'I'm not a wallet, I am a father'
Darrin White, a 34-year-old father of four from Prince George, B.C., hanged himself last year after a family court judge ordered him out of his home and imposed alimony and support payments that exceeded his income.
"Thousands of men and grandparents say the Divorce Act and the family court system too often devastate children and divorcing parents. After years of working for fairness in the law, they fear proposed changes to the act have been dismissed by two key cabinet ministers after feminist *manipulation' by the bureaucracy. Chris Cobb reports."
If Hal Legere had his way, family court justices across the country would be obliged to deliver a standard speech to any mother or father demanding sole custody of a child. The speech would go something like this: "If you can prove to me that the children are in danger, to the extent they are in need of protection, continue on.
"If you can't prove that, according to all rules of evidence, I would suggest you sit down together and work out some type of schedule you can both agree to. If it comes back to me, I am going to have the children spend substantially equal time with both of you. Unless you prove the child will be in danger, I will tell you now: that will be my decision."
Mr. Legere heads the Parents' Coalition of British Columbia, one of dozens of groups across Canada fighting for changes to the 30-year-old federal Divorce Act - or, more specifically, changes based on the 1998 report For the Sake of the Children, which was the work of a special joint committee of the House of Commons and Senate.
"Every child deserves to have the influence of both parents and extended family," says Mr. Legere. "We don't believe in automatic shared parenting because there are cases where one parent says 'you take the kids, I'm moving on.' We want presumption of shared parenting so if either a mother and father go to court asking for equal time with the children, they get it."
Every case is different, none is without pain or even tragedy.
There have been suicides, such as Prince George, B.C., father of four Darrin White, who hanged himself last year at age 34 after a family court judge ordered him out of his home and imposed alimony and support payments that exceeded his income.
Mr. Legere's situation is easier than many. He has custody of the eldest of his three children, his wife has custody of the younger two.
"I was working an odd shift at the time of the first court judgment," says Mr. Legere. "The judge essentially gave me nine full days access plus a few hours here and there over a five-month period. The order was worded in such a way that I could not see my children on the days I was working. So I quit my job. I'm not a wallet, I am a father. I attempted to get a regular schedule and couldn't, so now I work whenever I can, on the days I don't have the children.
"That's typical of a family court decision," he adds. "Common sense applied in other courts rarely exists in family courts. There is a presumption that mom has the kids, dad is the visitor and dad pays irrespective of who breaks up the family."
Divorce affects a staggering number of Canadians and their children. About 70,000 couples divorce each year, affecting some 50,000 children. About one-third of all divorces involve formal custody orders although some are negotiated by parents outside the court system.
According to the latest (1998) Statistics Canada figures, mothers are granted custody in 60 per cent of cases, far ahead of joint custody (30 per cent). Fathers receive custody in only 10 per cent of cases. To those lucky enough to have avoided the family court system in Canada, it sounds like a no-brainer. Those who have been through the slow, grinding and expensive family court mill, and have been stripped of their assets, dignity and their legal right to help raise their children, say they know better.
The system, they say, is replete with money-grubbing lawyers, judges who have neither the time nor interest to properly consider the implications of their decisions, and who inevitably fall back on 30 years of divorce case law that is anachronistic, anti-father and, most important, not in the best interests of children.
The battle against the Divorce Act is being waged by disparate groups across the country, some of whom will be on Parliament Hill tomorrow from noon to 2 p.m. for their annual Mother's Day rally.
There are fathers, and some mothers, who have been denied the right to be fully involved in the raising of their children. Some haven't seen their children for years.
There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of small groups across Canada but none more vocal, organized and emotionally involved than the National Grandparents Association whose 5,000 members have seen their bonds with grandchildren snapped - and grandchildren they have spent years helping to nurture, literally disappear from their lives overnight.
"We're all upset that the federal government doesn't seem interested in helping families," says association president Nancy Wooldridge.
"We are trying to be a voice for the children because they are the most important people in this. We are old enough to survive the heartache and the pain but the children aren't. They grow up with an abandoned feeling because they think their grans and grand dads don't love them any more. "I hate to say this, but it's mostly the mothers who are to blame. I believe in equal rights and if I'm a plumber I want to be paid the same as a man. I also believe that parents should have equal rights when it comes to their children."
The joint committee's For Sake of the Children report has been stalled, for more than four years, and all but suffocated, in a bureaucratic and political siege that began when then Justice Minister Anne McLellan officially received the report and announced five months later that more study was needed.The cornerstone of the report is the replacement of the terms "custody and access" with a concept called shared parenting which is, effectively, joint custody. Shared parenting does not necessarily mean 50-50, says the report, but rather a realistic continuation of the routines in place before parents separate.
Changes advocated by the committee would exclude all situations involving proven cases of physical abuse, but in an effort to stamp out false accusations of abuse, which can affect post-divorce arrangements for years, the committee also recommends punishment for those proven to have lied. Other recommendations include punishing custodial parents who routinely deny, or obstruct, visitation rights granted by courts to non-custodial parents.
Nearly three years of study and consultation with the provinces ended this month, but the worst fears of those advocating change were realized last week when new Justice Minister Martin Cauchon told reporters he would not keep Ms. McLellan's commitment and warned that any custody and access changes would be minimal, if they come at all.
Between the tabling of the joint committee's report, and Mr. Cauchon's announcement, there has been intense lobbying by feminist groups who are opposed to change. Typically, those fighting against changes to the Divorce Act say the joint committee's report is flawed and the all-party committee itself was instigated and controlled by men's lobby groups. They claim the report ignores the issues of violence and abuse against women and children and complain that none of the 48 recommendations address the issue of violence as its primary focus. Also ignored, they say, are numerous cases when non-custodial parents - usually fathers - fail to meet their visitation commitments to their children.
Justice ministry bureaucrats spent $1.5 million last year on a series of cross-country consultations with various interested groups. All meetings were all closed to media, criticized as a waste of time and money by activists on both sides and boycotted by some feminist groups who objected to being in the same room as pro-father groups.
Liberal MP Roger Gallaway, who co-chaired the joint committee, is furious at Mr. Cauchon's apparent dismissal of the report and says both Mr. Cauchon and Ms. McLellan have been manipulated by bureaucrats pushing the feminist agenda.
More important, he adds, is that in the throne speech of January 2000, the government promised to amend custody and access laws.
"Clearly, the intransigence of the minister is a reflection of the will of the Justice department bureaucracy," says Mr. Gallaway. "But I am not sure what he is frightened of. This is a massive social problem that affects tens of thousands of working Canadians, from men who are routinely treated as scapegoats, to grandparents who are taking regular care of their grandchildren one day and the kids are gone from their lives, literally the next day.
"The only conclusion you can draw," adds Mr. Gallaway. "is that the minister is quite willing to mislead Canadians. As a Liberal MP, I have been misleading people, but at least I have been doing it unintentionally."
Others see Mr. Cauchon's ease at reneging on Ms. McLellan's commitment as simple political calculation.
"Women are better at organizing themselves politically," says Peter Cornakovic of Fathers Are Capable Too (FACT), one of the larger pro-father groups. "Men are more inclined to go it alone - the John Wayne approach, I call it. The feminine way is different and far more effective."
FACT's Web site (www.fact.on.ca) gets 3,000 hits a day and the group is the only one in Canada operating a help line. It handles 15 to 20 calls day.
"We get calls from distraught fathers, grandparents or new wives of distraught fathers," says Mr. Cornakovic. "They are desperate for support but there is no support available to them. Many men blame their ex-wives but they shouldn't. It's the system. If there is a dispute over children, the woman simply alleges violence and she will always get custody. So why wouldn't she? The system plays into the hands of the manipulator. Men are being abused and violated by the judiciary."
Toronto bicycle courier Nick Kovats, who spent 18 months counselling on the FACT help line, now co-ordinates the Freedom for Kids network, disseminating information, studies and newspaper stories on custody and access on two second-hand computers and a high-speed Internet network.
"I spoke with more than 500 men on the FACT line and I couldn't handle it any more," he says. "It's emotionally exhausting dealing with distraught guys who are spending the winter living in their pickup trucks because they've nowhere else to go. Some men just cave in. It's staggering that we're still in this situation in 2002."
Mr. Kovats, who has been separated for eight years but sees his children regularly, doesn't expect any quick fixes.
"What Cauchon has done was predictable," he says, "but no less despicable. We have to look for incremental change through more collaboration across the country. But time is precious because most of us have full-time jobs. We are in it for the long term."
Hal Legere, of the Parents' Coalition, agrees. "The government is looking at us and saying 'these people are not really that organized.so why should we worry?'" he says. "I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I do understand politics a little. What's happening is that the women's groups, which don't really represent the majority of women, are organized and they have government money." Feminist groups are funded in their various activities by millions of dollars in federal and provincial taxpayer money. Not one group on the father or grandparent side has been granted government funding.
Nancy Wooldridge's grandparents association is putting more emphasis on provincial law and, in British Columbia at least, has had some success in getting grandparents a legal right to be heard in family court.
Others are working on education programs to prevent couples from financially and psychologically bankrupting themselves.
Sean Cummings, who runs a divorce education program for men and women in Halifax under the provincial Community Health Promotion Plan, says rather than wait for government to change the law, people should become proactive to change their own situations. Mr. Cummings recently surveyed 50 of "graduates" from his 15-week course. They are mostly middle income people ranging from those who plan to separate to those who have been divorced for several years but still have unsolved problems.
"I asked them how often had they been back to court," recalls Mr. Cummings. "The bulk had been back to court at least three times and collectively had spent more than half a million dollars in legal fees. That's just 50 middle-income people in Nova Scotia.
"I'm not anti-lawyer but I would suggest that this is an inherently conflicted process and there's something unethical about a lawyer who recommends a course of action to a client when he or she knows it will raise the level of conflict. And they charge a fee for it."
Mr. Cummings attempts to teach people how to survive divorce.
"It's a minefield," he says, "and most people step on the mines. So I am helping people to learn the benefits of waging peace with one another instead of war. I teach people how to choose a lawyer - most people don't even know you can negotiate a retainer with a lawyer. And I teach them to do as much as possible themselves. It isn't just about keeping people out of the court system but helping people get on with their lives. I had had people in my course who have been divorced for five years and still haven't settled their conflicts."
Californian James Cooke, who has led a movement to change custody and access legislation throughout the U.S., says that when joint custody is presumed by a court, most other areas of conflict disappear automatically.
"The concept of joint custody became the fastest moving of any family law change in the 20th century," he says. "It swept the country and is now the norm in about 90 per cent of the cases in California. It places the burden of proof on the party who wants sole custody and lightens the burden of the parent who wants to co-operate and share. There is an acceptance here, especially in the court system, that joint custody is of benefit to children. One parent beating up on another in court is no lesson for a child."
Voices:
Heidi Nabert, a witness at the special Senate-Commons Joint Committee into Custody and Access, 1997: "I told the lawyer I didn't know what my rights were, that I wanted to end my marriage, and I wanted to know that if I left the house, would I lose my entitlement to the property. His response shocked me. ... He said, and I quote, 'get him to hit you.' ... This is what my lawyer said to me. In 17 years of marriage, my husband never raised a hand to me. But he went on to say, 'If you get him to hit you, you can have him forcibly removed from your home and you'll get spousal support.'"
Dr. Eric Hood of the Clark Institute of Psychiatry, Toronto, on working with children of divorcing parents. A witness at the same committee: "Those of us who work in trying to assess and understand these situations end up very stressed, very troubled ... it's as if we're like the children and it makes our stomachs churn. If it does that to me and it's not my family, what's the pressure on the children?"
Unnamed eight-year-old committee witness: "There should be a law that parents can't yell at the children when they get divorced. It's not the child's fault."
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