I once asked the head of a child welfare agency what procedures they had to prevent spurious allegations of abuse from being used to win child custody cases — his answer, essentially, was "none." 

If this article is at all accurate, and I have no reason to think it's not, the family law system in the United States is a model of fairness compared to that of Japan (VirginiaLawBlogger, 12/10/09).

According to the article, the Japanese system is rigged and makes no bones about it.  The rules are simple; mothers get custody; all claims of domestic violence made by a woman against a man are true; no claims of domestic violence made by a man against a woman are true; all claims of child abuse against a man are true; no serious attempt is made to find facts which contradict any of the above rules. 

And it's a 'winner-take-all' system, so any mother who wants to get rid of her child's dad doesn't have to work too hard to do it.

If anything, it looks like Japan's definition of 'domestic violence' may be even looser than that of our federal Office on Violence Against Women.  The Japanese version includes such mysterious gems as "psychological violence" and "educational violence."  What constitutes the latter, I can't even begin to guess.  The former can occur when a man raises his voice to his wife; it can also occur when he is "excessively quiet." 

There was a time when we adhered to the notion that laws had to be sufficiently easy to understand for people to comport their behavior in accordance with them.  After all, one of the main aims of law is to order social behavior.  So it doesn't do much good to have laws that people can't obey because they figure out what they mean.

That's one of the many things that are wrong with domestic violence laws.  No normally intelligent person can read the definition offered by Japanese law or by the OVW and say with any certainty what does and doesn't constitute DV.  Given that the actual concept of "violence," (i.e. physical striking intended to cause injury or damage to property) was cast aside long ago, the laws have set us all adrift.  Did I speak too loudly?  Not loudly enough?  Did I ask my wife to spend less?  Did I say that taking courses in basket weaving wasn't as good an idea as courses in computer engineering?  Who knew that all of those things could constitute violence?

The point being that, having largely abandoned common sense and expanded the definition of domestic violence beyond recognition, it becomes apparent that domestic violence laws aren't meant to guide proper behavior.  They're meant in part as a "gotcha!"  That is, they're meant to punish wrongdoers, who aren't entitled to know in all cases whether their behavior violates the law or not.

But read the linked-to article.  It's a good one.  And if you're a dad, you can take some small solace in knowing that things could be worse; you could be living in Japan.  But of course if those plane tickets in your wife's purse list Tokyo as the destination, look out.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 10:02 am and is filed under Family Law, Domestic Violence/DV System, Divorce/Separation/Child Custody.