Tag Archives: Unilateral Divorce

News

MUST-READ: How divorce courts destroy the lives of fathers and children

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Consider this story from the Herald Sun in Australia.

Excerpt:

A mother found by the Family Court to be violent, untruthful, lacking moral values and responsible for the psychological and emotional abuse of her children has been given custody of them.

The father, deemed “principled” and with “much to offer his children”, has been effectively banned from seeing his daughters.

[…]The father… is described by a Family Court judge as no threat to his daughters, a successful parent who is “courteous” and “intelligent”.

The same judge found the mother… abandoned her first daughter at two and spurned the child’s subsequent attempts at reconciliation, had displayed “dreadful”, “cruel” and “malicious” behaviour.

But the judge still ruled that because of time spent apart, the children had become estranged from their father and it was in their interests that “the children spend no time with the father”.

Time spent apart? Why would a loving father willingly spend time apart from his own children?

Bill has not seen his daughters since April and has not spent extended time with them since August 2005.

He says the estrangement was largely a result of false allegations of sexual abuse of the children made against him by his former wife.

The custody ruling in the Family Court last month came after a seven-year battle over access to the girls, now aged nine and 11.

It followed a criminal trial in 2007, when Bill, 55, was cleared of the sexual abuse allegations. The trial judge found them totally false and threw the case out.

The ordeal has cost Bill his home, his job and about $450,000 in lost income and legal costs. He has faced court 70 times to clear his name and try for some form of access to his children.

“It has been a nightmare. All I wanted was to be part of my children’s lives – to try to give them a good start in life,” Bill said.

“But I am denied that because of the malicious way in which my ex-wife has acted and because of the credence the legal system has given her lies and falsehoods.

“The family law system needs wholesale change. There appears to be no testing of evidence in court and it seems that often lies and fabrications are immediately accepted as fact.

“It’s a disgrace and, as far as I know, it doesn’t happen in any other legal sphere.”

Bill’s case follows the case of “Steve” last year, in which the court accepted his good character, but banned him from seeing his daughter for seven years because it was believed the mother would “shut down” emotionally if he were allowed to see her.

In another case last year, a father, “Mick”, was jailed for sending a birthday card to his daughter in breach of a court order and was locked up again for taking a walk in a park – near where, unknown to him, his daughter was playing.

False allegations of sexual abuse are standard operating procedure in divorce courts in order to get custody of the children, and the child support payments that go with the children. The legal stakeholders in the divorce racket have every reason to help to the woman to make these false charges, because the father usually fights for custody, which is what keeps them all employed.

Further study

To find out more about the horrors of feminism and unilateral divorce, consider reading something by Stephen Baskerville and something by Jennifer Roback Morse. This podcast by Jennifer Roback Morse explains some of the threats to traditional marriage – it’s my favorite podcast ever. Women need to do a better job of understanding men, and understanding what has to change to make marriage attractive and appealing to men. That may involve changing laws to make these unfair divorce courts stop doing what they are doing.

One last thing. Most of my readers know that I am chaste, and so I have never been married or divorced. My parents are have been married for 40+ years. None of my immediate family is divorced. And none of my Christian friends are divorced. In fact, I have never experienced a divorce even vicariously by being friends with someone who was going through a divorce. And the point of this is to show you how Christians can become sensitive to an issue just by studying it. And this is what marriage-minded Christians need to do.

Christians need to study to understand the many serious problems that divorce causes for men and children. We should understand how marriage acts as a buffer to state power, thus protecting religious liberty. We should know how feminist policies weaken marriage and parenting. And we should understand how a stable marriage benefits children, and ultimately, society. When Christians inform themselves about these issues, it becomes easier to put ourselves second and act to preserve the marriage. Knowledge binds the will.

Commentary

MUST-READ: Jennifer Roback Morse explains why two-parent families matter

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Article here in Policy Review, a publication of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University.

Excerpt:

A free society needs people with consciences. The vast majority of people must obey the law voluntarily. If people don’t conform themselves to the law, someone will either have to compel them to do so or protect the public when they do not. It costs a great deal of money to catch, convict, and incarcerate lawbreakers — not to mention that the surveillance and monitoring of potential criminals tax everybody’s freedom if habitual lawbreakers comprise too large a percentage of the population.

The basic self-control and reciprocity that a free society takes for granted do not develop automatically. Conscience development takes place in childhood. Children need to develop empathy so they will care whether they hurt someone or whether they treat others fairly. They need to develop self-control so they can follow through on these impulses and do the right thing even if it might benefit them to do otherwise.

All this development takes place inside the family. Children attach to the rest of the human race through their first relationships with their parents. They learn reciprocity, trust, and empathy from these primal relationships. Disrupting those foundational relations has a major negative impact on children as well as on the people around them. In particular, children of single parents — or completely absent parents — are more likely to commit crimes.

Without two parents, working together as a team, the child has more difficulty learning the combination of empathy, reciprocity, fairness, and self-command that people ordinarily take for granted. If the child does not learn this at home, society will have to manage his behavior in some other way. He may have to be rehabilitated, incarcerated, or otherwise restrained. In this case, prisons will substitute for parents.

I am reading her book Love and Economics right now, and this argument is in the first couple of chapters, which is how I found this article.

Dr. J’s blog is here.

News

Are women held to a different standard than men under the law?

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I came across these 3 news stories that illustrate 3 concerns I have about how the law favors women over men in many areas.

Woman released without charges after shooting husband dead

Story here.

Excerpt:

A justice of the peace has ordered the release of a woman arrested in connection with the shooting death of her husband because no charges have been filed.

Las Vegas police arrested Ericka McElroy on Oct. 7 outside her southwest Las Vegas home. Her 37-year-old husband, Shane McElroy, died after being shot in the chest. Police said the two had allegedly been in a domestic dispute.

Woman gets 20 days of jail after making false rape accusation

Story here.

Excerpt:

A 20-year-old Valparaiso woman has pleaded guilty to falsely reporting that a Valparaiso man raped her, county police said Thursday.

Erica Donohue was sentenced to 180 days in jail, although most were suspended. She is to serve 20 days in jail and 10 days of community service.

Donohue said that on July 15, an acquaintance raped her in a rural area.

Porter County Detective Gene Hopkins investigated the case, and the evidence he gathered — including a video of the consensual act — convinced prosecutors to issue a warrant for Donohue, who was arrested Sept. 29.

She eventually admitted to making up the story about the rape, to hide where she had been from a person with whom she was in a relationship.

Woman wants $1.5 dollars in per year in child support

Story here.

Excerpt:

Sitting on a makeshift stand before the court, Nantz grew teary as he testified, blaming the marriage’s demise on his wife’s lavish spending habits, as well as what he claimed was a lack of support for his career, the paper reported.

Nantz’s wife, who is seeking alimony as well as more than $1.5 million-per-year in child support for the couple’s 15-year-old daughter, Caroline, has stated that she wants to keep the family’s six bedroom home in Westport, Conn. The family also owns a condominium at a ski resort in Utah, according to the Connecticut Post. Lorrie Nantz said that she wants to care for the child’s daughter even though she has a full-time nanny.

While court papers merely say that the marriage broke down irretrievably, Nantz told Superior Court Judge Howard Owens that while he was traveling around the country for work, his wife stayed home and went on excessive shopping sprees, the paper reported.

In nine years, Lorrie Nantz spent close to $1 million at a high-end clothing and jewelry store in Westport, Conn., the Post reported.

Last month she bought a $12,000 necklace at the posh store, but when pressed on its description, she could not remember details.

These stories are actually not uncommon. They are all from the last few days, and there are more stories like them every day. The lesson I am taking away from this is that the law is very hostile to men. It’s something that men don’t really talk about in public, and I wonder why that is the case.

Here’s my previous post on the parity of male and female rates of domestic violence, my previous post on the recent surge of domestic violence committed by women in Australia, as well as a new story on the surge in child abuse by intoxicated single mothers in Finland.