A rugged economic climate has created difficult times for families and for many divorced ones, where cooperation is not the norm, providing for children of divorce is proving more difficult.
Family law courts do not exist to help families peacefully co-exist or to put children first. It’s well known that it’s a adversarial, conflict-fanning, money-making, job producing system that uses families for its’ own benefit. So when family economic crisises reach the courts, it becomes ugly.
Children need financial support and some divorced dads, and some mothers, just don’t meet their moral obligation. Some single moms don’t want the legal battles and learn to live with lack. Some fathers probably do too.
However, some parents live to fight the other parent over every crumb, out of bitterness resulting from the failed marriage.
So when unemployment hits and one provider loses a significant part of their income, there are going to be problems. The Denver Post is reporting that some parents are having child support deducted from small unemployment checks. So on top of the job loss, a major stresser for any human being, there is the anxiety of being able to provide for one’s children and keep a roof over their own head, a vehicle to drive and food and other bills paid.
If the government insists of numerous federal bailouts without the public having much of a say then it should focus on helping families, and families first and families directly weather the storm of economic crisis. Beating a down parent by muscling them when they’re down is dehumanizing and inflicts more stress into sometimes already highly volatile family interactions.
The dirty secret has always been that family law courts don’t care about children, don’t care about families. They do care about processing voluminous case loads, keeping judges employed and making attorney’s wealthy with repeat business.
It’s time for an audit of how business is done and time for government to either retire from marriages and divorces or have a public board to oversee the courts’ often sloppy, unethical work on taxpayer dollars.
