Child Support and Father Access

	posted by Scott on Wednesday February 21, @09:17AM from the fatherhood dept.
	In part two of Arndt's series on male reproductive rights and the family courts, Arndt discusses the problems of getting access to one's children with a vindictive mother, and how blatantly obvious many women are in using the father for child support rather than for being a father. Acknowledgment is made of the unreasonable financial burden that child support can sometimes cause, and also stresses that many men still want access and are willing to pay support for children that aren't theirs. "It is all very well to say men shouldn't worry whether the children are theirs - but when they are confronted by a child-care system where men are required to pay far more than the actual costs of children and get little or no relief for costs of contact, you can hardly expect them to pay for children that are not theirs. Most step-parents value the relationship with their children and would be happy to pay to support them - provided it was a fair amount."

	Source: Sydney Morning Herald [Australian newspaper] Title: Father's choice Author: Bettina Arndt Date: February 19, 2001

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Mars (Score:1) by Mars on Wednesday February 21, @11:02AM EST (#1) (User #73 Info) I read these horror stories about paternity fraud, the CSA's power to impose unfair child support awards and the return of debtors prisons for "deadbeat dads" on those rare occasions when I imagine myself starting a family. I once mentioned these things to a bureaucrat who worked for the family court. Her comment was, "You doubt your ability to meet your obligations?" What obligations? I told this woman that I wouldn't be bullied into assuming any liabilities that would give extortionists (such as her) power over me. That ended the conversation. It's also appropriate to recall that you should reduce your expected income after marriage by the probability of divorce times the cost of divorce, which is at least 50% times the cost of divorce.

"Daddy Killers" (Score:1) by BusterB on Friday February 23, @02:50PM EST (#2) (User #94 Info) http://themenscenter.com/busterb/ I'm still waiting to run into a bureaucrat such as yours, so I can casually comment, "So, you're in the daddy killing business then?" Not that I think that these types are malicious. It's just that when they're in the courtroom with a family in front of them, they just sort of mentally edit out the father as being irrelevant, perhaps even annoying. As a result, they decide whatever is best for mommy and "her" little ones. With regards to the article, what's so bad about legal rights for fathers who were one-night stands? Hey, we do that for mothers now, don't we? Mothers who carried their babies for nine months and then signed them over to other people? When these mothers then come back two years later and ask for "their babies" back, we go all verklempt over what's "best" for little Jane and little Johnny. We know that what's best is to tell their ditz "natural mother" to bugger off and mind her own business, but then we get all tied up in knots, as our desire to do what's best for the kiddies collides head-on with the golden rule to never deny a mother whatever she wants. We don't seem to have a "golden rule" for fathers. Instead it seems to be made of tin.

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