"Ontario gov't website to embarrass deadbeat parents"

Wow, an article about child support enforcement that mentions a deadbeat mom and doesn't specifically bash men for a change. That's gotta be a first!

I wish they would dig a little deeper though and mention some of the reasons child support doesn't get paid (such as loss of job, the father being away at war etc...) and mention some real solutions such as starting with the presumption of shared custody/parenting rather than simply doubling jail time or other non-solutions. You can't squeeze blood from a turnip but apparently that reality isn't enough to stop the vicious punitive enforcement cycle. Yep, let's put these deadbeats in jail - that will certainly help them to catch up on arrearages!

In recent years, the trend has been to blur the line between what should be a matter for the civil courts and what should be a matter for the criminal courts. These are dangerous precedents to set. What civil matters will find their way into the criminal justice system next?

No doubt the child(ren) of an imprisoned parent suffers as a side effect. When the “what does your daddy (mommy) do” conversation comes up, the poor kid(s) are placed in an embarrassing (traumatic) position if their parent has been painted a criminal for being delinquent on child-support and is serving time. Civil matters should be left to the civil courts.

Tacking on a criminal charge, taking away driver's licenses, etc. can also serve to reduce the employability of the so called "deadbeats." This can be counter-productive to their own agenda; collecting money.

The worst problem is that the system does not differentiate between a parent who has fallen on hard-times and one who willfully refuses to pay legitimate support. All are lumped together under the label criminal. Where’s the empathy? Oh, I forgot, bureaucratic machines aren’t designed to reason or feel!

Any state entity should only be concerned that the bare minimum of support is provided to children in or out of the married family unit. It is up to the parents in that unit to work out between themselves the level above minimum subsistence that the children will be raised on. The state dictating the level of financial support children will receive is tyranny at the point of a gun and that is not what freedom and liberty is about. It is a farce that we spend billions for defense to stave off tyranny from abroad but have it here homegrown in the form of state agencies looking out for the welfare of the children. This has got to change!

> Ontario's Liberal government is planning to post the
> pictures of "deadbeat" parents who have refused to pay
> their child support...

By using the word "refuse", they make it sound as if there is no recognition that hardship/inability could be a factor. Oh, I guess it's not when you work in the gummint and money just seems to appear from nowhere for no reason.

But even I - and this is not an issue I spend much time on - know that something like 60% of those they're trying to shake down make less than $10,000 a year, and only a percent or two make $50k or more. Surely they've got to know this is all about empty posturing, at the expense of men and children.

I've always said that so long as we're charged with being a patriarchy, we might as well act like one and convict women who divorce men and steal their children as sex offenders, and put them on a registry and website. At least that might do some future good because men who might be victimized would be forewarned and could avoid a potential disaster.

But why would anyone bother to check the lineup of beat-dead dads in the first place?

* MB