Recent article by Stephen Baskerville - What God Hath Joined Together . . .

http://www.movieguide.org/index.php?s=articles&id=130

What God Hath Joined Together . . .
Aug 30th, 2006

The advent of "no-fault" divorce has given rise to a system that strips
fathers of their children, accelerates the breakdown of families, and makes
a mockery of the marital contract.

By Stephen Baskerville

For the moment, while the Federal Marriage Amendment is moved to a back
burner, it's a good time to heighten our awareness of a broader menace.
Same-sex marriage is a symptomatic threat to families, compared to the more
fundamental effect of "no fault" divorce. "Commentators miss the point when
they oppose homosexual marriage on the grounds that it would undermine
traditional understandings of marriage," writes Bryce Christensen of
Southern Utah University. "It is only because traditional understandings of
marriage have already been severely undermined that homosexuals are now
laying claim to it." Michael McManus of Marriage Savers writes that "divorce
is a far more grievous blow to marriage than today's challenge by gays."

The Bush administration and Congress have allocated $150 million annually to
promote "healthy marriages and responsible fatherhood." The effectiveness of
these efforts turns on how well they mesh gears with the underlying
realities of the family crisis. In order to face the bitter truths about why
families are dissolving at such an alarming rate, we must move from the
precincts of moral exhortation, to take an analytical look at the mechanics
of the family court system and related legal agendas.

It is a grievous misconception that an increase in marital "break downs"
warranted new laws to simplify the divorce process, as if to minimize a
futile expense for an unavoidable outcome. Under "no-fault" divorce laws,
80% of divorces are unilateral. In other words, most "no-fault" divorces are
unilateral, over the objection of one spouse, who is often committed to
keeping the family together. Further, it is more often the spouse who is
opposed to the divorce that will be burdened with on-going legal fees and
court actions. Evidence suggests that those who influenced the new laws had
an ulterior motive which has developed a system that exploits the
opportunity for professional involvement in a growing divorce industry.
Since "no fault" divorce opened the court room doors wider, the market of
professional family services has grown exponentially.
In contradiction to another myth, that husbands take advantage of the
simpler divorce method, the mother of minor children is overwhelmingly most
often the divorcing parent. In Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths, Arizona
State University psychologist Sanford Braver has shown that at least
two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women. Moreover, these divorces
rarely involve abandonment, adultery, or violence. The most common reasons
are "growing apart" or "not feeling loved or appreciated."

Divorces initiated by women climbed to more than 70% when no-fault divorce
was introduced, according to Margaret Brinig of the University of Iowa and
Douglas Allen of Simon Fraser University. Mothers "are more likely to
instigate separation, despite.evidence that many divorces harm children."
The bottom line is indeed the children. After analyzing 21 variables, Brinig
and Allen concluded that "who gets the children is by far the most important
component in deciding who files for divorce."
~~~
The importance of this finding cannot be overestimated. Political leaders
who call for repeated crackdowns on allegedly dissolute fathers clearly
promote the assumption that fathers are to blame with regard to the welfare
of children of divorce. "I believe children should not have to suffer twice
for the decisions of their parents to divorce," Senator Mike DeWine stated
on the Senate floor in June 1998; "once when they decide to divorce, and
again when one of the parents evades the financial responsibility to care
for them." But most fathers make no such decision. They are expelled by a
divorce to which they become obligated without consent.

Family law now allows mothers to walk away from marriages at any time and
take the children with them. Not only is this permitted, it is encouraged
and rewarded with financial incentives. Even more disturbing, in some cases,
mothers are actually pressured by social service agencies into filing for a
divorce that they don't want. The Massachusetts News reported how Heidi
Howard was ordered by the state's Department of Social Services to divorce
her husband Neil or lose her children, though DSS acknowledged he had not
been violent. When she refused the social workers seized her children,
including a newborn and attempted to terminate the Howards' parental rights.
News reporter Nev Moore says she has seen hundreds such cases.

The problem runs much deeper than the existing bias against fathers in
custody decisions. "Washing their hands of judgments about conduct...the
courts assume that all children should normally live with their mothers,
regardless of how the women have behaved," observes Sunday Times columnist
Melanie Phillips. "Yet if a mother has gone off to live with another man,
does that not indicate a measure of irresponsibility or instability, not
least because by breaking up the family.she is acting against their best
interests?"

Mothers who separate children from their fathers are routinely given
immediate custody. Although considered temporary, once a mother has custody,
it cannot be changed without a lengthy court battle. The sooner she can
establish herself as the sole caretaker, the more difficult and costly it is
for the father to regain custody. Further, it is the tendency of a mother
who cuts off the father to use his absence to embitter the child with false
charges against him, while she delays custody proceedings, and obstructs the
father's efforts to see his children. The most common end result is that she
retains sole custody.

As for the father, he is most likely to discover too late that any restraint
in his effort to regain custody will cost him dearly. Often only reciprocal
belligerence and aggressive litigation on his part carries any hope of
reward. Astoundingly, the latest wisdom counsels nervous fathers that the
game is so rigged that their best chance is not to wait for their day in
court, but to snatch first, then conceal, obstruct, delay, and so forth. "If
you do not take action," writes Robert Seidenberg in The Father's Emergency
Guide to Divorce-Custody Battle, "your wife will." Thus we have the
nightmare scenario of a "race to the trigger" and the pre-emptive strike
reminiscent of nuclear deterrence strategy. Whoever snatches the children
first wins.
~~~

Far from merely exploiting family breakdown, domestic relations law has
turned the family into what political scientists call the game of "prisoners'
dilemma," in which only the most trusting marriage can survive and the
emergence of the slightest marital discord renders not absconding with the
children perilous and even irrational. Willingly or not, all parents are now
prisoners in this game.

How did all this come about? Under the assumption that only mutual consent
would precipitate the dissolution of a marriage, "no fault" laws provided
for the removal of grounds for divorce. Subsequently divorces, commonly
blamed for causing hardship to wives and children, has increasingly left
husbands vulnerable to desertion and the confiscation of their children.
"No-fault" divorce is a misnomer for the creation of what Maggie Gallagher
calls in her book The Abolition of Marriage "unilateral" divorce, allowing
either spouse to end the marriage, without any agreement or fault by the
other.

What's more alarming is that these laws were passed while no one was
looking; no clamor to dispense with divorce restrictions preceded their
passage; no public debate was held in the national media. "The divorce
laws.were reformed by unrepresentative groups with very particular agendas
of their own and which were not in step with public opinion," writes
Phillips in her book The Sex-Change Society. "All the evidence suggests that
public attitudes were gradually dragged along behind laws that were
generally understood at the time to mean something very different than what
they subsequently came to represent."
Attorney Ed Truncellito agrees. In August 2000, he filed suit with the Texas
Supreme Court against the state bar. Truncellito contends the legislative
history of no-fault divorce law in Texas makes clear that the law was meant
for "uncontested-only" cases. He insists that "the state bar knew all along
that the no-fault law was being misapplied, but they covered it up for
financial gain." Truncellito claims that, effectively, "no one is married"
because the laws created "unilateral divorce on demand."
~~~
Dickens' observation "the one great principle of the...law is to make
business for itself" couldn't be more starkly validated. Nothing in the law
requires a judge to grant the divorcing parent's initial request to strip
the other parent of his children. A judge could simply rule that, prima
facie, neither the father nor the children has committed any infraction that
justifies being forcibly separated and that neither the mother nor the court
has any grounds to separate them. Yet such rulings are virtually unheard of.
One need not be cynical to recognize that judges who refused to grant the
request would be denying earnings to an entourage of lawyers, custody
evaluators, psychologists and psychiatrists, guardians ad litem, mediators,
counselors, child-support enforcement agents, social workers, and others -
all of whom profit from the ensuing custody battle and have a strong say in
the promotion of judges.

With all the concern shown for family breakdown and judicial power, it is
surprising that family advocates and judicial critics have paid so little
attention to family courts. Without a doubt they are the arm of the state
that reaches farthest into the private lives of individuals and families.
Though lowest in the judicial hierarchy, they are the most powerful. "The
family court is the most powerful branch of the judiciary," according to
Robert Page, Presiding Judge of the Family Part of the Superior Court of New
Jersey. According to Judge Page, "the power of family court judges is almost
unlimited." Others have commented on their vast power rather less
respectfully. Former Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas once characterized
them with the term "kangaroo court." Contrary to basic principles of open
government, they generally operate behind closed doors, often excluding even
family members and leaving no record of their proceedings.

These bureaucratic courts emerged in the 1960s and 1970s along with the
divorce revolution. Their existence and virtually every problem they
address - divorce, custody, child abuse, child support enforcement, even
juvenile crime - depend upon one overriding principle: The removal of the
father as head of the family. When parental authority functions properly,
family courts have little reason to exist, since these problems seldom
appear among intact families. While both fathers and mothers may fall afoul
of family court judges, it is fathers against whom their enmity is largely
directed, because fathers are their principal rivals.

The judges' contempt for both fathers and constitutional rights was openly
expressed by New Jersey municipal court judge Richard Russell: "Your job is
not to become concerned about the constitutional rights of the man that you're
violating," he told his colleagues at a judges' training seminar in 1994.
"Throw him out on the street, give him the clothes on his back and tell him,
see ya around.. We don't have to worry about the rights."

While all courts complain of being "overburdened," judicial powers and
salaries, like any other service, are determined by demand. Family court
judges are generally appointed and promoted by commissions dominated by bar
associations and other professional groups who have an interest in
maximizing the volume of litigation. Political scientist Herbert Jacob
describes how "the judge occupies a vital position not only because of his
role in the judicial process but also because of his control over lucrative
patronage positions." Jacob cites probate courts, where positions as estate
appraisers "are generally passed out to the judge's political cronies or to
persons who can help his private practice." The principles are similar, only
in family courts what is passed out is control over children.
Once the parent "loses custody," in the jargon of the court, he can be
arrested for trying to see them outside of authorized times and places. He
can be arrested for running into his children in a public place such as the
zoo, sporting events, or church. Additionally, parents are routinely
summoned to court for questioning about their private lives, which attorney
Jed Abraham has characterized as an "interrogation." Their personal
documents and homes must be surrendered to government officials without
warrants. Their children are alienated with the backing of government
officials and then are required to inform on them.

Despite the constitutional prohibition on incarceration for debt, a parent
can be jailed without trial for failure to pay not only child support but
the fees of lawyers and psychotherapists he has not hired. In these cases,
the judge is summoning legally unimpeachable citizens and ordering them to
write a check or go to jail. And the weapon he is using to do it is
children. If this systematic bullying by courts and enforcement agents
begins to sound like a reign of terror, that is precisely how many now see
it.

Aside from countless absurd and bizarre injustices, the family court system
has been cited as a cause for a growing percentage of fathers being driven
to suicide. In March 2000, Darin White was denied all contact with his three
children, evicted from his home, and ordered to pay more than twice his
income as child and spousal support, plus court costs for a divorce he never
agreed to. White hanged himself from a tree. No evidence of any wrongdoing
was presented against him. White's fate is increasingly common. "There is
nothing unusual about this judgment," the Vancouver Sun quotes former
British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Lloyd McKenzie, who pointed out that
the judge in White's case applied the same guidelines used in the US and
other western countries. Augustine Kposowa of the University of California
Riverside writing in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health
attributes a dramatic increase in the suicide rate of divorced fathers
directly to family court judgments.
Family law denies rights as basic as free speech and freedom of the press.
In American jurisdictions it is a crime to criticize family court judges.
Earlier this year, Kevin Thompson received an order from Massachusetts Judge
Mary Manzi prohibiting distribution of his book, Exposing the Corruption in
the Massachusetts Family Courts. Following his congressional testimony
critical of the family courts, Jim Wagner of the Georgia Council for
Children's Rights was stripped of custody of his two children and jailed.
"We believe.the court is attempting to punish Wagner for exposing the court's
misconduct to a congressional committee," said Sonny Burmeister, president
of the Council.

~~~

The divorce industry has, in affect, rendered marriage a fraudulent
contract. While the dissolution of families affects the health of the entire
society, parents and especially fathers must demand that marriage be made an
enforceable contract. "No fault" divorces granted by family courts also
confront church leadership, not only along lines of morality, but as it
touches on the validity of their ministry. If marital bonds can be dissolved
by government officials with no grounds or agreement between the marriage
partners, the sanctity of a wedding ceremony is subject to disregard. Unless
marriage is an enforceable contract, there is little point in preaching
trust in it. It is not surprising that ever fewer are willing to marry while
the marriage contract offers no protection of family, children, homes, or
privacy, even to the extent of life-threatening impositions.

It is one thing to tolerate divorce. It is another to allow government to
impose it on unwilling spouses. When courts stop dispensing justice, they
must start dispensing injustice. There is no middle ground.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Stephen Baskerville, PhD is president of the American
Coalition for Fathers and Children. For more information, including how to
join those who are working to restore the family, marriage, and fatherhood
against the ravages of the divorce industry, contact these links:

http://www.acfc.org
http://www.divorcereform.org
http://www.marysadvocates.org
http://www.ancpr.org