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I hardly need to make a case about how a big a world class failure this child support (extortion?) racket is, so I say we do two things:
Make joint physical custody the norm, where parents can look after their kids direct, with minimal bureaucratic interference.
Secondly, we go for single father custody at least 8 times out of ten, which would greatly limit the money they get off NCP's (mainly dads)
Who agrees?
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I agree with both ideas. I have long held to the second, although it is a tricky balance.
Joint custody should be the norm because it really is what is best for the children. If they(that is, the courts) were to start mandating joint custody, they would be finally doing what they have paid lip service to for years: the welfare of the children. The problem is then what to do in those cases when joint custody is unworkable.
First, let us dispense with the obvious cases of abuse and nastiness. Feminists who shoot back with the retort, "Well, I suppose you'd be happy giving children to abusive parents, then?" are just (typically) hitting below the belt in an attempt to win the argument. Of course you don't give children to parents who have been convicted of child abuse.
So, now that that's said, I think that all other things being equal, single-custody children should go to the parent most able to provide for them. This eliminates the whole nasty child support machine in one fell swoop. Of course, some earning parents may not want custody, but then by refusing custody they have made a de facto agreement to pay their ex-spouses, IMHO.
However, all is not rosy. In some cases, particularly in the case of very young children, the fact that a parent has custody may make it more difficult or impossible to work; witness the recent chest-beating in Canada over the "need" for state-sponsored day care. So, it is quite possible that the courts will end up in a situation in which the father can't have the kids, because if he gets them then there's no money, whereas if his ex gets them then at least it's a financially tenable situation.
This will in fact be a very common situation, as custody-by-court-fiat should be more common for very small children than for older ones. Any child old enough to look after his/herself while daddy is at work is also old enough to shuttle back and forth between their parents' places without help and old enough to decide with whom they want to live. Now there's a radical concept: let the (older) kids decide!
Out of sheer peevishness I also like to approach this one from the point of view of quotas. Hey, we've had hiring quotas and university entrance quotas. They were meant to "even out" the numbers in favour of "historically disadvantaged" groups. When are the courts going to start "evening" out the numbers of "historically disadvantaged" single fathers? (No, I'm not holding my breath. ;-)
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When I was going through the family court, they did let my daughter decide with whom she wanted to live. The cut-off appears to be 10 years of age (for what ever reason). The problem is the same problem with teachers and sex with students.
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