Post by Jim on May 11, 2009 6:15:28 GMT -5
The economy is driving uncoupled parents back to court. One woman walked away with a house, then watched it lose 25 percent of its value. While the squeeze hits mothers and fathers, their kids also pay a price.
By ROCHELLE OLSON, Star Tribune
When rising health care costs for Leah Moran's three children broke her budget this spring, the single working mom from Bloomington took their fathers back to court. The $340 she got per child just wasn't cutting it in the current economy, she said. Moran's situation represents one faced by a rising number of divorced or estranged parents statewide: Stressed out in a stalled economy, they're streaming to courthouses seeking adjustments to child support obligations.
Family court calendars are becoming backlogged, and family-law attorneys -- among the few in this economy with job security -- are seeing caseloads balloon. Meanwhile, family law experts worry about the emotional toll that the increased litigating over child support inevitably will take on the intended beneficiaries: the children.
In this economy, even "people with really adequate skills in resolving conflict are having really hard times," said Gunnar Bankovics, head of Hennepin County's Family Court Services. State courts spokesman John Kostouros said 5,380 parents filed for child support adjustments in the first quarter of 2009, up from 4,912 during the same period a year ago.
Nationally, the American Academy of Matrimonial lawyers has reported that 39 percent of the nation's top divorce attorneys cite an increase in modifications being made to child support payments.
Joani Moberg, a family-law lawyer and partner at Larkin & Hoffman, said she has seen her client load surge this year.
"People were trying to wait out the recession, and now it's gone on so long they can't take it anymore," said Moberg, who also is co-chair of the Hennepin County Bar Family Law Association.
Divorce filings have remained flat for now. But Hennepin County Family Court presiding Judge Tanja Manrique said a wave could be coming because there tends to be a lag between contacting a lawyer and filing for divorce.
Yours, mine - not ours
Those calling it quits have the added burdens of trying to sell devalued homes in a sluggish market and dividing up extensive credit card and vehicle debts along with dishes and furniture.
"When people are married, there's an understanding people are going to share the pain and get through it together," Moberg said. "There isn't the same attitude when they're divorced."
Tight finances also are compelling people like Moran to forgo a lawyer when they go to court. Contacts at the Hennepin County court's family self-help center hit an all-time high of 1,500 in March.
Three mornings every week, a lawyer working for the county presents a workshop on how to apply for child support adjustments. Last week, Marcy Watroba of Brooklyn Park and Raymond Johnson of Anoka were among those getting the free help.
Watroba, a letter carrier, wants an increase in her $231 monthly payments from her former husband. When she divorced, Watroba settled for smaller payments for her 4- and 6-year-old children because he agreed to let her buy him out of their house. Unfortunately, since then, the house has dropped 25 percent in value.
"I'm looking to see if there's any way I can get an increase because it's been two years since my divorce," she said. "If the economy was what it is today, I would have paid him a lot less."
Coping with a mother's death
Johnson is on the other side. He would like relief from $17,100 in child-support arrearages he owes for his two children, now adults.
He has a good job at a chemical company but is now raising a 5-month-old baby on his own after the child's mother died suddenly.
"I fall into that niche where I make too much money to get assistance for child care and not enough to pay for child care," Johnson said.
The toll on kids
Unfortunately, the surge in filings is hitting a court system weakened by state budget cuts, and the result inevitably will be a longer, more painful legal gantlet for families.
In March, Hennepin County Family Court Services (FCS), which helps parents resolve visitation and custodial disputes, got 181 new cases, up from 119 in March 2008.
Manrique noted that the referrals to FCS were the highest since 2002, but the division has six fewer employees now than it did then, and Bankovics has been directed to cut another 15 percent from his budget.
"We are trying to figure out how we could absorb this level of filing with the current complement of staff," Manrique said.
As of now, no appointments are available until July in Hennepin County to discuss child support adjustments with a judge or magistrate.
Beyond the numbers, court leaders worry about the long-term effect on the children, said Hennepin County District Judge Jay Quam, assistant presiding judge in Family Court.
"The economic stress makes parents less able to provide the children with emotional support, and it comes at a time when children's emotional needs are greatest," he said. "What is especially frustrating for judges is that we now have fewer resources available to help the parents and the kids through that exceptionally difficult time."
Ultimately, court administrator Mark Thompson said, a new wave of juvenile offenders eventually will wind up in the criminal justice system.
"It's sad," he said, "but the reality is when kids get neglected by parents going through strife, they end up acting out."
Rochelle Olson • 612-673-1747
www.startribune.com/local/44627752.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr
COMMENT:
System melt down
PURCELLVILLE--The decline of the family now affects virtually every American and seriously threatens not only social order but freedom and constitutional government. G.K. Chesterton once observed that the family checks government power. He was writing about divorce: Despite other threats to the family, divorce remains the most serious. Americans would be shocked if they knew what goes on in the name of divorce. Divorce today licenses unprecedented government intrusion, including the power to seize children, loot family savings, and incarcerate parents without trial. The full implications of the "no-fault" revolution have never been publicly debated. Divorce today seldom involves two people simply parting ways; 80 percent of divorces are unilateral. Under "no-fault," divorce becomes a power grab by one spouse, assisted by judicial officials who profit from the ensuing litigation: judges, lawyers, psychotherapists, and social workers. Involuntary divorce involves government agents forcibly removing innocent people from their homes, seizing their property, and separating them from their children. It requires long-term supervision over private life by state functionaries, including police and jails. The most serious consequences involve children. Invariably the first action in a divorce is to separate the children from one parent, usually the father. Even if he is innocent of any legal wrongdoing and does not agree to the divorce, the state seizes his children with no burden of proof to justify why. The burden of proof--and financial burden--falls on him to demonstrate why they should be returned.
A legally unimpeachable parent can thus be arrested for seeing his own children without government authorization. He can be arrested through additional judicial directives that apply to no one but him. He can be arrested for domestic violence or child abuse, even without evidence that he has committed any. He can be arrested for not paying child support, regardless of the amount demanded. He can even be arrested for not paying an attorney or psychotherapist. There is no formal charge, no jury, no trial, and no record.To justify this, the divorce machinery has generated hysteria against parents so inflammatory that few dare question it: child abuse, wife-beating, and nonpayment of "child support"--all propagated by feminists, bar associations, and social work bureaucracies, with federal funding. The accused parent loses his children and is abandoned by friends, family members, parishioners, and co-workers--all terrified to be associated with an accused "pedophile," "batterer," or "deadbeat dad."
The "deadbeat dad" is another creation of divorce machinery. He is far less likely to have voluntarily abandoned offspring he callously sired than to be an involuntarily divorced father who has been, as one attorney writes, "Forced to finance the filching of his own children." Originally justified to recover welfare costs, child support has become an entitlement for all mothers, regardless of their behavior, and a subsidy on middle-class divorce. It allows the mother--simply by divorcing--to confiscate her husband's income. It is tax-free to the recipient, and nonpayment means incarceration without trial. The Journal of Socio-Economics notes that child support serves as an "economic incentive for middle-class women to seek divorce." Economist Robert Willis calculates that one-fifth to one-third of child support payments are used for children; the rest is profit for the custodial parent. State governments also generate revenue from child support, giving them a financial incentive to make it onerous and to encourage divorce. Federal taxpayers subsidize this family destruction scheme with about $3 billion annually. Officials have admitted that the arrearages are far beyond the parents' ability to pay.
Government's divorce apparatus has become a machine for destroying families, seizing children, and incarcerating parents without trial. It is the most repressive government machinery ever created in the United States. Stephen Baskerville is associate professor of government at Patrick Henry College and author of "Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family" (Cumberland House). This column is adapted from an article in the Jan.-Feb. issue of Touchstone magazine.
