loved and protected and they smash it all up, leave it in ruins on the floor, then walk out and leave the child to clean up the mess.” A loving parent is not going to do that to their child. God’s plan of forgiveness and reconciliation works every time; not divorce, which He hates.
Talk with your legislators. Let them know that American citizens want new laws to stop the stampede of divorces, and are extremely upset about how the anti-family courts are tearing families apart for profit.
Billy Miller is a resident of Alexandria. — 9/3/06
Reprinted with permission from Billy Miller – originally published in Alexandria, Louisiana’s “The Town Talk”
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The only good news is that the system is verging on financial collapse. When this happens women will line up behind the nearest man and start minding their manners.
Children of single-mother households are to blame for raising problems, everybody is to blame, excerpt wrong mothers. Mothers? They don’t care! And so government ‘helps’ also with raising the cildren that is they provide and psychologist & pedogoges make instant (semi-)academic pedologic non-sense to play their informant-role even harder. How they do that? By selling the feminine way misusing safety-arguments generalizing false status-quo’s and problems. In this way it is a matriarch-system wher boys cannot be boys, also men and fathers must be modelled the feminine way and so being fullworthy and authentick males are killed like a sniper. Stop the war agaisnt fathers lifetime-hetero-relations and families! Poor divorced-aborted-adopted-socialized children mostly their father and his family!
I’m just glad that the state is finally backing down and helping to erode patriarchal oppression.
Great article! This was picked up by Glenn Sacks and fathers and families a while back. He covers Baskerville work frequently. Like a lot of people on this blog I have gone through custody hell for the last 10 years. In my humble opinion there are a couple of goals men should be aiming for.
The first are shared equal parenting laws. There was a law in Australia that was recently overturned and I believe Saskatchawan is contemplating such a law. Shared equal parenting laws are like hitting two birds with one stone. It ends the automatic awarding of custody to mom which in turn removes the financial penalties on men because they are no longer the sole breadearner. Most child support is based on time the percentage of time spend in each parent’s household. With men sharing custody women will not be able to duck working real jobs after a divorce.
The second important systemic change that needs to happen is that the marriage contract itself needs to be updated. It is 150 years out of date. As has been pointed out already, there is no clause in a marriage contract for dissolution. Any business partnership has a section outlining what happens in the event of dissolution. Rather than a marriage being null and void there are penalties in the form of alimony which continues long after the partnership is over. Combine this with the fact that 75% of the divorces are filed by women what we are ending up with is economic slavery.
Take the money out of divorce and things will change.
I would like to see a pre-nuptial agreement for the children of a marrage, and not money. Kids are used as a weapon to be used for the hate of 2 people who use to love each other, I cannot blame Goverments for the ill treatment of children in a marrage breakup, it is society that has given the rights to Goverments and organisations to bring in laws, mums/ dads and the whole family should be the ones to pass the laws, starting with a pre-neptial agreement before marraige. Then perhaps dads could have a better chance to see their kids. And kids could also have a voice and rights.
MAGGIE TUTTLE
When my now-ex wife first presented me with what I now know to be the standard “order of protection” and various false accusations regarding child abuse, emotional abuse, financial abuse, denial of medical care, et cetera, a friend of mind gave me the recipe. I did not believe him. After living through the nightmare of being falsely accused, of having to “prove my innocence” to a disbelieving court system, of being denied to see my children for nearly a year even though my now-ex wife had no physical evidence or witness that I had done anything wrong (and neither could any of the various evaluators either), and after spending $65,000 in legal fees, custody evaluator fees, professional psychological evaluations, after paying for myself to live in separate quarters, after continuing to pay for all of her housing expense while being denied the use of my own home, after being denied to visit with or see my children or to attend school functions, I now know that my friend was right. Steven Baskerville’s book lays the entire nightmare down in writing; his book details the truth in detail, is very accurate, and I could take my case right from his writings. And yes, everything that everybody has stated here is true – nobody who hasn’t gone through this nightmare can understand that it is very, very real. I too thought that such writings were radical, the product of maladjusted conservatives complaining about “government intrusion”. But Steven is right – it is long past time for us to stand firm against what now is, to refuse to accept any further intrusion, and to be evangelists for change … before it is too late and our country becomes yet another example of despotism run amok. Steven is nearly alone in his championship of the truth … here in Arizona … we have one group actively working (Arizona Fathers Rights) to help those men enduring this system. Getting involved, asking questions, and holding elected officials accountable to the people is sorely needed. Keep in touch!
“Who is “family court”? A group of tight-knit judges and attorneys who have no real interest in the well-being of your family. Their motivation is money. Attorneys get huge fees to keep animosity stirred up, requiring filing after filing with the court. Each time papers are filed, fees and court costs must he paid by you. Divorce is a $250 billion industry annually, with your money keeping it alive and well. The “family” court system profits from the destruction of your family.”
50% (rough gestimate) don’t Pledge an Allegiance to the American Flag but to a foreign flag. As a Jewish man I approve this message.
It is somewhat ironic to read this article and others like it championing the victimization of men. Having known a mother of 11 children who was abandoned by her husband for a younger woman at the office I have yet to see her husband victimized in the way that he should be. And by “victimized” I mean held accountable. In 2 years he has paid no child support, purchased a diamond engagement ring, 5 bedroom house and travelled with his girlfriend. He moved out of state to make child support enforcement all but impossible and now just when the courts were getting close to compelling him to pay support he has “been fired and has no income”.
Divorce is a very serious problem. However, divorce does not offer women and children “free money” as this article seems to claim. It is automatic poverty and you have to wonder what would force a woman to embrace that for herself and her children.
I note the misogynistic comment by “Liberty” that women will line up behind men and start minding their manners. When, will men (specifically husbands) decide to mind their manners and make it unnecessary for their wives to file divorce?
To Mary:
Yes there are people who can get away from child support, though I find such things rather rare. Usually you will find a man hounded rather far even if completely broke and can’t pay.
I also love that it is always women as the victim. If he leaves her he is a destering jerk. If she leaves him then he must have been a worthless idiot not worth her time. Either way it is his fault the marriage broke up. Not that she was was a nag or controlling or a b****. Nope! the entire fault is his.
It is free money since it is not taxable and she can get remarried and get money from the new hubby as well as the old. Why fix the marriage when she can get house, kids, car and child support from the husband. She doesn’t need to compromise just kick him out and take most of what hes got. Then the worse ones can start having revolving boyfriends and partying without having a husband “tying” them down. The better ones can get married be back to two incomes and pulling in the child support from the old man to increase the overall household income.
I knew a woman whose mother went through 5 divorces and she knew how to work the system. When here daughter wanted to divorce her husband she taught her how to do it to. First get a restrainging order based on I am afraid he may do something. (not that he even did ANYTHING to begin with) That gave her custody of the house and kids. Then quit her job. That insursed she got the most help with child support/ (possible) alimoney. The guy never saw it coming.
I will agree there are women that get the raw deal on some divorces. One most though they man gets BY FAR the worse end of the deal. Though when you discuss these with women the standard answer is “but I know this one woman…..” as if they washes away ALL the problems men have gone through.
sorry for any misspellings on my last post
sorry about the grammer and mis-spellings in my posts.
As usual, Dr, Baskerville presents a cogent and unassailable assessment of social and governmental hostility to the modern family, and the subsequent erosion of cultural stability. Far be it from me to add to it.
I have to note though, the irony of these realities against the current wave of born again constitutional stalwarts hosting tea parties and challenging the status quo in Washington of late. With all the hoopla and Henryesque rhetoric filtering through the media about a return to constitutional ideals and basic liberties, the paucity of discussion on men’s issues reduces the whole affair to shenanigans-as-usual among politicians, libertarians included.
Without a far reaching counter-feminist backlash there can no reclamation of personal liberties.
It is understood that to publicly embrace the men’s rights movement is political suicide in the mainstream given the modern misandric zeitgeist and especially the feminist governance currently in power. It is that movement though, in my opinion, that represents the only plausible hope for substantive change.
How much abuse men will endure before they look past partisanship and staged politics to make that happen remains to be seen.
I disagree that the problem is the government intrusion into the lives of families. The article seems to portray the government as conducting an ad hominem attack on fathers. I don’t believe that is the case.
The government is simply trying to deal with the problem of fatherless families; they did not create the problem.
I would assert that at each juncture of government interference that there was also an abdication of duty and responsibility from the Church. We ceased teaching the roles of older men and women in the church in Titus 2, we ceased teaching on Biblical roles for men and women in the family, we ceased practicing judgment and discipline in the local church, and we ceased being hospitable enough to even know that marriages were in trouble until they were beyond repair. We wasted more than a generation telling young high school grads that if God called them, that he called them to ministry, not to the university, or business school or law school to be an influence there, as if the only ministry that existed was paid clergy. We removed the salt from society, and we ceased to be salt ourselves. It is inappropriate to blame the government for our won moral failures.
It is not Big Brother’s intrusion into our lives that got us in the end: It was our own love of pleasure, riches, ease and entertainment. We loved something besides the truth.
I’ve seen a lot of discussion regarding the same issues we’ve discussed before. Inappropriate use of OOP mechanism ranks very high on the list, as does inappropriate false accusations coupled with a lack of consequences for doing so. This particular issue is, in my opinion, by itself and should be addressed and worked independently. It is unfortunately a federal statute that you and I are both familiar with.
Second. Inappropriate use of no fault divorce filings. Not sure if you understand the issue. Let me know what you think. In a no fault divorce, the plaintiff (usually the female) is allowed to break her marital contract without penalty, extracting full financial benefit (in community property states such as Arizona) without consequence. Likewise in equitable distribution states (e.g. Michigan, North Carolina), no fault divorce enables the plaintiff to make claim against the defendants assets and income without consequence. Previous to the no fault divorce law, breaking the marital contract without cause resulted in the plaintiff losing claim to the defendant’s assets and income. With cause meant, I think, adultery, spousal abuse, or child abuse. Under “traditional divorce law”, unless the plaintiff could prove cause, the defendant was allowed to retain ownership of assets and income. Note that I said prove cause.
Arizona allows the use of the “covenant marriage law” to re-establish traditional divorce law for the couple that chooses to enter a covenant marriage. My current wife and I have chosen to enter a covenant marriage, as both of us are staunch in our belief that marriage is for life and the couple should make every effort to work out their differences. The covenant marriage law is available to each citizen on the Arizona Supreme Court web site … an excellent summary of it can there be found. I do not know if other states have a covenant marriage law. In a covenant marriage, there is no such thing as no fault divorce.
Third. Inappropriate use of false accusations and refusal to cooperate in order to acquire legal sole custody and parenting time of the children of the marriage primarily for the purpose of controlling the father’s income and maximizing child support payments to the mother. As we have discussed, this issue can be resolved by changing the existing statute to a presumption of 50/50 joint legal/residential custody unless either parent can be proven unfit. Note that I said, proven unfit. Such a statutory change must explicitly exclude a parent having to prove fitness.
In my research regarding the evolution of custody law, I discovered that until recent times custody was rarely awarded to a divorcing woman … instead, the children were considered the responsibility of the father and nearly always awarded to the father. Why this was changed, I don’t know. Current research seems to indicate that equal access to each parent is in the best interest of the child’s health … and thus I’m puzzled why the states in general award as little time to the father as they do. In Arizona, the generally accepted award is, as you know, every other weekend and Wednesday afternoon.
So, I’ve summarized more concisely my bully platform for family law reform.
I’ve also been monitoring the Arizona State Domestic Relations Committee and am completely disgusted with it. It appears to be simply a sham by the State of Arizona to appear to be in compliance to the federal requirement for regular review of child custody rules and laws. In my opinion the committee is a waste of our time and energy and serves only to prevent, delay, inhibit, or stifle addressing the necessary changes to statutes to fix our seriously broken family court system.
My three cents worth.
enjoyed your story …
I’ll talk to you when I can … been very, very busy with young men leaving home, going to high school, etc.
I discovered that the only women who seem to “get the short end of the deal” are the ones that don’t hire an attorney. If she hires an attorney, it is WITHOUT EXCEPTION to the man’s disadvantage. Does anyone know different? If so, I’m all ears.
[...] MARRIED TO THE STATE. In 1947, with the baby boom in its infancy and few disposed to hearing of family crisis, Harvard [...]
Here is my answer short and sweet:
Never voluntarily place oneself under the jurisdiction of the Family Court.
In other words never marry the State,
How my children suffered because Mom was leaving for greener pastures. I’ve found since my divorce that American women aren’t worth the trouble, unless there is some compelling reason to be attached to them, such as raising children. I have to laugh, as yet another jerk is running around after my ex-wife with his pants down around his ankles.
American manhood isn’t what it used to be, either, as many divorced men will duplicate their error and prove their lack of virility by, first, marrying a divorcee, and second, having sex with an older woman. I may get lonely from time to time, but I’ll tolerate it since the latter is an offense against nature, and outdoor sports and moderate drinking are preferable activities anyway.
A New Hampshire Superior Court documented the estrangement and alienation of the children and their father was the result of mom’s anger. The court ruled that the child suxual abuse did not occur and was the result of mom’s actions.
There were never any charges, indictment and DCYF ultimately closed the case as unfounded, withdrwe and closed the case based on the “suspicion” of mom’s involvement.
The court awared 100% residential responsibility to mom and $2,000 per month in child support to dad along with the only way for dad to see the children was in supervised visits.
Greg
One has to ask, “How did such an abhorrent state come to be?” The answer is: MONEY! In order for the radical, anti-male feminists to push their agenda forward, they lobbied for laws that would make female dominance PROFITABLE. So they got laws passed that would “reduce the burden on taxpayers” by forcing fathers to support mothers on welfare.
The states were then paid by the federal gov’t for collecting that child support. Not enough women on welfare to make it really profitable to the states, so Congress expanded the program to benefit women who WEREN’T on welfare. Child support morphed into a Communistic “TRANSFER OF WEALTH” program, and now 80% of the recipients are middle class mothers. Even fathers with shared physical custody are forced to pay into this feminist pork barrel. As always happens, the state collection agencies got greedy, and began abusing their authority. To insure that the courts turned a blind eye to the abuses, and rewarded the favored gender,the feds started paying the courts for HEARING child support cases. Welfare rolls were reduced by less than 3%, but the cost to the taxpayer has skyrocketed into the BILLIONS per year. Now, the states are reluctant to give up all this filthy lucre, and politicians and judges are firmly opposed to any changes in the system to right the inequalities. In fact, an entire INDUSTRY has grown up around the family courts. No matter how detrimental to the child, to society, or to the ideals of “justice”, courts continue to separate fathers from their children in order to separate them from their money.
The detriment to society of the current anti-family court system is very clear. Note the following:
SINGLE MOTHER HOMES
37.8% of single mothers are divorced, 41% never married, and only 6.5% widows. Brookings Institute, “Assessing the Impact of Welfare Reform on Single Mothers”, Part 2, 3/22/04
“The strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison, is that they were raised by a single parent”. C.C. Harper and S.S. McLanahan, “Father Absence and Youth Incarceration”, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Assoc., San Francisco, CA, 1998
In 1996, 70% of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long sentences, were raised by single mothers. Wade Horn, “Why There Is No Substitute For Parents”, IMPRIMIS 26, NO.6, June, 1997
72% of juvenile murderers, and 60% of rapists came from single mother homes. Chuck Colson, “How Shall We Live?” Tyndale House , 2004, p.323
70% of teen births occur to girls in single mother homes. David T. Lykken, “Reconstructing Fathers”, American Psychologist 55, 681,681, 2000
70% of drop-outs, and 70% of teen suicides come from single mother homes. Wade Horn, “Why There Is No Substitute For Parents,” IMPRIMIS 26, N0. 6, June 1997
70% of runaways, 70% of juvenile delinquents, and 70% of Child murderers, come from single mother homes. Richard E. Redding, “It’s Really About Sex”, Duke Univ. Journal of Gender Law and Policy, Jan.1, 2008
“Girls raised without fathers are more sexually promiscuous, and more likely to end up divorced.” Wade Horn, “Why There Is No Substitute For Parents”, IMPRIMIS 26, No.6, June, 1997
“After controlling for single motherhood, the difference between black and white crime rates disappeared.” Progressive Policy Institute, 1990, quoted by David Blankenhorn, “Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem,” New York, Harper Perennial, 1996, p.31
63% of all youth suicides,
70% of all teen pregnancies,
71% of all adolescent chemical/substance abusers,
80% of all prison inmates, and
90% of all homeless and runaway children, came from single mother homes.
Bob Ray Sanders, “Hey Y’all, Let’s Fill The Hall (Of Fame), Ft. Worth Star Telegram, Oct.28,2007
Mona Charen, “More Good News Than Bad?”, Washington Times, Mar.16, 2001 (citing Bill Bennett, “The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators: American society at the end of the 20th Century., New York, Broadway Books, 1994)
Children brought up in single mother homes are:
5 times more likely to commit suicide,
9 times more likely to drop out of high school,
10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances,
14 times more likely to commit rape,
20 times more likely to end up in prison,
32 times more likely to run away from home.
Chuck Eddy, “The Daddy Shady Show”, Village Voice, Dec. 31, 2002
“America has more than twice as many teenage births as other developed nations.” Isabel V.Sawhill, to House Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Human Resources, June 29, 1999
86% of American teen births are out of wedlock. Dr. David Popenoe, “The Future of Marriage In America”, Rutgers Univ., The National Marriage Project, 2007
600,000 out of wedlock births in 1979. Patrick Fagan and William H.G.Fitzgerald, “Why Serious Welfare Reform Must Include Serious Adoption Reform. Heritage Foundation Reports, July 27, 1995
“(I)n a recent study by the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation. Comparing statistics for its Kids Count report, the organization reported that Detroit ranks No.1 in unmarried births among the nations 50 largest cities. Of the 16,729 babies born in Detroit in 1997, 13,574 were black, 1,679 were white and 817 were Hispanic. Seventy-one percent were born to unmarried mothers. This compared with a state average of 33 percent and a 50-city average of 43 percent.”
Detroit is the worst offender on our list of America’s most dangerous cities, thanks to a staggering rate of 1,220 violent crimes committed per 100,000 ”
Less than 1% of children born to never married women were placed for adoption from 1989 to 1995. U.S. DHHS, Child Welfare Information Gateway, “Voluntary Relinquishment For Adoption, Numbers and trends, 2005
In 2003, there were 1.5 Million unwed births, and less than 1% were put up for adoption. Fagan and Fitzgerald (above)
Only 4% of college graduates have illegitimate children, and only 16% of college graduates get divorced, compared to 46% of high school dropouts, who marry in smaller numbers to begin with. Dr. David Popenoe, “The Future Of Marriage In America; “The Frayed Knot – Marriage in America”, The Economist, May 26, 2007
50% of single mothers are below the poverty line, their children are 6 times more likely to be in poverty than children with married parents. Chuck Colson, “How Shall We Live”, Tyndale House.
85% of homeless families are single mother families. Barry H. Waldman and Stephen P. Perlman, “Homeless Children With Disabilities, “ The Exceptional Parent, June 1, 2008 (American Academy of Developmental Medicine and Dentistry
90% of welfare recipients are single mothers. Jason DeParle, “Raising Kevion”, New York Times, Aug. 22, 2004
There were 3 million single mothers in 1970 and 10 million in 2003. U.S. Census, Table FM-2, All Parent/Child Situations, by Type, Race, and Hispanic origin of Householder, 1970 to 2003
The illegitimacy rate went up more than 300% since 1970. House Ways and Means Committee, Nonmarital Births to Adults and Teenagers and Federal Strategies to Reduce Nonmarital Pregnancies, appendix “M”, 2003
From: James D Carmine
Subject: FATHER your own? No! Foster parent someone elses? Sure!
The sickest problem is I can legally raise someone else’s kids and get paid for it by the state, but I am not allowed to see my own child for more than 4 days a month. Of course I can also live with some other father’s kids as well as spend most of his money, so long as I am shacking up with his
ex. Thank you Liberal lunatics. Seems I can raise anyone’s kids but the ones I really love. MY OWN.
The State is a corporation and benefits from it’s work at enslavement of the modern family. The acts of the state are well highlighted in this article. However, what is missed is the fact that all this misery is by our own agreement and via contracts we accepted which allowed the state corp into our families and lives. We are being duped by a corporation operating under public policy. Unfortunately our ignorance is also our undoing. The recent book, “The Red Amendment” by LB Bork outlines just how things go wrong (14th Amendment). Start protecting your rights and stop making deals with the state!
The only thing I find troubling with Baskervilles messages is that it focuses too much on the Father being the victim. From what I’m seeing out here in California, both genders are being trampled on. I wish Baskerville would shift the focus of Fathers being trampled on to Families being trampled on. I’m part of a group out here in San Diego, and half of the people are Women who are being trampled on by the system just as Men are, it is shocking, and we have a female Supervising Judge. I agree that Men get the short end of the stick most often but it’s not like all Women are getting it easy. Moreover, I see from the stories that I hear firsthand that it’s all about the money, the money, the money. The looting professionals do whatever it takes to keep the fight going, to keep looting the cash from both parents, ultimately Families are the victim. They target those who have money and milk them for all they can, and term them “high-conflict” cases.
http://translate.google.com/?hl=en&sl=en&tl=vi#
To Mindi Wilhem,
You are dead wrong! Government has everything to do with it. You need to do further research and you will see what’s happening to men is no accident.
To Ben Siegfried,
What you are fogetting is women have to do something bad like have an addiction or arrest records or somthing thing like that to lose custody of their children, but on the other hand men don’t have to do anything at all to lose custody just being men. This is true you need to do a little research to. I’m sure some women do get the short end of the stick on occassion but you can not compare that to the short end of the stick that men get at all, it’s not even in the same ball park.