Divorce misconceptions persist

The NY Times got a couple of family law experts to discuss couples getting prenups for their ideas, and one says:

Women have, historically, been short-changed in divorces. A familiar pattern was that of a wife who supported her husband as he worked his way through law school or medical school by taking low-wage jobs with little opportunity, believing she was helping invest in their collective future. Once the marriage dissolved, though, the husband walked away with the fruits of their human capital.

Greenspun responds:

The law professor who makes this assertion doesn’t make any attempt to explain why most divorce lawsuits are filed by women (see the classic Brinig and Allen paper referenced in “Causes of Divorce” as well as this statistical study of a Massachusetts courthouse where 72 percent of the cases were filed by women).

Greenspun also points out that the other expert is wrong about divorce law.

Family law is not complicated, but even experts get it wrong. I do not know whether these experts are stupid, or are blinded by ideology and self-interest.

I started this blog with a belief that the family (and juvenile dependency) court system could not really be as bad as it appears. Then I believed that the system would be reformed, if only the public understood how screwed up it was. Then I thought that at least it would be useful to document my own experience, so others can be alert to the pitfalls.

I don't think that I persuaded anyone. I heard from lots of people who had their own bad experiences, and who appreciated the blog to get the bigger picture. So I am happy to leave this blog up, in case it helps anyone.

Donald Trump was elected because, in part, the public wised up to the fact that the powerful and influential elites were lying to us about trade, immigration, Islam, police work, foreign wars, and many other topics. They also lie about marriage and parental rights, but that is too sensitive for even Trump to address.

Take the red pill. Our society is destroying the family. Find out how it works before you get married or have a kid.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

State tries to stop newspaper reporting on CPS

I have posted before how California law has been interpreted to shelter CPS (Child Protective Services) from public scrutiny. Sometimes they even try to restrict a parent from showing legal accusations to his own attorney.

UCLA law professor E. Volokh writes:

Avilucea also got, from the child’s mother, the child abuse complaint (filed by the New Jersey Division of Child Protection) that sought to remove the child from her custody. ...

The state therefore got a court order that barred the newspaper from publishing “any information obtained from the filed verified complaint,” as well as ordering the newspaper “to remove from any publication source any documents if already printed or distributed.” And there is also a related statute, which criminalizes “encourag[ing] the release of the contents” of such records and reports (and which might presumably apply to any request by the reporter that the mother let him copy the complaint).

I think this order violates the First Amendment. ...

But it’s not clear that the government may get a court order blocking publication even of an illegally solicited document — the prior restraint doctrine, which presumptively forbids injunctions against publication, is generally very strong.

And beyond that, I don’t think that the government can just flatly ban the targets of government action from going to the media with complaints about such government action. If the government wants to take away your liberty, your property or your children, and you think this action is unjust, you should have the right to blow the whistle, and appeal to those who are ultimately in charge of the government, and in whose name the government acts — your fellow citizens.

The legal briefs on the free speech issue are also sealed, and unavailable.

I think Volokh is correct that CPS confidentiality laws are contrary to established interpretation of the First Amendment and maybe some other amendments as well.

Update: A comment adds:

There is no reason to respect an unconstitutional court order or the court that issued it. I am a lawyer in NJ, and the Family Courts in NJ routinely trample First Amendment rights, often closing the entire courtroom in many case involving children, whether DYFS (whose name has changed) is involved or not. Even when DYFS is involved, I am not convinced the statute requiring all records to be sealed, initials to be used and the courthouse closed is constitutional. The general reason given is "best interests of the child," a general, non-descript catch-all phrase that is used to justify almost anything in Family Court.

Volokh removed links to the brief, even tho he says that the order sealing them is unconstitutional.

CPS gets too much money

Robert Franklin of the National Parents Organization does a lot of good work, but I cannot agree with this:

The latest scandal out of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services had barely been made public last week, when the top echelons of state government swung into action. ...

Gov. Greg Abbott and other state leaders ordered the Department of Family and Protective Services Wednesday to ramp up efforts to protect endangered foster children and curb the backlog of ones waiting for homes.

Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Joe Straus released a joint letter to department Commissioner Hank Whitman directing him to immediately develop a plan to hire and train more special investigators to take up the backlog of at-risk kids who have not had a face-to-face interaction with Child Protective Services. ...

In short, Abbott, Patrick, et al are trying to look tough on the issue of child safety while doggedly refusing to do the one thing that’s unquestionably required to do a better job of protecting children at risk – pay caseworkers more.

No, paying caseworkers more will not help.

I don't know about Texas, but California CPS (child protective services) workers are extremely well paid. They have 6-figure salaries, and seem to have a lot of excess time on their hands. The more they make, the worse job they do.

No, a much better approach would be to keep cutting CPS funding until they focus only on what is necessary.

Google demands that I correct a violation

Google just emailed me this notice:

Hello,
This is a warning message to alert you that there is action required to bring your AdSense account into compliance with our AdSense program policies. We’ve provided additional details below, along with the actions to be taken on your part.

Affected website: angry-dad.com

Example page where violation occurred: http://blog.angry-dad.com/2015/02/choosing-moms-sex-on-birth-cert.html

Action required: Please make changes immediately to your site to follow AdSense program policies.

Current account status: Active

Violation explanation

As stated in our program policies, sites displaying Google ads should provide substantial and useful information to the user. Users should be able to easily navigate through the site to find what products, goods, or services are promised. Examples of misguided navigation include, but are not limited to:

False claims of downloadable or streaming content
Linking to content that does not exist
Redirecting users to irrelevant and/or misleading webpages
Text on a page unrelated to the topic and/or business model of the website.
For more information, please review Google’s Webmaster quality guidelines and the AdSense program policies.

How to resolve:
If you received a notification in regard to page content, we request that you immediately remove Google ads from the violating pages. If you are unable to, or unsure of how to remove the ads from these pages, or would like to continue monetizing the page with Google ads, please modify or remove the violating content to meet our AdSense policies.

If you received a notification in regards to the way ads are implemented on your site, please make the necessary changes to your implementation.
You do not need to contact us if you make changes. Please be aware that if additional violations are accrued, ad serving may be disabled to the website listed above. You should immediately take time to review your pages with Google ads to ensure that they comply with our policies.

Additionally, please be aware that the URL above is just an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website or other sites that you own. To reduce the likelihood of future warnings from us, we suggest that you review all your sites for compliance. Here are some useful resources you might be interested in.

AdSense policy FAQs
Using site: search to find violations
Recommended solutions for policing your content
Content filtering
For more information regarding our policy warning notifications, visit our Help Center.

We thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

What is going on here? Can anyone help me out?

What could Google possibly have against this web site or that particular web page?

Just what am I violating?

I have no idea whether this is a mistake, or if I can committed some sort of micro-aggression that offends Google, or what.

Jolie wants child support from Brad Pitt

I cannot keep up with the Brad Pitt Angelina Jolie divorce, and the bizarre way they are raising their first daughter as a boy and buying kids from other continents.

As Pitt and Jolie are super-rich, popular, famous, well-liked, beautiful actors, you would think that they would find a way to avoid the trashy accusations of divorce court. They can each in one movie make more money than the rest of us can spend in our entire lives.

They claimed that they did not get married earlier because they were waiting for same-sex marriages, and only got married because their kids nagged them into it.

They had waited for gay marriage to become legal, with Pitt telling Esquire magazine in 2006: "Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able to." source

Nevertheless, Jolie is making accusations that could win her as much as $50 million in child support payments.

It is all about money. The bad incentives are huge.

BIOTCh added to dictionary

NPR radio reports on new additions to the Oxford English Dictionary:

Other new additions to the dictionary include:

biatch and associated spellings — beeotch, beoch, beotch, beyotch, biotch, biyotch, beeoch — that express the same variation of "bitch"

It has not added my meaning yet, as far as I know.

I have been using the term BIOTCh here for years to mean the Best Interest Of The Child. It is the biggest single problem with the family court.

The evil of mandated reporting

Here is a CPS incident in the news:

She and her husband were suspected of child abuse. The daycare center had called CPS to report a bruise on the baby’s chest.

In a sane world, if a daycare attendant wondered about a mark on a child’s chest, she might pick up the phone and call the parent, but that’s not the world we live in. The person at the daycare center really had no option but to call CPS. After all, she didn’t want to lose her job. ...

“The sheriff told us that he thought the birthmark looked like a handprint.” ...

Meanwhile, Skenazy makes the obvious and responsible point that, the mere fact that we have mandatory reporting doesn’t mean the adults in charge of the situation must suspend their adult common sense or their ability to judge the reality of what’s been reported.

These stories illustrate the fact that we must kill off the notion that overreacting to nearly non-existent threats is prudent. Clearly, the daycare provider had been trained, just like the TSA, to treat anything the least bit suspicious as incredibly, overwhelmingly suspicious. Overkill is the government MO. It shouldn’t be. ...

“I would rather see 1 million reports that end up not being an issue than see even one go unreported and lead to serious injury or the death of a child.”

(I mixed up the quotes. Check the source to see who said what.)

The evil of mandatory reporting is understated here.

You may think that the day care worker should have just called the mom for an explanation of the birthmark, and then dropped the matter. Unfortunately, that is illegal.

I once heard of a physician who are was prosecuted for consulting an expert medical professor over whether a symptom was evidence of abuse.

The law requires child professionals to report all suspicions. If he was suspicious enuf to make a phone call, then reporting to CPS is required. The child care worker needs to look the other way and not have any suspicions, or keep calling CPS with accusations that are probably trivial or easily explained.

So these problems are not solved by ppl being reasonable. The only solution is to abolish mandatory reporting of suspicions.

No such fix is likely. The dopey women who work in this field say crazy things like a million false reports being better than some potential real problem going unreported. There is no reasoning with such ppl.

Judicial reformer to be sentenced

I don't know anything about this, but a fellow angry parent sends:

On Tuesday, August 16, 2016 Commission on Judicial Performance reform activist Joe Sweeney will be handcuffed and taken into custody from the courtroom, and on the order of Contra Costa County Judge Bruce Mills.

The place is Department 29 of Contra Costa County Superior Court at 725 Court Street, Martinez CA 94553. The time is 8:30 a.m. This is the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse.

Sweeney will be jailed for publishing a blog documenting institutionalized corruption in the Contra Costa County Family Court system.

This event is to encourage the public to attend the hearing and witness the arrest. The ultimate goal is that the witnesses will later testify at the final CJP prosecution of Judge Bruce Mills.

Judge Mills has been disciplined by the CJP FIVE times, more than any other judge in the state who has not been removed from the bench. It is a virtual certainty that Mills will finally be stripped of his black robe for his misconduct in the Sweeney contempt case.

The circumstances suggest that Sweeney also is being punished for his advocacy to expose judicial corruption and reform the CJP. Even Joe's court-appointed criminal attorney, a veteran criminal and family law lawyer, says he has never seen anything like this.

On Tuesday, August 16, Judge Bruce Mills intends to order that Joe be jailed for 25 days in connection with a trumped up contempt of court proceeding.

Judge Mills is one of the most corrupt judges in California, and, again, has been prosecuted and disciplined by the CJP FIVE times. No other judge in the state has been disciplined as many times and remained on the bench.
Mills has connections at, and has been protected by the CJP for over 10 years. Judge Mills is in effect acting as the hatchet man for the Judicial Branch, and returning a favor to the CJP.

This event is to support, and witness the courtroom arrest of CJP reform advocate Joe Sweeney. We are confident that this extra-judicial act by Judge Bruce Mills will result in the final CJP prosecution and removal of Mills by the CJP.

If you cannot attend, but still want to help, in the next 24 hours we will be posting other ways to participate. This situation is evolving rapidly and we are trying to keep up.

She also sends links to Change.org and Facebook.

Judicial commission holds hearing

A fellow angry parent sends this:

CJE [Center for Judicial Excellence] is working in coalition to audit and reform the California Commission on Judicial Performance (CJP), a powerful state agency that is responsible for disciplining our state’s nearly 2,000 judges.

For 20 years, the Commission admits that less than 2% of all complaints filed by average California litigants or their family and friends have resulted in the discipline of our state’s judges. This is an appalling and concerning statistic that proves the need for reforms of our judicial oversight agency, which was created in 1961 in large part to “protect the public.” We are committed to bringing sunshine into a secretive agency that operates in the dark, and without any meaningful checks or balances.

We are pleased to announce that we expect our audit request to be heard at the JLAC Hearing on August 10, 2016 in Sacramento (the Joint Legislative Audit Committee).

I am surprised that 2% of complaints result in discipline to a judge. That is much higher than I would have expected.

If I were running the commission, I would probably decide that most of the judges need to be displined.

Anyway, I post this in case anywants to attend this hearing, or to send a supporting message.

Fathers as Caregivers

The Sunday NY Times published father opinions:

Readers discuss the critical role that fathers play in parenting and what steps should be taken to remove stigmas and promote equity.

Half of the comments are from women, such as this illogical feminist:

While Mr. Shedlin makes constructive suggestions about engaging fathers in the care and challenges of rearing children, in my pediatric practice I have encountered fathers who appear in my office in the days or weeks before custody decisions, claiming that they would like endorsement for their becoming active participants in their children’s lives. In child custody decisions, the best interests of children are served by continuing, stable, previously demonstrated caregiving, not by experimenting in potential benefits to fathers’ self-images and enrichment. There is no prescribed formula for good parenting. Custody decisions should be made based on the facts at hand.

LYNN K. RUDICH
Woodbridge, Conn.

If "There is no prescribed formula for good parenting", then there is no basis for saying that any parent is better than any other. If parents are divorcing, then continuing the previous arrangement is impossible. Everyone wants decisions based on the facts, but she is the one refusing to endorse fathers "becoming active participants in their children’s lives."

Fathers in Woodbridge, Conn. might want to avoid this pediatrician

The lead pro-father comment said:

This report, preceded by a few days by another report, “The State of America’s Fathers,” produced by Promundo, is one of many indicators of the inadvertent social evolution I call the “Daddying Movement.”

Both reports demand our attention and offer recommendations for action that it would be wise for us to embrace, including these:

1) Encourage men to enter professions involving early childhood, health and caregiving heretofore seen as women’s professions.

2) Teach all children about the importance and value of being caregivers.

3) In child custody decisions, keep the best interest of the child foremost, even if it challenges the assumptions that traditionally favor mothers.

4) Pass a national policy guaranteeing paid leave of equal length for mothers and fathers after a birth or adoption.

I guess these changes would be good for fathers, so you probably expect me to endorse them.

I do not.

This is a leftist vision. It denies human nature. It uses social policy to try to change peoples' preferences. It tries to use education to brainwash the next generation. It uses buzz phrases like BIOTCh to enforce authoritarian control over families, and over businesses. It pushes "equality" to silly extremes, such as treating birth the same as adoption.

You think I am overreacting? Look at his (supposedly pro-father) report:

As this report will show, holding a lower bar for fathers’ caregiving contributions works against our efforts to reach true gender equality at work and at home. ...

State of America’s Fathers provides recommendations on what it will take to reach equality in caregiving ...

While the report adopts a specific focus on the benefits of fathers’ rich involvement in their children’s lives, it keeps its eye on the ultimate goal: gender justice.a

We are not interested in pitting the needs of mothers against the needs of fathers. Rather, we want to move toward a country where everyone, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, is able to choose and define their own roles within the family – without discriminatory policies or restrictive cultural norms holding them back. Fathers’ and men’s increased care-work contributions bring such broad benefits for a simple reason, and it is not because the caregiving realm will be any better managed by men than women, or because men have superior abilities. Rather, men’s caregiving contributions stand to create broad personal and social benefits precisely because they open more spaces for parents of all genders to pursue full, uninhibited personal and professional lives. In other words, these contributions advance gender justice. The pursuit of gender justice is not a zero-sum game whereby gains for women mean losses for men, or vice versa. Indeed, true gender justice is an abundant and self-perpetuating resource, offering benefits and expanded opportunities to all members of society.

[footnote]a. The pursuit of gender justice can be defined as an effort to realize a world without any inequality of rights or opportunities based on gender, whether in relationships, families, communities, workplaces, or states.30

Got that? The ultimate goal is not happiness, or productive citizens, or personal freedom, or family autonomy, or respect for traditions, or research-based child-rearing, or Christian ideals, or anything like that. The ultimate goal is "gender equity", and "pursuit of gender justice".

The report claim to address the problem of men not being more involved in child care, but the 140 pages fail to mention the biggest two:

1. Women are naturally and instinctively inclined toward child care.
2. Men doing child care are always under suspicion of being perverts.

I am under unfair suspicions of enuf things already, I do not wish to add pervert to the list.

Perhaps they dispute the human nature differences between men and women, but they are backed by every scientific study and by the cultural norms of every successful society. You can see it in 3-year-old girls playing with dolls, and boys refusing.

The report does not suggest using scientific research to see what works best, or letting people choose on their own. They demand gender equity, at whatever cost.

One of the NY Times letters praised a father for bringing cakes to school parties! I suppose a gender equity proponent would try to make sure that the school cakes are brought equally by moms and dads, and also equally by LGBT figures, if that makes any sense.

I have posted many times for equally shared parenting, but I am afraid that the movement has been taken over by crazy leftists.

In my view, parents should have the freedom and autonomy to rear their kids as they wish. The law should protect those rights, and to protect the customs that have worked well for centuries.

Maybe that means that the dad would rather earn the money to pay for the cake and the mom would rather bring the cake to the school party. Any attempt to equalize those roles is crazy. Also crazy is any attempt to give the mom custody of the child just because she has been bringing the cakes. In a free society, human nature will induce dads and moms to take different roles.

Recognition of human nature differences between men and women sometimes goes over the name of red pill. I see that there is a forthcoming amateur movie title The Red Pill, with interviews of prominent men's rights advocates and others.

Filmmaker Cassie Jaye delves headfirst into the mysterious and polarizing world of the Men’s Rights Movement. The Red Pill takes a magnifying glass to today’s ‘gender war’ and raises questions about what needs to be done in order to achieve true gender equality.

This is a misuse of the term "red pill". The term red pill is usually means facing reality that everyone ignores. It means waking up.

But this movie is about politics, not human nature, and half the interviews are with women and feminists. It probably does give a good introduction to men's rights issues, but the premise is that we ought "to achieve true gender equality."

No, wanting to achieve true gender equality is blue pill, not red pill. True gender equality is neither possible nor desirable.

My arguments for shared parenting are that kids need the different influences from dads and moms, that it preserves parental rights, that it shelters the family from oppressive govt control, and that anything else seriously undermines marriage.

I don't hear anything else making these arguments. Apparently most political organizations eventually get taken over by leftists, and they have discovered that the best way to get their demands is to keep shouting "equality" over and over.

Count me out. I want to live in a society where men are men, and women are women. The happiest and most well-adjusted families are those where the dad is the authority on important matters, and the mom does most of the child care.

Georgia upholds free speech for parents

I have quit posting, but here are a couple of things that came to my attention recently.

A family court judge ordered parents not to comment about the court on Facebook, as he took personal offense at some of the criticisms.

A Wash. Post blogger reports:

Georgia appellate court overturns custody order that barred both parents from commenting about the case

As the United States Supreme Court has stated,

[w]hatever differences may exist about interpretations of the First Amendment, there is practically universal agreement that a major purpose of that Amendment was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs. Although it is assumed that judges will ignore the public clamor or media reports and editorials in reaching their decisions and by tradition will not respond to public commentary, the law gives judges as persons, or courts as institutions no greater immunity from criticism than other persons or institutions. The operations of the courts and the judicial conduct of judges are matters of utmost public concern.

Among other things, a parent was complaining that the court transcript did not match the official audio recording of a hearing, and the judge was relying on the inaccurate transcript.

Fathers’ rights campaigners in Israel have long complained about what is surely the most archaic and anti-child feature of Israeli law regarding child custody – its retention of the Tender Years Doctrine. In Israeli law, that’s called the “early childhood clause.” Under it, mothers receive custody of any child under the age of six. All considerations except the child’s age are off the table. Is the mother mentally unbalanced, abusive, a drunk, a drug addict? It makes no difference. Is Dad a paragon of virtue and paternal love? It makes no difference. Mom gets custody. Period.

People complain about the possibility of Sharia law creeping into the court, but they should also complain about Jewish law creeping in.

AP reportw:

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — People who deliberately refuse to pay court-ordered child support can go to jail for consecutive six-month sentences for repeat violations, New York's highest court ruled Tuesday.

State law generally limits Family Court to imposing single six-month sentences.

The Court of Appeals, with six judges ruling unanimously, said Family Court can revisit jail sentences for willful violations that were previously suspended and order an offender jailed on all of them. Those sentences can run consecutively, extending the time an offender can be locked up.

These jail terms are without a jury trial or other due process protections that a criminal defendant is entitled to.

Your name was incorrectly submitted

I just got this letter:

In response to your request, the Santa Cruz County Human Services Department has completed a review of the investigation to determine whether the report made to the Department of Justice (DOJ) was made in accordance with the statutory requirements.

Section 11169 of the California Penal Code requires child protective agencies to forward to DOJ a written report on each case of known or suspected child abuse that the agency investigated and determined to be either substantiated or inconclusive, and not unfounded. The one exception is for cases of neglect coming within subdivision (b) of Section i1165.2.

I have reviewed the recommended decision, dated April 21, 2016. The recommended decision is attached and its findings incorporated by reference.

Based on my review of the recommended decision, I:

|X| Adopt the findings in the recommended decision. ...

Your name was incorrectly submitted to DOJ. We have notified DOJ and requested that your name be removed from the Child Abuse Central Index (CACI).

Cecilia Espinola, Director
Human Services Department

Cecilia Espinola was paid $276,029.04 in 2014.

She still gets the law wrong. The Penal Code says:

11169. (a) An agency specified in Section 11165.9 shall forward to the Department of Justice a report in writing of every case it investigates of known or suspected child abuse or severe neglect that is determined to be substantiated, other than cases coming within subdivision (b) of Section 11165.2. An agency shall not forward a report to the Department of Justice unless it has conducted an active investigation and determined that the report is substantiated, as defined in Section 11165.12. If a report has previously been filed which subsequently proves to be not substantiated, the Department of Justice shall be notified in writing of that fact and shall not retain the report.

The crucial point here is that Child Protective Services (CPS) investigates reports, and classifies them as substantiated, inconclusive, or unfounded. The California law clearly says that only substantiated reports are forwarded to the DoJ CACI, but she says that she forwards reports that are "either substantiated or inconclusive".

The exception is that cases of "general neglect" are not forwarded to the DoJ, whether substantiated or not. I think the idea is that if a parent fails to feed and clothe her own kids adequately, then CPS can take action on this as general neglect, but it is not forwarded to DoJ because such a parent would not be a threat to others. The purpose of the CACI is for use in background checks for teachers and others with kid responsibilities.

Someone who makes $276k per year to enforce these rules should understand that reports have to be substantiated to be forwarded to the DoJ. She persists in the error even after I prove her wrong in a legal hearing.

Representing CPS at the hearing was Santa Cruz County attorney Shannon M Sullivan, who made $190,012.53 in 2014.

My notice of the hearing said:

You may attend the face-to-face meeting alone or with an attorney or other representative. If you bring an attorney, you must notify the Department in writing at least 10 business days in advance so that County Counsel can also attend. If you do not bring an attorney, County Counsel will not be there.

I actually intended to bring a lawyer, and hired one for the purpose. But CPS said that if I did, then it would not hold the hearing until July.

So I dropped the lawyer, and went by myself. To my surprise, County Counsel Shannon Sullivan was there anyway, and refused to leave even when I objected and showed the document proving that her presence was against their own rules.

The acting judge was just a CPS consultant who was previously a CPS director in another county. He found that the report was not credible, and that it would not be reportable even if it were 100% true. At no time did any child suffer any harm or be in any danger.

Actually, I just have the consultant's conclusion, as CPS has so far refused to release the full report to me. Perhaps I will have to subpoena it, as CPS probably finds it embarrassing.

This is now the seventh time CPS has brought a legal action against me. Every single one of them was ultimately resolved by proving that the CPS accusations had no merit whatsoever. This is harassment. I think that the whole department should be shut down.

I have never met a more despicable class of human vermin than CPS social workers, managers, and lawyers. They lie, violate the law, and mistreat children. There is no merit to anything they say.

Agony of being a 50/50 mum

The London Daily Mail reports:

Agony of being a 50/50 mum: Women once held the upper hand in custody battles. Now fathers are winning EQUAL access... and mothers are struggling to cope

* Nicola Hewitt, 42, an office manager from Kenley, Surrey, faces the trauma of being without her children Devon, 10, and Sonny, eight, every weekend
* Veronica Sweeney-Bird, a 33-year-old bar worker from Tunbridge Wells, a week-on, week-off shared care arrangement for her two daughters
* Mothers are having to divide time with their children equally with their exes

Every mother lives for those small, joyful moments when her child masters something new - a book once too challenging, the telling of a joke previously stumbled over, a food devoured that had formerly been rejected.

For it's in the gentle minutiae of a little one's life that you really see their budding personality grow.

Imagine, then, the agonising pain of being privy to your child's life for only half the time. The milestones missed. The lost cuddles before bedtime. The long nights spent wondering if they are sleeping sweetly or crying out for Mummy.

This is the reality for Britain's growing legion of 50/50 mothers, who divide their time with the children equally with their exes. It's a growing phenomenon that - on the surface - might seem the fairest way for separated parents to organise their lives.

But it comes at an emotional price for the mothers involved - and the consequences for children are as yet untold.

Veronica Sweeney-Bird is one such mother who wishes more than anything that her two little girls were having a more relaxed, stable childhood. Instead, every other Thursday, she drops one off at nursery and one at primary school, full of foreboding as she kisses them goodbye.

A week-on, week-off shared care arrangement with her ex-husband is the high price Veronica has to pay for her broken marriage. And two years on from the split, she still struggles to cope with the moment she says goodbye to her girls for seven long days.

'I so hate being a 50/50 mother,' says the 33-year-old bar worker from Tunbridge Wells, who was married for seven years.

'When it's not my week to have the children, I have to try to switch off from being a mum and it's so very hard.

So what do they want? No-fault divorce, full child custody rights, alimony, child support, public respectability, and what else? Maybe some free government day care services as well?

Limits on recording child cellphone

It used to be that parents had the authority to act on behalf of their underage kids. Now they can be second-guessed by judges who might have other opinions about the child's best interests.

The NY Daily News reports:

Parents can legally eavesdrop on young children if they reasonably believe it would be in the child's best interest, the state's highest court ruled Tuesday, establishing an exception to New York law against wiretaps without the consent of at least one person on a call.

The 4-3 ruling by the Court of Appeals involved a cellphone recording of a man threatening to beat the 5-year-old son of his live-in girlfriend. The boy's father recorded the conversation.

"The father had a good faith, objectively reasonable basis to believe that it was necessary for the welfare of his son to record the violent conversation he found himself listening to," Judge Eugene Fahey wrote for the majority.

He cautioned that the ruling shouldn't be interpreted as a way to avoid criminal liability for wiretaps "when a parent acts in bad faith."

The live-in boyfriend, Anthony Badalamenti, was later convicted of child endangerment, assault and weapon possession. His attorney challenged the tape as inadmissible evidence from illegal eavesdropping.

Fahey cautioned that courts must consider the age and maturity of the child in considering parental eavesdropping. He didn't specify an age.

A key question "is whether the child is capable of formulating well-reasoned judgments of his or her own," he wrote.

So I guess a New Yorker can eavesdrop on a 5-year-old who is being threatened with a beating. In any other case, I have no idea.

I think that it is crazy that a father has to make a legalistic best-interests analysis to record his 5-year-old son in a potentially dangerous situation. But that is the society we now live in, and the dad only won by a 4-3 vote in a NY appeals court.

CPS cartoons

A reader sent these.

Newspaper criticizes CPS

Whenever I hear or read stories about Child Protective Services (CPS), they are always either about harassing good parents, or causing some kid to suffer or die.

Here is the latest. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports:

Despite high-profile child abuse and neglect cases, including many in the Bay Area, authorities have been slow to make substantive changes to the often underfunded and under staffed agencies, experts said.

In the horrific case of Shaun, 6, Delylah, 3, and their 9-year-old half sister, 135 pages of Monterey CPS documents obtained by the Contra Costa Times, and the state’s highly critical review of the case, found that social workers called repeatedly to the home in 2015 violated five state regulations and ignored best practices intended to keep children safe.

But that branch of CPS is not alone. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that in about 12 percent of all 2014 child fatalities involving abuse and neglect, the families had prior contact with CPS. During that year, 3.2 million children were the subject of at least one CPS report and 1,546 kids died from maltreatment, 70 percent of those under the age of 3. Of those fatalities, 131 were in California. ...

The same year, Contra Costa health officials paid $300,000 to the biological parents of a girl who died in foster care. Deonna Green was nearly 3 years old, yet weighed only 19 pounds, when she died in 2006. She was being fed baking soda by her guardian. ...

But last month, a federal commission charged with developing a national strategy to eliminate child abuse released the results of a two-year probe that delved into case studies, examined what went wrong and what can be done to stop vulnerable children from falling through the cracks. The National Strategy to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities commission estimated that between four and eight children will die every day from abuse and neglect unless major reforms are made. The commission criticized the lack of communication among various agencies, and issued several recommendations for agencies and states to follow to save children’s lives, among them:

CPS will probably say that it could do a better job with more money. I don't believe it.

A CPS social worker told me that they routinely investigate parents over and over again, even if no problems are ever found. She said that it is not unusual to investigate a parent 10 times, without finding anything.

At the same time, they have kids in foster care dying of malnutrition, and no one bothers to check that a kid has a normal weight.

I don't know whether these CPS workers are incompetent or evil or what, but we would all be better off if the agency were shut down.

Ken Perlmmutter is worse than I thought

Some angry dads and moms have contacted me about Psychologist Ken Perlmutter, as they found my complaint against him. Apparently he has done a lot of bad child custody evaluations.

I do not want to dox him, or attack him personally, but he needs to be held accountable for his official actions. He works as a public official for the county family courts of counties surrounding San Jose California, and makes $400 per hour. He continues to do harm in his official capacity, and his court victims need to know the truth about why he does what he does.

I have known for a long time that he had a son who died, but I did not post it because it did not seem relevant to me. But now I am told that it is key to understanding his work.

Perlmutter divorced his first therapist wife, and later married a younger woman and had a son Joey with her. Joey died at age four of a treatable illness, but was not getting medical care. Neither parent was charged with neglect, but some people hold him responsible.

I am not blaming him for that. He is innocent until proven guilty, as I always say.

The problem is that Perlmutter never got over this death. He never had another child, and he is wracked with guilt over what he could have done.

He is a bitter and broken man.

$800k a year of court money buys him and his wife a rich lifestyle and fancy vacations, but it is not enough. They have no child, and they lost their precious boy. He needs to make other parents suffer the loss of a child, as he has suffered.

Whenever possible, his evaluations do not recommend joint child custody. He likes to see one parent lose all custody, and he will do whatever he can to make that happen. Somehow inflicting pain on others makes his own pathetic life more bearable.

He will manipulate the facts to force good parents to endure the loss of a child.

Perlmutter is personally more psychologically disordered than the great majority of the parents he evaluates. He is more disordered that the typical mental asylum inmate.

If all of this is even half true, then Perlmutter is a sadistic monster. He is a modern Dr. Hannibal Lecter. I estimate that he has messed up the lives of 1000 kids. He should be locked up.

Update: I found this reply to a omplaint on another blog:

I would invite any person who has any questions about my practice or ethics to phone me and personally discuss them with me.
My phone number is 650.322.5011.
Thank you.
Ken Perlmutter

Another comment says "There is a special place in hell for animals like Perlmutter."

My gripe is not so much with him personally, but with a system that grants screwballs like him enormous power over people's lives. See also this Change petition, from someone Perlmutter evaluated.

Silly reform for Arizona CPS

Robert Franklin is a good advocate for fathers and for shared parenting, but his article on Arizona CPS falls for the idea that the bureaucrats need more money. (I am used to the term CPS = Child Protective Services, but apparently Arizona has changed its name to DCS in order to expand its influence.) He cites:

The hotline receives about 125,000 calls a year and currently generates about 52,000 reports that all require investigation under state law.

So most of the calls are so bogus that no follow-up is needed at all?

CPS likes to justify their investigations by saying that they are required by law, but apparently it is allowed to disregard the majority of reports.

I do not doubt that most of the calls are transparently bogus and need no investigation, I just want to point out that CPS certainly does not investigate everything.

Franklin is concerned about a proposed Arizona law:

Here’s the operative language from HB 2522:

E. EXCEPT FOR CRIMINAL CONDUCT ALLEGATIONS, THE DEPARTMENT IS NOT REQUIRED TO PREPARE A DCS REPORT IF ALL OF THE FOLLOWING APPLY:

1. THE SUSPECTED CONDUCT OCCURRED MORE THAN THREE YEARS BEFORE THE COMMUNICATION TO THE HOTLINE.

2. THERE IS NO INFORMATION OR INDICATION THAT A CHILD IS CURRENTLY BEING ABUSED OR NEGLECTED.

Really? This is going to save money?

Yes, I think that it ought to be obvious that if a complaint is non-criminal, over 3 years old, and not affecting any child today, then it should be ignored.

I would think, altho I have never tried, that if I went to my local police station and said: "I have a complaint about someone who was bugging me 5 years ago. He did not do anything criminal, and he is not bugging me now, but could you please investigate?" Then I would expect the police to politely ask me to move on.

And yet CPS wastes time investigating crap like this?

Not only that, but Arizona CPS/DCS is lobbying for a change in the law so that it can save money by canceling all those investigations!

Franklin writes:

Arizona, like so many other states, tries to do child protection on the cheap. Year after year, it indulges in the happy fantasy that too few caseworkers can do too much and do it effectively. They can’t. Poorly paid employees who often are asked to handle twice the caseloads called for by industry standards tend to do a poor job of protecting children. ...

So HB 2522 looks like an effort to keep funding levels the same by simply restricting what DCS needs to investigate. Yes, the state receives too many unnecessary calls. But as sure as the sunrise, HB 2522 will, if it becomes law, result in greater risk to children who need the very protection DCS exists to provide.

This is crazy. I don't know about Arizona, but California CPS is extremely well-funded, and case workers earn about $100k a year. They have way too many caseworkers for the need.

More money will not help them do a better job. They have too much money, and they find destructive ways to spend it.

Franklin is not a fan of CPS:

I’ve said before that more money isn’t the final answer to what ails children’s welfare agencies. The final answer is a change to the way they carry out their legislative mandates. A greater emphasis on providing needed services to biological parents so they can care better for their children is the best way states can protect children. That includes a de-emphasis on foster care and a change in agency cultures that too often include taking too many children from too many parents.

I am glad that people like him are sticking up for parental rights, but I do not see any realistic hope for reforming CPS. It is foolish to think that CPS might get more money, hire better people, and do a better job.

CPS cannot be reformed. It is evil. The whole concept of govt bureaucrats taking anonymous non-criminal complaints and micro-managing parenting behavior is contrary to a free society.

O'Reilly and Thomas in the news

The trashy gossip site Gawker reports:

A New York appeals court held last week that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s school-age children don’t want to live with him anymore, and should live exclusively with their mother, O’Reilly’s ex-wife Maureen McPhilmy.

The lengthy decision affirms the holding of a Nassau County Supreme Court justice last year that the children, now aged 13 and 17, should live full-time with their mother (the former couple had been splitting residential custody). ...

The preference of McPhilmy and O’Reilly’s 17-year-old daughter is not particularly difficult to guess: As we noted last year, she told a court-appointed forensic examiner that she witnessed O’Reilly drag her mother down a staircase by the neck.

A lot of people hate O'Reilly for his abrasive style, so they will be celebrating this.

I did not follow this. Apparently she left him 5 years ago to marry a cop.

It would be amusing if he took the red pill.

The NY Times reports:

WASHINGTON — Breaking a decade-long silence, Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday suddenly started asking questions from the Supreme Court bench. ...

Justice Thomas’s questions came in a minor case on domestic violence convictions and gun rights. He made a series of inquiries about whether misdemeanor convictions can permanently suspend a constitutional right.

With Justice Scalia dead (and having died under mysterious circumstances), Thomas is the only one left who clearly understands that a man should not lose his constitutional rights just because he is accused of misdemeanor domestic violence.

Corruption of Men's Rights

The manosphere blogs are not very influential, and they are split between several views. Feminist blogs are much bigger.

A prominent men's rights blog is A Voice for Men, where Dean Esmay writes:

So listen up, you fools in the RooshV circle: there is nothing but misery and death down the Return of Kings path. You have to be a complete idiot to follow any advice the RoK cultists give you. If Roosh or other Return of Kings writers tell you that the sky is blue, triple check it – they’re just that insane.

The Men’s Human Rights Movement has a long and strained relationship with so-called “red pill” sleazy sex gurus like Return of Kings publisher RooshV. Roosh and Return of Kings have never, ever been MRA as every honest person who’s done 5 minutes of due diligence knows. ...

So here’s the truth: Daryush “Roosh” Valizade has written for years about his past supposed adventures traveling the world to have one night stands with the psychologically dysfunctional, neurotic women he picks up in sleazy meat markets around the world. In many of his books, you find what are undeniably confessions of Roosh raping multiple women. In fact, the words “serial rapist” are not too harsh to describe Roosh, at least if his own published, public writings are to be believed. As with Roosh’s friend Matt Forney, also a confessed rapist by any sane standard, it’s often been unclear whether what they’re writing is just the poorly-written rape fantasy porn, or if it’s the real thing.

Why the vitriol?

It is true that Roosh and RoK rarely speak of men's rights. They mainly give advice and commentary on how men can become better men.

Sure, some of their articles are provocative or offensive. Eg, they give tips on avoiding undesirable or troublesome women.

But they are not rapists, and these accusations are irresponsible and libelous. Roosh and RoK only advocate consensual relationships.

The term "rape" does have an ever expanding definition, with some feminists saying that all PIV sex is rape. If so, then nearly all men are rapists.

I post this just to point out how the men's rights movement has degenerated. Men have instincts to become white knights and attack their fellow men in any conflict with women. So we have men's rights groups who are not actually pushing for men's rights.

A site titled "A Voice for Men" attacks men for being men. It does not speak for me, or any men I know.

Update: For more on the attack on Roosh V, see this Reason article or Heartiste.

Update: Here is another attack on Roosh:

I think he's such a hateful embarrassment to humanity that he's single-handedly keeping aliens from contacting us.

This is crazy stuff. Roosh runs an excellent web site.

Men are commonly hated if they are either (1) successful with women, or (2) unsuccessful with women. I think that some psychological forces are at work against anyone like him.

Parents cannot settle support issues

According to USA law, a women has the unilateral right to opt out of parenthood by having an abortion at any time. A man has no such right, and can be forced into fatherhood. Furthermore, he can be forced into continuing involvement with the child, even if both parents agree to a financial settlement.

And when both parents agree to a settlement, both the judge and the press will blame the man.

The NY Post reports:

An Ivy League Lothario’s bid to get out of child support by giving his baby mama a one-time $150,000 payment was spanked by a Manhattan judge Thursday.

The 2013 Dartmouth grad offered the woman the pile of cash to “irrevocably terminate [his] parental rights” — because he was mad she refused to get an abortion and didn’t want to support the kid until he was 18.

The man, identified in court papers only as Avery G., 24, actually convinced the woman to take the lottery-style reduced-sum payout — which would be a lot of money up front but less than she would get from taking a monthly support check. ...

Avery G. will pay $832 a month for support, ...

Goldstein calls Avery’s bid both “unusual” and “extraordinary” and says there is no similar precedent for voluntarily signing away parental rights.

The mom, an $85,000-a-year marketing director, has sole legal and physical custody of the baby.

This anti-man, but it is also anti-woman, as the mom did not get the deal she wanted either.

I do not know how parents will ever get their rights back. Here both parents went to court with a settlement agreement, and the judge rejected the deal and insisted on supervising the child's upbringing for the next 18 years. And the newspaper agrees with the judge.

I don't know why the judge says that voluntarily signing away parental rights is so unusual. I have seen it in the local family court lots of times. Sometimes it happens just because a parent misses a couple of court appearances.

The same newspaper says Bernie Sanders is a communist.

In another attack on parental rights, the NY Times reports:

But anti-abortion groups argue that such cases should be decided according to the best interests of the embryos, the same legal standard used in child-custody disputes. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed last month in the Missouri dispute, they say an embryo’s most fundamental interest is to be born: “No other right is of any avail if a human being is not around to invoke it.”

The BIOTCh is called a legal standard, but it is not. Saying "best interests of the embryos" sounds like satire.

What would they do, appoint a court psychologist to evalate the embryo? That is not much more ridiculous than the family court does already.

Parents rejected for spanking beliefs

The Mass. supreme court is famous for being the first state court to mandate same-sex marriage, and even teaching it in schools, based on centuries-old constitutional language.

But what happens when a white Christian cis-gendered heteronormative traditional family wants to care for a foster child? They are ostracized for beliefs shared by 90% of the population a generation ago. Eugene Volokh reports:

The Massachusetts high court held today, in Magazu v. Dep‘t of Children & Families, that the state may refuse to place foster children with parents who occasionally spank their own children. This is so even if the parents promise to spank their children outside the foster children’s presence (because they already administer spankings only in private, without their other child watching).

I sometimes hear people say that we need more foster parents. It is all a lie. If you are a normal well-adjusted parent, the foster child agencies do not want you. They specialize in damaged kids, and keeping them damaged.

The research on spanking is that excessive spanking, such as several severe beatings a week, is correlated with worse outcomes later. No harm has been shown for moderate spanking, and no research has shown that any other method of discipline works better.

A lot of liberals today have the view that spanking is the choice of a low-class black family, and they are better than that.

I am just posting this to note the trend towards liberal agencies working to control families and deny personal freedoms. They will not stop until we are slaves to their collectivist ideology.

The black studs of Omaha

Omaha.com reports:

[Norman] Bennett became a reproductive citizen: At age 31, he has at least 13 kids by 11 women.

That’s a tentative tally, because various court records seem to indicate that the Omaha man may have 15 kids by 13 women. Or more. ...

Turns out, Bennett isn’t even Omaha’s most prolific procreator.

Attorney Meagan Spomer, who works in child-support enforcement, told Polk that she has heard of a deadbeat dad with 23 kids by 15 women. ...

Some judges have required deadbeat dads to name each child. Any slip-ups, and certain judges will send dads to jail on the spot.

By law, child-support cases are supposed to stop short of becoming a sort of punitive paternity court. High court rulings have essentially outlawed the concept of a debtor’s prison — where defendants go to jail simply because they can’t pay down their financial obligations such as child support.

The Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled that any jail time in child-support cases should be coercive — an attempt to force the dad to chip away at whatever he owes.

One important note: Whether Bennett pays up or not, the women he impregnated are receiving child support through the welfare program formerly known as Aid to Dependent Children.
In other words, state and federal taxpayers are partly footing the bill for Bennett’s brood.
In turn, the State of Nebraska seeks reimbursement from fathers, such as Bennett, who have impregnated the women now receiving welfare.

Do not expect the Obama-Clinton Democrats to do anything about this, because all those kids are likely to become Democrat voters.

To maintain their power, they have to destroy the family and keep a permanent underclass.

Happy New Year. Vote for Donald J. Trump.