The American Legal System and Children's Custody Issues

Sometimes new ideas come up which may sound good in theory, but are put into practice before realizing the negative impact and consequences. The way the American legal system has come to deal with children's issues would have been best put into the category "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Take a step back to "old skool" legal terminology. One phrase which was standard was "legitimacy is presumed." Even those without legal expertise can understand what that means-- if a woman was married when she gave birth, her husband was the child's father, with all rights and responsibilities attached to that role. It was not a matter of "proving" that a child was or was not a man's biological offspring; biology was not the source of paternity-- the marital relationship between the child's mother and her husband was.

The other "old skool" phrase was "the child follows its mother." For those who are not familiar with this, it simply meant that if an unmarried woman brought a child into the world, she and she alone bore all the rights and all the responsibilities for the upkeep and raising of her child.

Things began to change-- and have become very messy. Not only has the marital relationship become irrelevant in the determining of rights and responsibilities, the result is an all-out warfare where family relationships are undermined and the children are the ones who suffer the most.

In casting aside the old skool method of determining what does and does not constitute paternity, two equally-disturbing concepts have blossomed and gone way out of control-- and they are very much connected. The first subject is Child Support. To word it in the most straightforward manner, child support is a matter of putting one's hand in the wallet of a male who frequently is unable or unwilling to pay-- and, consequently, granting him "rights" because of this money. Sometimes this is done by government agencies, as in the case of mothers who are on welfare; sometimes it is done by attorneys; sometimes acquiring child support is done at the request or with the cooperation of the mother-- and sometimes it is not. Women are often tricked into believing that if they claim "Good Cause" for not initiating a child support case, the matter will be dropped and the "absent parent" will not be contacted-- but this is not the case. The agencies then go ahead and demand money from the absent parent-- often without the mother's knowledge. In such instances, the mother is given a false sense of security, not even being informed that the child support action against the absent parent grants him the ability to claim all sorts of "rights"-- from visitation to claims for custody.

Connected to this negative manner of determining paternity is the subject of "Fathers' Rights." It may have sounded good in its original theory-- that a person who had been in his child's everyday life should not be put in the position of that relationship being severed in the event of a divorce. However, the media, "support groups," and the legal system have gone way out of bounds in regard to "fathers" having "rights"-- it is no longer a matter of divorced fathers who wish to continue a role in their children's lives, but those who were never in their children's lives in the first place suddenly insisting that they must have "rights" equal to mothers. A guy who impregnates a girl, not only choosing to not marry her but to also refrain from accepting any responsibility, can, at any point in time, pop up and demand his "rights." Biology is seen as a more important factor than responsibility, more important than the relationship a mother has bonded with her child since its birth, and more important than the child's needs and feelings. There have even been widely-publicized cases of sperm donors seeking visitation and custodial rights; and, even more horrifying, similar demands on the part of rapists for their "offspring."

Children need the bond between themselves and their parents; if only one parent has been in the child's life, taking on the day-to-day responsibilities as well as building that all-important bond, these modern trends of child support and fathers' rights should not be allowed to undermine it. A child needs to know where he lives, on whom he can depend, who is there for him. Perhaps a clear view of the consequences to children can be shown in the case of a five-year-old girl who was put on a plane alone at various times of the year to travel between her father's home state and her mother's home state-- she approached her paternal grandmother and asked her "Where do I belong?"