Follow the Money
The "best interest" standard also transforms Judges into dispensers of
patronage who can appoint evaluators of both parents and children. Here we begin to
glimpse the political dynamic that will be fueled by the funding proposed by the Bush
administration.
Family courts are controlled by bar associations. To satisfy their members, judges can
hire them at public expense or at litigants' expense. "Lucrative patronage
positions," writes legal scholar Herbert Jacob, "are generally passed out to the
judge's political cronies or to persons who can help his private practice."
A judge can even order litigants to hire his friends, on pain of incarceration. Legally
unimpeachable citizens who give neither grounds nor consent for a divorce are ordered to
pay attorneys and psychotherapists they have not hired for services they do not want, and
may be jailed for not complying. A father can be ordered to sell his house and turn the
proceeds over to attorneys he has not hired for a divorce he did nothing, legally
speaking, to bring on.
Judges also appoint "attorneys ad litem" to ostensibly represent the
children's interests. These officials are notorious
At the very time churches are
relinquishing their role as guardians of what is supposedly a sacred covenant, they are
being recruited as government informers.
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for cronyism and for advocating the removal of fathers. In 2001, a
two-year investigation into court appointments in New York state by a special inspector
general found "cronyism, politics, and nepotism" in appointments of attorneys ad
litem and other officials. In March 2000, four Arkansas senators were convicted on
federal racketeering charges connected with contracts for attorneys ad litem and
child support enforcement.
The patronage clients most likely to benefit from the Bush proposals are
psychotherapists, who likewise serve mostly to provide a rationale for removing fathers.
"The marriage of law and psychology has reached the heights of disproportionate power
for the psychologists. . . in the family courts," writes Margaret Hagan in Whores
of the Court: The Fraud of Psychiatric Testimony and the Rape of American Justice.
Psychologist Sanford Braver calls such expert advice little more than guesswork. He
writes, "There is absolutely no credible evidence that these [methods] are valid
predictors of which spouse will make the best primary parent. In fact, there is no
evidence that there is a scientifically valid way for a custody evaluator to choose the
best primary parent."
Braver attributes their obvious father-hostility to gender bias, but pecuniary interest
may be a sounder explanation. He quotes one evaluator to the effect that almost all his
business would be lost were not fathers routinely removed.
Already ubiquitous in custody proceedings, psychotherapy has been developing a new
market as an alternative to litigation. This has also made it appealing to the federal
marriage promoters. Many states now require divorcing couples to undergo counseling,
mediation, and marriage education of the kind being mandated by the Bush administration.
Not only is there is no proof that such programs reduce divorce, it is fairly obvious that
they thrive on it. According to the Administration for Children and Families,
"Marriage education is a research-based approach that teaches couples how to build
and maintain healthy, stable marriages and handle marital distress and breakdown."
The last word slips in the government wedge, since all the counseling in the world is
superfluous so long as one parent can simply take the children and leave.
"Mediation was pitched to the public as a service that would reduce the costs of
litigation," writes Judy Parejko, herself a mediator, in Stolen Vows. "It
sounded really good. But such well-intentioned messages served to cover up that no-fault
was inherently forced divorce."
Parejko describes how her colleagues actually encouraged divorce. She claims her
court-affiliated work was terminated by a judge and she was locked out of her office for
trying to repair marriages. "They were in the business of mediation, charging a hefty
fee for their settlement work," she writes, "and without a steady flow of
customers, their business would dry up."
Half the jurisdictions in America now mandate marriage education during divorce.
"The programs offer instruction in how to behave during a divorce and afterward, for
the benefit of the children," explains the New York Dally News. Such provisions
convey the appearance that officials are trying to minimize divorce; in fact, they shift
blame onto the parent who fails to cooperate with it. "The fact that one parent
didn't want the divorce — or that one of them had broken the promises they'd made
when they were married — these were issues I was supposed to ignore," writes
Parejko.
The administration claims its marriage measures are "voluntary" — that
is, unless you want to keep your children. Conducted by professionals with a financial
stake in divorce, these programs add clients to the gravy train and further transfer
control of children to the state. Revealingly, the Canadian Bar Association pushes for
coerced parent education, so parents who are involuntarily divorced must also be
involuntarily educated into acquiescing in the loss of their children: "The CBA urges
the federal government to require parents to take mandatory parental education before they
are permitted to pursue court proceedings involving their children."
At first glance, it appears the government is requiring parents to attend the classes
before it will permit the divorce; a closer look at the careful wording reveals precisely
the opposite. The court can still summarily remove the children, and parents who want them
back must first accept government instruction in how to behave toward those who have taken
them away. "We want to pull away from the idea that parents have rights in relation
to their children," says Jennifer Cooper of the CBA's family law section, which
represents 2,200 divorce lawyers.
Noting that mobs of unhappy dads who haven't seen their children for months or years
now picket the homes of judges, the Guardian newspaper recommends that the protesters
The healthy marriages project appears
to be largely a vehicle for expanding the already formidable child-support enforcement
apparatus.
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be silenced with instruction: "The system first needs to educate
parents and provide a range of services, such as mediation and parenting classes."
The Washington Post describes a measure in Virginia that makes parent education
"mandatory for anyone, married or not, who goes to court over custody, visitation, or
child support." Again, the fine print reveals how the measure, far from checking
divorce, will insert additional layers of officialdom between parents and their children,
and intimidate parents who object to having their children removed. |
