With liberty and justice for all?

Divorce, Family Court and Child Support Enforcement agencies are among the reasons more men are choosing to opt out and not get married. Useful idiots of the feminists, like the "traditonal women's rights activists" (TWRA) condemn MGTOW (Men Going Thier Own Way) claiming that we oppose marriage because we're a bunch of gender egalitarians who don't believe in marriage and revel in having sex with many women unfettered by resposibilities, but in most cases they're wrong. The PUA (Pick Up Artist) branch of the men's movement, led prominently by Tom Leykis , may be the extremists of the MGTOW but they reflect a very reasonable reaction to the injustices perpetrated by the feminists and facilitated by the TWRA.

All you have to do to qualify for this program is (1) to be a father and (2) to fall behind in your child support payments.

It doesn't matter if your wife left you, taking the kids with her. It doesn't matter if she ran off with another man, turned Lesbian or threw all your possessions into the street screaming that she was going to have you murdered.

She is the mother of your children to whom the court in its infinite wisdom will grant custody. From that moment on, unless you are among the very rich who can afford months, perhaps years of attorney's services at $150.00 an hour or the minority of men who care nothing for their children and manage to elude the system, you will pay and pay and pay. And pay.

If you lose your job, you will still be required to pay. If you are unable to pay, for whatever reason, the arrearage will mount up behind you, month by month.

If you have nothing to eat, no place to sleep and no hope of finding employment, the amount awarded by the court will continue to mount.

In the meantime, your former wife and helpmeet may have decided that although the Court specified you would have visitation rights to see your children, you will never see them again.

Never mind. Those kinds of problems don't fall under the jurisdiction of this agency. You will pay anyway.

If you should be so bold or so stupid as to attempt to have a life and remarry, and your new wife is working, HER income also may be siphoned off to be applied to this endless debt.

Nazi Germany? Communist Russia? Uh-uh. It's the U.S. Government's child support enforcement agency, administered by the Department of Health and Social Human Services. Once set in motion, it grinds forward inexorably on automatic pilot.

Faced with an insoluble dilemma, many men break down, flee or even take their lives.

Created in 1975

The Federal program was created in 1975 by Congress as an amendment to the Social Security Act. It is the same law that requires individuals to pay into the social security program, the same law authorizing welfare programs. It was created to protect the children of separated or divorced parents.

Each state establishes a single, separate organization unit responsible for locating fathers (non custodial parents) in child support cases and establishing child support obligations. If the child support enforcement agency doesn't fulfill these obligations, the state can be penalized millions of dollars in welfare funds.

Although the child support enforcement agency has primary responsibility for the program, some of its duties may be contracted out to other governmental departments in the state. In the past, the prosecuting attorney usually was responsible, but more and more states have moved toward an "administrative" process. Instead of using prosecuting attorneys and judges to establish and enforce child support obligations, the agency may use its own staff and hearing examiners.

In the end, the process and intent are the same: to force the father to pay monthly child support and any amount past due from other months.

Let's say the father's payments are $500 a month, but he has been unable to make payments for the previous two months for whatever reasons. He now owes $1,500, payable immediately. He may make a payment under the impression that he is taking care of his current month's obligation. No such luck. The payment will be credited to the arrearage, leaving him in default for two months. Unless he is able to come up with the entire $1,500, he will never catch up. The consequences of the system leave thousands of men in such perilous financial condition many of them are forced to declare bankruptcy - which condition in no way absolves them of the responsibility for current and defaulted child support payments.

A Self-Defeating System

Certainly protection must be assured for the children of separated parents and every effort must be made to see that funds allotted for their care are forthcoming. Most fathers make incredible sacrifices to provide for their children. Yet thousands fall behind month by month, with no hope of recovery.

The present system seems not only ruthless in its application but self-defeating.

If fathers separated from their children are never able to catch up with their payments, if their wages may be garnished up to 65 percent and their jobs imperiled because employers dislike the expense and nuisance of the process, if they may never enjoy proper credit or make use of bank facilities like "normal" people, they will never be able to comply with their obligations, no matter how desperately they might try.

Debtors' Prison No Matter What They Call It

Prison? How will incarcerating a father because he's unable to pay his child support solve the problem? In addition, society will pay another $30,000 a year to support a new "jailbird." The present system is not working. It is dehumanizing, demeaning and denigrating to those fathers who sincerely try to care for their children. The tragedy of divorce is destructive enough to children and parents alike without adding impossible burdens.

Legislators need to be made aware of the severity of the present system. Fathers, individually and collectively, must prepare alternative legislation and bring it to the attention of legislators. Large organizations can lobby on their own behalf. They have the clout of the vote behind them. Legislators are sensitive to voters. The bigger the threat of loss of votes, the more attentive legislators become.

The process of change will be slow and painful, but it must be undertaken if one of the most inhumane systems in our government is to be corrected. Changing laws, even those which prove to be bad laws, takes enormous time and effort. The effort must be made. The life you save may be your own.

Edited reprint by permission of the author from the Monroe Monitor