milo hobgoblin said:
Couldnt agree with you more. And after I thought about it last night.. I realized spending time thinking about things like this doesnt fix the problem and just makes one angry.
Its still a funny story.
But.. even you HR have to admit.. men are not treated equally in divorce court.. especially in matters of child support and custody. That "inequality" fuels a lot of the resentment men have about this issue.. and untils its addressed .. it will never get better.
Women cant ask for equality only when it suits them.
From what I have seen, and I am being 100% honest here, the assets are usually very fairly divided. Now, if it is different in other states, I can't really say.
With regard to child support/custody/visitation, it has been my experience that men usually are happy to let the children live with mom and to just visit with them. I would say about 85% of my cases, that was the case. The other 15% duke it out and it can get SO NASTY that it is disheartening. Now, maybe men do this because they wrongly assume that the woman will automatically get to be the residential parent, anyway. On the other hand, maybe they don't want to have to take care of the child every day and prefer having set visitation times, instead. In Ky, and lots of states, there used to be a presumption that children under 7 are better off with mom unless mom is unfit. This was called the "tender years doctrine", but that was found unconstitutional years ago, and now the standard is the "best interests of the child." Believe it or not, in my experience, if there is any favoritism toward giving residential custody to mom, it is usually the older, MALE judges who do it. I'm not kidding! They are just more old fashioned. Here, after a kid is about 10 or so, the judge does place some weight on where the kids says she/he wants to live so long as it is for good reasons.
With regard to child support, in almost every state, child support is primarily determined by formula and in NO STATE is there any regard whatsoever as to gender in determining the amount of child support to be paid. Most of the time, you plug in incomes of residential and non-residential parent, health insurance premiums, day care expenses, and viola, a presumptive payment is determined.