NOW and joint custody in NY

I confess that I neither live in New York State nor do I know much about the joint custody bill being considered there besides what I have read in a few news items, but this shrill, hysteria-mongering rant from Marcia Pappas of the NY NOW is so full of distortions, deceptions and self-serving rubbish, independent of the NY legislation and NOW, that I felt a little critical dissection was in order. I quote the entire article in blue italics and intersperse my comments in plain text.

The state Legislature is considering the worst joint custody bill that the National Organization for Women -- New York State has ever seen,

Has the state Legislature ever considered a joint custody bill before? This is an honest question, I don't know.

presuming joint custody in all custody cases

I have yet to see any argument anywhere that presents any kind of a case at all that this might be a bad thing, and I've read lots from both sides.

including a deceitful attempt to redefine visitation of non-custodial parents as shared parenting.

And why is this bad? Why should one parent be relegated to the status of "visitor" in his or her children's lives?

NOW NYS has always favored primary caregiver presumption legislation to ensure stability and continuity of care for children.

Uhuh. And is that what it acheives? The words sound good, but what is the reality? What is there about having as near as possible equal access to both parents that represents instability or discontinuity to the children? Their inheritence is constituted by both parents, not just one of them.

How do you know that the custodial parent can provide stability and continuity? These days the majority of divorces are instigated by the woman, there's at least a partial argument that the unilateral act of ending the marriage can be seen as an unwillingness to seek stability and continuity for the children. This is not a "conservative" opinion, it is simple logic.

If a person is not involved in the lives of his or her children during the marriage, why would that involvement increase after divorce?

For many (most?) fathers and mothers, every other weekend plus Wednesday evenings is an appalling decrease in parental involvement and yet that is precisely the most common award to the non-custodial parent in the aftermath of a divorce.

Therefore, we oppose court-mandated joint custody and oppose changing the terminology to shared parenting.

This is a non-sequiteur. A "therefore" implies a preceding statement of factual grounds leading to a conclusion, and there is none. I don't think you have a coherent reason for your position except you want custodial parents to retain a total and totally unfair power over the non-custodial parents through their children. The fact that the National Organization of Women feels so strongly about this reflects who it is who possesses that power and who stands to "lose" (i.e. not the children and not the fathers).

Primary caregiver presumption would cut down on the abusive practice by the moneyed spouse (usually the husband) of coercing the non-moneyed spouse (usually the wife) to make monetary concessions rather than risk a custody battle before a biased court.

Since the court's bias is, in fact, very much towards awarding custody to the mother, this sentence should read: a presumption of shared parenting would cut down on the abusive practice by the spouse in control of the children (usually the wife) of coercing the non-custodial spouse (usually the husband) to make concessions of parenting time and money rather than risk a custody battle before a biased court.

This threat of a fight for custody is the fear factor that leads mothers to make financial concessions in exchange for the chance to give her children a stable life.

The threat of a fight for custody is the fear factor that leads fathers to accept disenfranchisment in exchange for financial survival. The father who fights for his and his children's rights is far more likely to end up a penniless loser than the mother he faces.

One attorney has acknowledged that he often gave that advice to male clients. When he became chief justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals in West Virginia, he was responsible for the passage of a primary caregiver bill.

Many attorneys have been known advise female clients to accuse their ex's of abuse to gain an upper hand in a divorce settlement, whether it included a custody battle or not. A presumption of joint custody in which the accuser has to prove any such abuse would drastically reduce the incidence of this disgusting practice. Furthermore, an attorney who routinely advises male clients to sue for custody to get a better financial deal knows that he's lining his own pockets quite nicely.

NOW NYS would like to set the record straight. It is a lie that mothers are awarded custody in 95 percent of divorce cases, as fathers rights advocates would have the public believe.

I would like to set the record straight that I have never known any fathers rights advocate claim that mothers are awarded custody in 95 percent of cases. The highest I have heard is 80% and I have never heard of anything close to parity. Therefore, you use the underhanded and deceitful debating technique of putting your own lie into the mouths of those who would advocate fathers' rights simply so that you can call them liars.

Only 1 percent of cases are litigated so mothers get custody by agreement of the parties, whether or not the agreement is coerced as we describe.

If there is "agreement of the parties" doesn't that imply the case is not litigated? What does this sentence mean?

Let us learn from the experience of others. In California, a report prepared 15 years after divorce reform legislation, found that one-third of joint-physical custody arrangements were indistinguishable in practice from the sole-custody visitation arrangements.

Which implies that TWO-THIRDS, 67%, a clear majority, were different! And yet large parts of this article argue that joint-custody is simply a change of terminology...?

After seeing the harmful effects on children by court-ordered joint custody, California ended its presumption in favor of joint custody awards in 1989.

What harmful effects? As opposed to the harmful effects of fatherlessness on a generation of children?

Joint custody establishes rights without responsibilities.

Primary caregiver establishes rights without responsibilities. Complete rights.

There is no way under current law to enforce visitation.

The currently legal ways to enforce visitation are unenforcible.

There are no penalties for failure to visit.

There are rarely any penalties for failure to comply with visitation.

There is nothing in this bill, or any other joint custody or shared parenting bill, to enforce compliance with a parenting plan. The term parenting time suggests that all non-custodial parents take an active, positive role in their children's lives. Reality shows us that many parents who are granted visitation choose not to be involved in their children's lives.

Reality also shows that many parents are frustrated in their desires to be involved in their children's lives by the paltry visitation awards that are made.

Change in terminology does nothing to enforce parental responsibility or involvement. Opponents feel that the term visitation carries a negative connotation with respect to non-custodial parents, stating that visitation is associated with visiting relatives in prison.

It is certainly demeaning.

This is clearly a ridiculous argument.

Try it. Really, give it a go. You try trying to think of something special and fun to do in the insufficient few hours you have on Wednesday evenings, every Wednesday evening. You try spending every other weekend intensively keeping the company of your children while simulatenously trying not to crowd them. You try creating something like a normal family life in which you can all relax when all you've got is 14% of the time. You try reassuring your kids as the time approaches for them to return while you yourself are anxious to get there on time because if you aren't both you and they will suffer. You try enduring that hour or two wasted at the beginning of each visit while you get to know eachother again. You try answering court questions over homework that the children didn't do while in your company, homework that neither you nor they knew anything about. Seriously, try it.

People visit family members and other people in many and varied relationships.

This is disingenuous. I visit aunts, uncles, parents and grandparents from time to time, but my relationship with them is fundamentally different to that I have (or would like to have) with my children. To be made to "visit" one's children is a humiliation. For many the humiliation is so unbearable that they back off, becoming fodder for your canon into which you load accusations of delinquency, further humiliating them.

If parents want to take an active role in their child's life, why would terminology make a difference? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

If "shared parenting" is in reality no different from "visitation", then why are you all so worked up?

NOW NYS believes the actual motivation for this change in terminology is to require the court to equate the parenting plan or schedule with actual parenting responsibilities, financial and otherwise.

Yes, and?

Arguments have been made by non-custodial parents that the costs of spending time with their children should be deducted from their child support obligations, ignoring the fact that it is the primary caregiver who is responsible for the day-to-day expenses of the children.

Many non-custodial parents would be grateful for the responsibility for the day-to-day expenses of children, directly, as opposed to through the custodial parents' proxy and disposed of as she chooses.

This newly proposed legislation lays the dangerous groundwork for the courts to decrease child support awards based on a change of terminology.

This newly proposed legislation lays the welcome groundwork for the courts to increase the involvement of many disenfranchised parents in their chilren's lives.

It is an erroneous implication that the caregiver and the non-custodial parent carry the same load and devote the same time to their children.

That is precisely the point, they don't, and many want to but are stymied by the false assumption that they aren't interested, which turns into their disenfranchisement which, with Pavlovian inevitability, demoralizes and demotivates them.

The basis for this strong battle of the fathers' rights groups is totally financial.

No, it is not, any more than the NOW's motivation is total domination of the country's policy on children. Hmmm. Now that I come to say it....

It is frequently reported by school guidance counselors that a common complaint of children of divorce is that they don't see their fathers,

Because the courts and their mothers don't want them to.

and it is not unusual for children to complain about the inequities of material advantages they often observe when their father acquires his new family.

In which he often acquires new expenses and therefore such "inequalities of material advantages" are a lie that you put into the mouths of the children.

This bill establishes the pretext of a continuing relationship between children and non-custodial parents,

With this line, you neatly expose the real problem, that a continuing relationship between children and non-custodial parents is a pretext, a fraud, a sham. You admit, in fact, that the current system erodes and destroys the relationship between children and non-custodial parents, that simply being a non-custodial parent implies the lack of a proper relationship with your child. And yet, the law and custodial parents take that destruction and blames it on the non-custodial parents. In fact, what it does, is blame the victim for the crime. Now where have we heard that before?

This pretext should be eradicated by legislation which encourages that relationship to be real, legislation which recognises that both parents are of value to the children, and that the destruction of the relationship between the children and one parent or the other is inherently detrimental to the child.

and falsely legislates in the best interest of the child.

This is only true if it is in the "best interests of the child" to undergo a parentectomy. "The best interest of the child" has been reduced to a political canard which reflects the underlying tendency to use the children to obtain unreasonable control over the non-custodial parent, both financial and emotional.

As Adolf Hitler said: "Society will tolerate almost any injustice so long as you tell them it is for the children."

The reality is that it does nothing to advance the welfare of the children of New York.

The reality is that the welfare of the children anywhere has very little to do with what NOW wants. It is a National Organization of Women not a National Organization of Children. To equate the two implies that women and, in particular, the women of NOW, have a monopoly on the knowledge of what is best for children and that is not true.

A little more exploring and I find that Albany Times Union includes this story from Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks back to back with the above febrile incoherency from NOW which neaty and gracefully puts the lie to their position.

Technorati tags: Father's Rights, Child Custody, Child Support, Divorce.