Rethinking Fathers’ Rights

My brother while married, suffered abuse and all sorts of insults and nasty behavior, from slamming doors to bad language. The ex wife had and has such an attitude that if anyone, not only him, dares to disaggree with her in the littlest point, she will come at you over and over, until you accept her point and say sorry. It's crazy, but it is what happens. His marriage deteorated, not surprisingly, as this woman would be always nasty. After their divorce, for two years now, she feeds the court system with tons of pages filled with lies against the man, alleging that he is not fit to be a father to his three children, and the court system allows her to laugh diabolically and to trash him to the point of what he is now - a very sad face, tired and worn out. This is a mirror that reflects how awful the end times are, people make money on the troubles of others, those in whose hands the destiny of children are, decide to be unfair, hypocrites and liers. Even children close to maturity age, are not being allowed to choose with whose parent they wish to live with. How unfailr! Humanity's only hope is in the soon coming of the Lord! I can't wait!

This is a bigger issue than bitching about the "poor dads" that have been essentially relegated to the sidelines of their children's lives. Yes its a sad situation, I have been there. My ex got custody of my daughter and has done everything in his power to push me out of her life, even though by all accounts I was a great mother. The real issue should be that it is wrong to alienate a parent from their children regardless of whether that be the mother or th father. After all is it not in the child's best interest to have a relationship with both parents?

Here it is 18 years after my divorce and my ex-wife is still complaining to people about me. Nothing was good enough for her when we were married, nothing is good enough for her now that I'm no longer paying child support. Unfortunately, my children get to listen to their mother bad mouthing me. They are constantly torn whether or not to spend time with me. They feel that they're being disloyal to their mother. They are learning that fathers are nothing but a paycheck. I wonder what type of married life they will have??

My husband divorced his wife. In the process, he lost his right to be a father. He lost the ability to support himself after the divorce. His daughters, according to the court, should not have to sacrifice anything financially because of the divorce. Yet he was expected to try to survive on what was left of his salary while his daughters lived a lifestyle better than they had when their parents were married. Something must change.

I think both mothers and fathers get the short end of the stick when it comes to the custody of their children. Like this article says, fathers disproportionately become non-custodial parents and don't get to see their kids as much as they would like. And BethA's comments are relevant, because you cannot talk about a custody battle without analyzing both the father's and the mother's side. Women, who earn about 25% less than men, have to be the head of a household and raise a family by themselves with only one income. Child support paymets are still less than what a father living in the house would contribute to the family. Only 40% of non-custodial parents give full and regular child support payments, and 80% of non-custodial parents are fathers. Clearly, mothers don't fair as well in custody battles as a lot of people seem to think. So fathers have to deal with not seeing their families whenever they want, and mothers have a bigger financial burden, and the kids have to deal with the added stress of both their parents. Instead of getting the courts involved, I think the parents should swallow their pride, quit playing the blame game, and work out custody and a visitiation schedule themselves with their children's best interests in mind.

After reading the article ???Rethinking Fathers??? Rights???, I felt compelled to respond that I agree completely with Mrs. Lithwick. The media showcases some of the worst possible examples of injustice with the family law system. While there is great injustice to the father, the father is quite often portrayed as deserving it.



Many times the condemning activity showcased, happens after the court injustices. These fathers are often asked to be happily compliant with blatant, unfounded and obvious bias. Sometimes the reality of a court ruling clashes with a persons sense of the way it should be. I believe this clash can be so extreme that it can blur all sense of right and wrong in general. These fathers can feel betrayed by law and eventually lose respect for it. Next thing you know, they???re headlining the national news for some crazy stunt. Sadly, it???s only at that moment when people become interested in finding out what drove them to it. It???s like saying ???You see what he did? Isn???t he despicable? Yes it might have been bad at the time, but surely you can see that we were right to indenture him for life and deny him his children! We cannot to trust him!???



I too have been victim of family law bias to the extreme. Extreme is not a word used lightly. I suffer dearly from the injustice. The entire fiasco has done irreparable damage to my family, friends, religion, trust of government and entire outlook on life in general. I feel mortally cheated and abused. Even so, I quietly struggle to pay my child support and hope to have an important role in my daughters??? life one day. I have no compulsion go on violent rampages??? but that story is depressing and not very interesting now is it?

Betha keep the comments on topic... this isn't an article about how single mom's have to suffer through raising kids because of a deadbeat dad. That story has been told to death and frankly loving responsible fathers, much like my own dad, are tired of having their story always devolve into yours after mere moments. I'm not saying this to demean what you did, as I'm sure it was hard, but the focus of the article is to shine a spotlight on the genuine GOOD fathers out there that never get their story told.

Loving fathers should get equal custody AND equal responsibility. My ex-husband pretended to be that loving dad in all 9 lawsuits he filed against me to get out of child custody. He demanded more time, I gave in for the sake of the kids and because he quit his job to lower his income, well I paid him alimony and he paid 12/month child support. The minute he got it to that, he stopped seeing the kids. I raised them virtually alone. He swears I took the kids from him, he would love this article that there are loving dads, but I gotta tell you, I know more women like me, raising the kids alone because the dad didn't want to put the kids first and refused to pay child support so we took it all over because we put the kids first. So please hear this side of the story because myself and many other women have taken over the full burden of raising the children when the loving father is more worried about money and getting back at the ex-wife, than raising his kids. I blame the courts for this side of parenting too...

Don't forget that before the 20th century it was the other way around: children were nearly always awarded to men in a divorce, and women got next to nothing. Plus, there's the tales of women who gain custody who end up harming or killing the children. The system won't truly be fair until both parents, on a regular basis, are given a fair chance and custody is awarded without bias to the appropriate parent.

I'd love to be interviewed for this topic for a followup article that becomes the cover topic. It's too late to help me. My daughter is 20 years old, and our relationship will never be what it should have been. However, I want to help other men. Men like myself who are responsible, good fathers who's relationships simply didn't work out. Men who pay their support in full, on time, and want to be an equal influential parenting figure in their children's life. I'm not advocating for the men who simply want to be fathers to avoid court ordered child support, but the men who have been there for their children since birth. If sharing my story of the unfairness of the family court system can help inspire reforms, then I'm here to help. mgw@abmac.com

Our media loves good gossip and villanizing men because MEN as gender ( esp white males) do NOT stick up for themselves. Look how many advocacy groups there are for african americans or women...there is a group for every gender race/nationality but not one for white male men or men in general. Again I say as long as men choose not to stick up for themselves no changes will be made

Well written. My husband went through an ugly divorce where a man who made 50 grand a year got stuck with child support 580 something AND alimony for three years $450.00. The system is severely screwed up AND is slighted towards women. The problem is no advocacy group is standing up LOUD enough for men's rights. Nothing will EVER change unless someone makes a HUGE stink.

Well written. My husband went through an ugly divorce where a man who made 50 grand a year got stuck with child support 580 something AND alimony for three years $450.00. The system is severely screwed up AND is slighted towards women. The problem is no advocacy group is standing up LOUD enough for men's rights. Nothing will EVER change unless someone makes a HUGE stink.

Well written. My husband went through an ugly divorce where a man who made 50 grand a year got stuck with child support 580 something AND alimony for three years $450.00. The system is severely screwed up AND is slighted towards women. The problem is no advocacy group is standing up LOUD enough for men's rights. Nothing will EVER change unless someone makes a HUGE stink.

While I agree that fathers are just as capable of being loving, primary caregivers after a divorce, I strongly disagree with the notion (not necessarily advocated in this article) that both parents should have the same parental experience post-divorce that they had prior to the divorce, or rather, would have continued to have if they continued to live with their children. When parents have that expectation, they unwittingly put their children in a position of having to make them happy by making them feel like the good dad (or the good mom in the less frequent case where mom moves out) despite not having a daily role in the child's life. It should never by a child's job to make a parent feel satisfied. I believe that we need to put more emphasis during divorces on helping the parent no longer living with the children to come to terms with their new role, which may often be more like a favorite uncle than a father (or aunt than a mother). Unfortunately, life is not fair, divorce is certainly not fair, and parents should not go into divorce expecting it to be. Most importantly, we should be sure that in our zest to protect secondary caregivers, we do not to create laws and policies that work toward satisfying parents' needs at the expense of their children.

I'm sure that there are good fathers out there and I agree that reform is needed. I live in Texas and it is like a third world nation here. My ex-husband has waged a finacial and psycological war for the last year and half against me and his child. He lives next door to me, has had a criminal tresspass ticket issued and still continues to come and go at will. The police do nothing, the judge believes that I'm making all of this up and there we sit at the end of a dead end street with him constantly stalking us. He has killed 5 of my horses, including his own daughters horse and I have the proof that he poisoned the animals and still the court does nothing for us. I have tried to get protective orders and been denied, have asked for charges to be filed and denied. He has seen his child 2 times in the past year but still claims that the reason he keeps dragging me to court is because he loves his child. My lawyer finally told me to sell my house and move in the middle of the night so he can't find us. We have an elaborate system set up so that I can mail him medical bills and stuff, but it does me no good because he won't pay the bills that he owes. My daughter failed 9th grade due to all of the stress and yet I'm the one that keeps being painted as the "bad mother". He now has a woman living with him that is harrassing my daughter with text messages and no matter how many times I change the number she gets the number and starts the messages again. I filed charges against her and actually have a chance to get this stopped, but my ex isn't going to stop until he destroys us and he is doing a great job. I know that he is an extreme. I wish that there was an advocate for my daughter so that this would stop. I'm all for reform and it needs to start in Texas

Yes its really sad. I am a woman and sadly I had a poor excuse for a mother who cared nothing more than trying to convince my sisters and I to live with her just so she could get child support. The woman couldn't have cared less about us. Even after my father had custody of us she still tried to get his pension. She was actually ordered to pay our child support till we were 21 yrs old and sent me a b-day card on my 18th b-day saying ha ha I don't have to pay your child support anymore. She has since left the country and god knows how much she owes my father. This woman was physically and mentally abusive yet our legal system is stuck in the 50's and always tries to place the children with the mother. Thank god we were old enough to make our own decisions. I have several male friends in which they had a child with a woman and the woman just left the baby with them [this is becoming more common] and they tell me the horror stories of trying to collect child support from these mothers and can't seem to get the money. Our family law system needs to reflect the times.

Every situation will be different, but for me, a father of 3 girls who is a year into the divorce process with no end soon enough, I see a process clearly biased and not in my favor. The lengths I need to go just to achieve equal physical custody is ridiculous and it sickens me to see the time factor used by my ex as a way to maximize support so she doesn't have to work, not to mention the clandestine move-in of her boyfriend (who is not divorced from his wife and doesn't appear to work) and his son, into a 3 bedroom house with my young daughters. There's nothing I wouldn't do or no amount I wouldn't pay to ensure their well-being, but it is ridiculous to have a system weighted against good fathers from the start. There should be a presumption of equality in the children's lives until it is demonstrated otherwise. Even criminals are presumed innocent until proven guilty; family law courts don't share the same attitude when it comes to custody and fathers.