Messages By: rush01

I have never seen a more stereotypical response in all my life. 

For the record, men do not carry the child but they do "sacrifice" when a baby is on the way.  I would suggest you open your eyes to that fact.  While the men surrounding you may not do this does not make that the reality for others. 

As for staying up late with baby, I did that with my children while my wife slept.  As for taking a lesser job to spend time with the child, this is a relative decision that each man and woman makes.  many men would love to quit their job so they could spend time with their kids, I know I would.  however, milk doesn't appear in the fridge by magic.  Fact is that I am jealous of the social freedom women have to not work and stay home with the kids.  Men don't enjoy that freedom.  Do it and people look at you as if there is something wrong with you.  Men are "supposed to" earn the money for the family, even if the wife makes enough to support them giving him the freedom to stay home with the kids. 

As for the child support, you are right, that isn't the point, especially given the fact that non-custodial mothers are ten times more likely to be a deadbeat parent than non-custodial fathers.  They are also treated more leniently when taken to court for non-payment. 

So you say the point is "what's best for the baby".  Really?  Is that really the point?  I don't think so.  Case in point is the way in which child support is determined.  For instance, a woman is put through college by her husband who is not a college grad and therefor makes less money than she does after she attains a job after graduation.  They have two kids and a few years later, after engaging in an affair with a colleague, she decides to divorce her husband and marry her lover.  She wins custody and though her and her new husband make far more money than her ex husband, the screws are put to him based solely on his income. 

He then meets a genuinely good woman who looks past the fact that he has to pay this child support.  They get married and have a child.  Times are tough so he takes on not one extra job but two.  He works as a roofer during the day, bar tends at night and works in a convenience store on weekends.  he works a lot of hours per week. 

His child support is then recalculated based on his total income from all 3 jobs.  Keep in mind that she didn't even need a single dime of child support in the first place.  Keep in mind that he took on the extra jobs to improve the life of the woman and child living in his home.  keep in mind that even this wouldn't raise their standard of living to anything even close to what his ex-wife and two children enjoy. 

Welcome to the life of my best friend.  While his wife never wears clothes that are a year old, always has perfect manicured nails and perfect hair, while she always drives a Mercedes no older than 3 years old, lives in a lavish new construction home, etc...  My friend can barely afford to keep his clunker running, wheres thrift store jeans and T-shirts and lives in a shoddy small two bedroom apartment in a bad part of town.  This all that he and his wife who also works can afford. 

What is best for their child?  personally I think the court should look at the situations that both children live in and make adjustments as needed to improve the life of a child if they can? 

My friend has two girls with his ex and a boy with his present wife.  The boy lives a drastically different lifestyle than his half sisters.  When they come over, they make fun of him because he isn't wearing the latest designer clothes and shoes.  While they wear new looking Reebok's, he wears brand X from Payless shoes.  They think this is funny.  They question why they are having sloppy joes on Friday instead of steak because they always have steak at "mom & dad's" house. 

To add insult to injury, the mom let's them pick out expensive things such as bikes.   Yes I witnessed this.  They decide what they want, then the mom tells them to approach their dad to by it for them.  Oddly, he has to tell them that he can't afford $500.00 for two bicycles for them.  So the mom then "come though" and buys it for them. 

Again, what is best for the children?  Do these girls really need $500.00 bicycles while their half brother doesn't even have one for lack of money?  Do they need child support to buy them Reebok's that mom can afford without the child support while the boy's mom and dad wonder how bills will get paid? 

No, lady you are dead wrong, the real point is that groups like NOW are strong organizations that fight for the rights of women, not the child.   Men enjoy no such political organization to be a balancing factor.  Men's groups are fractured because men are not good followers.  They start their own small organization instead of all of them joining one large organization.  So now can get things done for women unopposed. 

Think of it like two people getting divorced and only one has an attorney.  Think of it like only having one strong political party while the population is equally split between republican and Democrat. 

Simple fact, is the most intelligent part of your post was an acknowledgment in passing that things are not fair. 

I'm sorry you've misunderstood me. What I've actually been trying to say simply is that both men and women need to take their share of the responsibility. 

The issue isn't whether both parties should be responsible for the child equally or both should be able to escape that responsibility.  The issue is that one side has no choice while the other side has choice.  This is unconstitutional discrimination.  if the courts do their job, they will have to determine that the man also has the right to opt out of parenthood or the woman does not have the right to do so. 

More stereotyping?  A non-custodial mother is 10 times more likely to be a deadbeat parent. 

Maybe if men had more equality in the whole situation there would be less deadbeat fathers.  Unfortunately, it has been my experience that the system is simply not fair at all.  I have known many families who were hurting financially before they got a divorce.  In short, the have a hard time making ends meet with both incomes in one house.  now add a second house and double the bills.  Just how do you think child support is going to get paid? 

Yes I know some men do not pay what they when they can pay it. That is not right.  Maybe more studies need to be done to find out why and what could be done to change the system to make it more fair. 

Would fairness make a difference?  You bet.  When a man feels he has been treated fairly the child support is paid nearly 100% of the time.  In fact, when the father simply has equal rights to the child, payment rates are around 96%. 

The issue is that the laws in this area are not fair and that is the whole issue here. 

I have little sympathy for the basketball player who had 10 children with 8 different women.  You reap what you sow.  It also seemed that some of the women were willing to work with him.  However, the system overall is not fair to men.  it treats them as a beast of burden and little more.

Basically, as the man you will be punished for the sins of every other man who walked through the doors of the courts prior to you.  This is the reason that the man on the show is being treated the way he is being treated.  In the past, there have surely been men who tried to work the system by taking a lower paying job to get lower child support payments.  Once he got the lower payments rdered, he might then find a new job that pays more.  This however would have been a very small number of men doing this unless we are talking about men who were forced to pay so much that they had to take desperate measures to find fairness.

For instance, imagine a man making $10 an hour in a 40 hour a week job.  The woman migh also be making $10 an hour.  If he has just one child, he will be ordered to pay around $400 a month.  So out of his gross yearly income of $20800 (if he is paid for 52 weeks a year) he would owe $4800 a year.  This leaves him $16, 000 a year and that is before we have taken out his taxes.  We also haven't gotten to anything else that the mother has decided to tack on such as daycare, etc...  Daycare is about $100 a week on average around the country so go with that.  So you can add another couple of thousand to what the man would have to pay.After taxes and the day care alone on one child, the man could easily be trying to live off of less than $10,000 a year, forcing him to move in with family or at a minimum take a roommate in a less than ideal apartment in a less than ideal neighborhood.  Nice place to send you child for visitation, right mothers?

Are we starting to see why some men are deadbeats?   Many men of course, then take a seond job to make ends meet.  This of course invites the state to pursue him for even more child support based upon the added income.  Tlak about a slap in the face.

On the reverse, imagine the women who has the child.  If they had a home she is likely living in it and may also have help from the man in making the mortgage payment which further reduces his ability to support himself.  Without looking at mortgae payments being paid by the husband, let's look at what it would look like with the woman just getting the child support payments.

She would also have an income of $20800 but she now adds the $4,800 a month from the ex-husband.  This brings her income up to $25,800  So she now has an income level nearly $10,000 more than the man.  Keep in mind this is just the starting point.  The father will also be asked to help buy school clothes, birthday and Christmas presents.  If the child is moved out of his geographical area he will have enormous costs involved to maintain a relationship with the child.  There will be medical and dental expenses, etc...

Now if the woman remarries, and the new husband also just makes the same $10 and hour, the household income is now $46, 400 vs the $16, 000 of the man.  And keep in mind that though he is paying support he does not get to claim his child as a dependent.  And again, this is before figuring taxes and any other expenses the man is ordered to contribute to.  This also covers just one child.  It gets a lot worse when more than one child is involved.

Add insult to injury, he might not even be the guilty party.  Yes, the woman could be off at the gym getting in shape like my best friend's ex.  There she met a man who owned his own business.  My friend was a devoted dad to his two girls and worked two jobs to support his family.  One day he finds out the wife is leaving him and a few months after the divorce she is remarried and living in the other man's very posh house and driving a BMW.

The child support payments were so harsh that my friend took on a THIRD job to make ends meet.  Not long after, he was ordered back to court where he was admonished for not making the state aware of the inceased income and now ordered to pay support based on all 3 jobs.

He had to move into a roach infested studio apartment over one of those little main street stores in our hometown.  Not an ideal situation for his two daughters.

Bottom line is we need more fairness.  Now let's look at what would work in many middle of the road type of cases.  You have two adults who get divorced, both are working.  Both are likely capable of being the primary caretaker if they were awarded custody.  If one parent is not able to provide for the majority of those children's needs, they should not get primary custody.  If you are the man and you alone make enough money to support your children, the state should have to prove you unfit to be the primary caretaker.  If they can not, then you should be the primary caretaker.  If the woman does not work, it could easily be arranged that she be the daycare provider if that is her wish.

What if both can?  What if both live in the same city and both can provide for their children's needs?  Maybe not equally but they can both put a roof over the child's head, feed and clothe them, etc..  OK award joint custody and leave it at that.  No support is necessary.  If I have my child half the time, why should I have to pay support?  Am I receiving support during the time I have the child?  Answer would be no.

My biggest problem with all of this is that with the way the courts operate, a man can do everything right in his life but because his wife meets somebody new and falls in love, she can walk away with all the rewards and no responsibilities.  The man on the other hand gets to see his life made a shambles, and to add insult to injury, may have to live with the fact that another man reaps the rewards.  The new man gets to move into the house that this man sacrificed to provide for his family.

This is why I was so frustrated when Dr. Phil asked the man if he had considered whether he could afford to have more children with his new wife.  (If I caught that right.)  Think about that.  A man could do everything right in his life, within reason, but because his ex finds a new man and chooses him, the first guy is then told that he has to consider whether he can afford to even rebuild his life with somebody new.

Anyone who can not see that the system is not fair is either blind or benefitting from the inequity that is inherent in the system.  Also, let's stop with the "It's for the children" excuses because the reality is, we can all bankrupt ourselves providing the "necessities".  By that I mean, it is one thing to provide the basics but we can all find more and more things to provide for our kids if the money is available.  As far as that goes, I can point to many examples where a child who receives support and thus an increased lifestyle compared to their peers, in turn becomes a very mean spirited child.  Money is not what children need beyond having the basics paid for.  They need parents in their life who are also metally healthy.  It is not a good situation when one parent feels like they are getting the shaft from the system.