From: shedevil@vix.com (Anne P. Mitchell JD)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,alt.dads-rights
Subject: Re: Custody case question
Date: 28 Aug 92 15:34:08 GMT
Organization: Fathers' Rights & Equality Exchange
NNTP-Posting-Host: gw.home.vix.com

In a recent missive srm@world.std.com (Stevens R Miller) tells us:
*My professor of Family Law (Ms. Kristian Miccio, a much-honored
*activist and very hard-core feminist) claims that the father has
*an advantage in custody disputes because he usually has the better
*income and, unlike the mother, is not socially assigned the duty of
*staying at home with the kids.  That is, a good mother will stay home
*with her children, according to our quaint notions of her role, but
*a good mother would also be able to provide for the financial needs
*of those children; a Catch-22.  A good father, on the other hand, is
*not expected to stay home; he just hires a nanny.  A counter to this
*is the possibility that the court can order support payments from the
*father, but these are not reliable, hard to enforce, and never equate
*to the quality of life that direct support (i.e., living in his
*bigger house, in his better neighborhood, etc) would provide.
*--
*Stevens R. Miller, J.D.


Sigh...it is such "hard core feminists" that have contributed, in
part, to the current custody battle situation.  [Note:  I am using the
term "hard core feminist" because that is what Stevens used, not to
indicate "feminists" in general, if, indeed, such a class can even be
defined.]

This disinformation is so wide spread...social statistics not
directly on point are so stretched and twisted and linked, that the
above sort of statement is just accepted wholesalely as true.
Besides, it fits in so nicely with current feeding frenzy upon
"deadbeat dads".

In point of fact, from not only my somewhat extensive experience as a
fathers' rights advocate, but from studies which actually were
designed to study the very issue in question, fathers do NOT
win more often, they do NOT have any bargaining advantage, and, in
fact, the entire family law/court system in most, if not all, states
is VERY slanted towards mothers.

For reference, look up Profs. Mnookin and Maccoby's recent
Stanford Child Custody Study, a comprehensive study of nearly 1000
divorcing couples in California, which revealed that while more than two-thirds
of the fathers wanted some form of physical custody, nearly one third of
them requested less custody then they actually wanted. By contrast,
the mothers almost always asked for far more than they wanted, putting
them in a superior bargaining position, and ensuring that even in the
event of a compromise, the mothers would end up with at least as much
custodial involvement as they wanted, while fathers in a compromise,
having started out at their desired position, ended up with less than
they really wanted.

The researchers involved in the Stanford Child Custody Study
hypothesize that it may simply be that fathers in some way feel less
strongly about custody then do mothers.  However this theory is based
on responses to a "1 to 10" response option question asking the respondents
to rate how they felt about custody, with 1 being someone who didn't really
care what custody arrangements were made, and 10 being someone who was
determined to get the exact custody they wanted.  On average, mothers and
fathers alike rated their feelings about custody to be between an 8 and a
9, with the women averaging an 8.8, and the men averaging an 8.4.  Even the
researchers concede that this is a small difference indeed.

But the really striking finding was that in cases where both the mother
and the father wanted the *father* to have sole custody of the
children, the court still awarded full custody of the children to the
*mother* in over 12% of the cases!



Other information which comes from the most recent census:

* 37.8% of noncustodial fathers have no visitation rights.
* 54.9% of noncustodial fathers have some visitation rights but little
  enforcement.
* 7.3% of noncustodial fathers have joint custody (shared parenting).
* Fathers with joint custody (shared parenting) paid 90.2% of support.
* Fathers with visitation rights paid 79.1% of support.
* Fathers with no rights paid 44.5% of ordered support.
* 86% of fathers who did not pay support did not have visitation.
* 1.8 million (15%) of fathers have custody.

Source: Children's And Parents Rights Association (CAPRA) Of Ohio



I realize that support isn't relevant to the issue here, but the
figures are interesting so I left them in.


Anyway, just another perspective for you to think about.
Newsgroups: misc.legal