Why Fathers Protest Child Support

Why Fathers Protest Child Support

Fathers For Virginia

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WHY FATHERS PROTEST CHILD SUPPORT

Six Reasons Why Fathers Protest Against Child Support 
 
1. Custody Discrimination. Child support is payable to custodial 
parents. Custodial parents--particularly in Virginia--are nearly all 
mothers. Even when joint custody is awarded, normally it is joint legal 
custody: the father's role is only to participate in legal matters 
affecting the children (and he has no way of ensuring that he can do 
even this). In these joint custody situations, the children live with 
the mother, and child support is payable to her as if she had sole 
custody. In other words, the glass ceiling on paternal custody is 
firmly in place, and the father's role is to be an ATM machine. The 
fundamental reality is that so-called "child support" is money paid by 
fathers to mothers. This determines the whole nature of the system. 
 
2. CS Numbers Rigged. In Virginia, child support amounts are determined 
according to guidelines in state law. These guidelines set child 
support according to the number of children and the income of the 
parents. However, the guidelines are rigged against fathers. For one 
thing, in recent years the figures have been set on the advice of a 
Denver firm called Policy Studies Inc., which has a vested interest in 
pushing the numbers as high as possible (see below). Secondly, the 
numbers take no account of the visitation time the children spend with 
their fathers, until a high threshold number of days is reached (and 
mothers' attorneys take good care to ensure that the threshold isn't 
reached). Finally, the tax effects discriminate against fathers, 
because they have to pay the money from their post-tax income (mothers 
receive it free of tax), but fathers don't get the tax deductions for 
the children. 
 
3. Draconian Enforcement Techniques. Federal and state authorities have 
been using more and more vicious enforcement techniques against fathers 
for nonpayment of child support, whatever the reasons for nonpayment. 
Enforcement techniques include imprisonment of fathers (despite the fact 
that in all other contexts, debtors' prison has been abolished). 
However, there is no visitation enforcement agency, and no effective 
penalties for interference with visitation. 
 
4. Vilification of Fathers. As part of the enforcement apparatus, 
federal and state agencies are engaged in a campaign of vilification of 
fathers. In public speeches, these agencies grossly exaggerate the 
amount of unpaid child support. They publish on the Internet lists of 
"Ten Most Wanted" fathers, whom they say have not paid child support. 
However, the jobs of these fathers (also shown) clearly indicate that 
most are impoverished themselves. 
 
5. Conflicts of Interest. Increasingly, state agencies are using the 
services of private enforcement agencies to harass fathers for child 
support. In some cases, such as in Virginia, these private companies 
that advise states on the AMOUNTS of child support to be paid also act 
as enforcers. There is an obvious conflict of interest, since the 
higher the child support numbers, the larger the numbers of fathers who 
will be unable to pay. Many of these private agencies--for example 
Policy Studies Inc., which works for Virginia--have made a specialty of 
hiring state officials to ensure the continued flow of contracts. 
 
6. Damage to Children. A large number of studies show consistently that 
children's interests are best served by growing up in two-parent 
families. Children from fatherless families are FAR more likely to fail 
academically, to become pregnant while teenagers, to commit suicide, and 
to become involved in crime (particularly violent crime). Despite this, 
a pattern of incentives for the creation of fatherless families has been 
created. This pattern includes substantial and growing child support 
amounts, payable to mothers only if the father is absent from the 
family. This is a particularly serious matter when research shows that, 
in the U.S. at the present time, about 75 percent of fatherless families 
exist because of the decisions of mothers. Contrary to the impression 
created in the media, the vast majority of divorces are pushed through 
by mothers over the objections of the fathers. Fathers don't leave 
their families--they are expelled from them. They are then forced to 
subsidize exactly the kind of families that are known to be damaging to 
their children.

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