The Acceptable Slander Even here at DU

LincolnMcGrath

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Wed Sep-15-04 01:36 PM
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The Acceptable Slander Even here at DU

DEAD BEAT DADS

http://www.acfc.us/reports/pdfs/DTWCSRaids090602.pdf

Braver, who has conducted an eight-year study of parents after divorce, knocks down the stereotypes one by one. To begin with, most divorced fathers don't "walk out." At least two-thirds of the time, the mother is not only the one who files for divorce but the one who wants out of the marriage. And it's usually not, as many assume, because the father beats her, drinks or cheats; most commonly, mothers cite such reasons as "growing apart" or "not feeling loved or appreciated."

Nor is it true that, once divorced, fathers are likely to desert their children emotionally and financially. Most fathers who are steadily employed consistently pay child support (their record is especially impressive if one looks not only at mothers' reports, on which most statistics are based, but at fathers' own reports) and work to stay in their children's lives. So-called "runaway dads" are often "driven-away dads": they vanish because their ex-wives keep them away.

Finally, there's the mother of all divorce myths: that men benefit economically from divorce, while women and children are impoverished. The famous factoid from Lenore Weitzman's 1985 book The Divorce Revolution - women's standard of living drops 73 percent in the year after divorce, that of men goes up 42 percent - was exposed as erroneous two years ago. But her critics' alternative calculations still showed a drop for women and a rise for men.

http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/3804680p-4830118c.html

The Child Support Enforcement Act, introduced July 16 by U.S. Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Newport Beach, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., would require delinquent parents to pay taxes on unpaid child support as if it were income. This misguided legislation lies upon a foundation of illusions about deadbeat dads.
The first and biggest illusion is that, as Cox's press release noted, there is $78 billion owed in back child support nationwide. Arizona State University researcher Sanford Braver, in his book "Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths," explains that "unemployment is the single most important factor relating to nonpayment." Braver, who between 1986 and 1990 conducted the largest federally funded study of divorced dads ever done, notes that his findings were "consistent with virtually all past studies on the topic" and that it "belies the image that divorced fathers don't pay because they refuse to though they are truly able to pay."

The $78 billion figure is further inflated because it includes child support owed by fathers who lost their jobs or became disabled but were unable to get downward modifications in their payment amount. According to Elaine Sorensen of the Urban Institute, even among fathers who experience income drops of 15 percent or more, fewer than one in 20 is able to get a reduction in child support payments. In the interim, arrearages mount, along with interest (10 percent or more in most states, including California) and penalties.

Also included in the $78 billion are fake arrearages caused by billing errors, including mistaken identity, mathematical errors, failure to record or transfer records of payments, billing men for children they did not father, failing to stop child support when a child reaches the age of emancipation, accepting custodial parents' false reports of nonpayment and failure to update child support orders with later court rulings affecting modifications.

http://www.fathers.ca/the_deadbeat_dad_canard.htm

Another illusion upon which the Child Support Enforcement Act rests is that states are not collecting money from many well-heeled child support evaders but this new tax penalty will spur them to pay up. Currently fathers who are behind on their child support are subjected to numerous penalties, including jail, the loss of driver's licenses and business licenses, wage garnishments, tax interceptions, and seizures of bank accounts and houses. It is hard to imagine that there are many evaders who have stoically endured all of these punishments but who will now decide to get out their checkbooks because of the Child Support Enforcement Act.

Instead of political grandstanding, Congress should intervene to improve the system both for those owed child support and those obligated to pay it. For one, the government should change the way it financially supports states' child support enforcement efforts. Currently state agencies are federally reimbursed for every child support dollar they collect, and thus are encouraged to grab and hold on to every dollar they can. The federal government should instead give block grants to states and establish yearly compliance evaluations which include stiff penalties for false collections and billing errors.

Also, the government must repeal the Bradley amendment, which mandates that child support arrearages cannot be modified or forgiven. The law, though perhaps well-intended, has ruined the lives of tens of thousands of men guilty of nothing more than of being laid off of their jobs or suffering disabling injuries. By prohibiting judges from resolving these injustices with debt modifications, these innocent men are permanently driven underground and out of their children's lives.

The third and most important reform needed is to enact measures to allow divorced and never married dads to remain a part of their children's lives. Most fathers have little chance of getting sole or even joint physical custody of their children, and little is done to ensure that fathers have access to their children. Left at the mercy of custodial parents, studies show that half or more of these fathers endure visitation interference or denial, and hundreds of thousands more are victims of "move-away moms" who permit or use geography to drive them out of their children's lives.