Here's a video of a speech by Carol Rhodes.  For over 20 years, she was a Friend of the Court in Michigan's 37th Circuit.  That meant that she was part of the court bureaucracy that administered custody, child support and visitation issues.  She's written a book entitled "Friend of the Court, Enemy of the Family."  In short, she's the spy who came in from the cold, a whistleblower on the uses and abuses of the family law system that she saw first hand.

What she saw was a family court system whose every action was driven by money.  The prospect of federal funds flowing to the state for every dollar of child support ordered and collected meant that ability to pay was of secondary importance to judges.  The more support ordered, the more was paid and the more money poured into Lansing from Washington, D.C.  Unsurprisingly, visitation orders have little importance to judges because they require court time, but don't produce revenue. 

And that attitude filtered down to all levels of the family court personnel.  If a person wanted information or forms or instructions about an issue like visitation, they might be lied to or have the information or forms withheld, because the flow of dollars was all-important.  A custodial parent seeking an increase in support were treated with kid gloves; non-custodial parents seeking downward modifications got the back of some bureaucrat's hand.  In the family court vocabulary, fathers were "payers" and considered to be unnecessary and probably dangerous to children.

All of this was enforced by clearly articulated instructions by superiors.  Failure to follow those instructions threatened jobs and 401k plans.

None of this is news.  The Office of Child Support Enforcement as much as spells it out in its own publications that plaintively suggest to state family courts that they might consider setting support at levels that obligors can actually pay.  Of course that would help fathers stay in their children's lives; it would help ex-spouses to reduce conflict; it would keep dads who can't pay out of jail.  In short, no one is served by too-high support orders, which non-custodial parents can't pay and which result in endless anguish, bad blood and litigation.  No one benefits that is, except those who rely on the system for their employment - people like the ones Carol Rhodes worked with every day for 20 years.

While you're at the website with the video of Rhodes' speech, why not sign the petition too?

Thanks to Maura for the heads-up.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 7:23 pm and is filed under Child Support/Child Support Enforcement, Divorce/Separation/Child Custody. You can trackback from your own site.