Saturday, September 24, 2016

A Broken System: Halls of Justice

An article in the Huffington Post titled, A Broken System: Halls of Justice discusses the perception of the legal divorce process vs. the hard reality of how it works.
In reality, many parents experience disingenuous and fraudulent motion practice for months and even years prior to a hearing or court hallway encounter. All while being subjected to financial hardship as a direct result of court actions and, many times, disingenuous litigation playing out.
When a parent is sometimes dealing with an opposing party with deep pockets, compromised ethics, and a lot of skin in the game put into false allegations they often use money and litigation as weapons to pressure and force situations to procure outcomes favorable for themselves but adverse to the child and other parent.
As I have often mentioned, one of the most difficult obstacles to divorce reform is that people just cannot believe that in a democratic society the system can be so bad. They view situations such as mine as uncommon aberrations not the norm. Partly this is because many, including myself, know people who have divorced in more or a less amicable manner. This is possible, even likely, when two reasonably intelligent and reasonably moral people go through the divorce process. The problematic cases arise when one or both parties does not act ethically. Like rotting meat, this attracts unethical lawyers and others involved in the divorce process because they smell easy money.

Often, again my case is a good example, this leads to massive fraud and other criminal actions that are not only tolerated but encouraged by a divorce industry because it is so financially beneficial to them. Sadly for many money trumps ethics. The tragic part is that often the money comes from the ethical law abiding party. Worse it always hurts the innocent children.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

Gender Stereotypes

It sometimes amazes me how prevalent gender stereotypes are. On NPR this morning I heard a story about the Washington D.C., police chief Cathy Lanier who is stepping down to take a position with the NFL.

The story mentioned that only 3% of police chiefs are female which is of course is unfortunate. However, in the story Katherine Spillar with the National Center for Women and Policing, a project of the Feminist Majority Foundation argued that it was unfortunate because, "Women tend to use a more community-oriented style of policing, are better communicators, can de-escalate potentially violent situations before they turn violent."

So rather than arguing against societal stereotyping and laws such as limitations on women in the military which result in few women reaching the top echelons in police departments, Ms. Spiller tries to use stereotyping to argue that women are better than men. The irony of her argument is simply incredible.

But then, to NPRs credit, they also talked to Dorothy Moses Schulz who is the author of a book about female chiefs called "Breaking The Brass Ceiling." Ms. Scultz responded to Ms. Spillar's comments with:
"Whether women all have better communication skills or are all better at de-escalating - I mean, those are basically sexist generalizations that there's no proof to."
It is nice to see some intelligence in gender discussions.

Eventually people will also understand that awarding undeserved alimony to women just reinforces the stereotype that women are weak and unable to take care of themselves.

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Real World Divorce

Real World Divorce is an online book written by several authors including the remarkably talented Philip Greensspun who has been a computer scientist, educator, pilot and entrepreneur, often at the same time.  The book is a concise and clear overview of the reality divorce, mostly in the United States. It isn't pretty.
"When young people ask me about the law as a career," said one litigator, "I tell them that in this country whom they choose to have sex with and where they have sex will have a bigger effect on their income than whether they attend college and what they choose as a career."
Divorce in this country is for the most part highly profitable for the unethical and criminal and detrimental to the honest and innocent. Family court and the divorce industry are so damaging to children they are effectively the leading cause of child abuse. It is heart wrenching. Yet little is done about it. Why? As they say -  it's the money, stupid.

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Lifetime alimony Debate

Although it is from a few years ago, a debate on lifetime alimony on the Diane Rehm Show is still interesting.

"Lifetime alimony payments may soon be a relic of the past" - sadly we are still waiting for this to be true in all but cases where it warranted.