Second Chances for Marriage

Second Chances, a proposal to reduce unnecessary divorce, was presented October 21, 2011 at The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.    Model legislation to present to state legislators include

1.  a bill requiring a mandatory one-year waiting period prior to marriage dissolution,
2.  a bill establishing a Center to develop capacity to prevent unnecessary divorces, and
3.  a bill on education requirements for divorcing parents.

William J. Doherty, a professor of Family Social Service at the University of Minnesota,and Leah Ward Sears, the former chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, authored the report, with suggestions from other individuals involved in the marriage movement.

The authors found that about 40 percent of couples already deeply into the divorce process report that one or both spouses are interested in the possibility of reconciliation, a modest reduction in divorce would benefit more than 400,000 U.S. children each year, and a modest reduction in divorce would produce significant savings for U.S. taxpayers.

There is no waiting period in many states, like Nevada and New Hampshire.  In Virginia, Maryland, and D.C., there is a one year waiting period.

David L. Levy stated in the question and answer period that joint custody has been found to be a factor in reducing divorce.  Research finds that the states with the greatest amount of physical joint custody had the lowest divorce rate in subsequent years, according to data from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics.

"If a parent knows that he or she will have to interact with the child's other parent while the child is growing up, there is less incentive to divorce," said Levy.  Mr. Doherty replied that the authors of Second Chances did not want to get involved in joint custody legislation.

Panelist and researcher Theodora Ooms stated that proponents of this model legislation would have to work closely with domestic violence organizations.  Levy replied that although domestic violence is important, DV experts have generally opposed joint custody legislation.  Nevertheless, joint custody is legal in all 50 states and is a preference or presumption in 38 states and Washington, D.C. Nevertheless, the proposals by Second Changes are positive in that they may help to reduce the divorce rate, one of the long-time goals of the Children's Rights Council.

Although CRC works mainly to help children and parents who are separated, divorced or never-married, CRC recognizes that marriage is the best insulation for children.

Access (Visitation) Promised for Children and Families

New initiatives for children and families were announced March 6, 2011 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), but many people may be unaware of what they consist of. They are a sign of the progress we have all been working and fighting for over the years for children and families.   The statement that I find most impressive is to "Require states to establish access and visitation responsibilities in all initial child support orders." This is important because many times, a child support order is issued by a court or administrative agency without any corresponding access and visitation order, so that the non-custodial parent has to pay financial child support, without any access to his or her child, and vice versa. Such one-sided orders have been detrimental to children and families. Child Support Commissioner Vicki Turetsky and many other people deserve credit for promoting this change. When the HHS budget is approved by Congress, the initiatives below will become law.

Note: the more than 2 million non-custodial mothers in the U.S. will also benefit from this promise of access (visitation). The marriage and fatherhood grant applications mentioned in this initiative are already in process and the winners will be announced soon.

Office of Child Support Enforcement, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Fatherhood Initiatives in the Administration’s FY 2012 Budget March 06, 2011 The President has a deep and long history of supporting policies that can lift up fathers— expecting them to take responsibility for their children, but also helping them be the fathers they want to be by making policy changes and offering services that encourage, not discourage, healthy and active paternal involvement. There are many facets of this Administration-wide effort, as is made clear in the President’s FY 2012 budget request. The budget request includes new investments of $305 million in FY 2012 and $2.4 billion over ten years for the Child Support and Fatherhood Initiative. The budget also proposes continued funding of $150 million to support the Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grant program. Both initiatives are part of HHS’s efforts to ensure that children have the support and involvement of both parents.

CHILD SUPPORT and FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE

The FY 2012 budget includes several legislative proposals to continue a commitment of vigorous child support enforcement, a continuous emphasis on program outcomes and efficiency, and provisions to help further encourage fathers to take responsibility for their children and to promote strong family relationships. The Child Support Enforcement program is administered by HHS’s Office of Child Support Enforcement within the Administration for Children and Families. These proposals include:

• Improved distribution policies to ensure that when non-custodial parents do the right thing and pay child support, their children benefit. The proposals encourage states to distribute more child support payments to families so that more of the support paid by fathers reaches their children. Taken together, these distribution proposals are estimated to result in an additional $1.9 billion in child support payments reaching the children. They include:
• Encouraging states to pass through the current child support collections to TANF families, rather than retaining those payments;
• Granting states additional flexibility to discontinue the requirement that child support payments be assigned to the state when a family receives TANF assistance;
• Requiring that when children are in foster care, the child support payments made on their behalf are used in their best interest;
• Prohibiting the use of child support from fathers to repay Medicaid costs associated with giving birth—a policy already discontinued in many states;
• Including a short-term five-year pool of funds to offset a significant share of states’ costs in implementing the distribution policies; and
• Providing one-time funds to states for necessary adjustments to their computer systems.
• Fostering fathers’ engagement in their children’s lives. The Budget provides $570 million over ten years to support increased access and visitation services and integrates these services into the core child support program. A few states currently help parents establish access and visitation agreements with significant success and modest costs. These services not only improve parent-child relationships and outcomes for children, but can also lead to greater, more regular payment of child support. Research shows that when fathers spend time with their children, they are more likely to meet their financial obligations. This creates a “double win” for children – an engaged parent and more financial security. The Budget includes proposals to:
• Update the statutory purposes of the CSE program to recognize the program’s evolving mission and activities that help parents cooperate and support their children;
• Require states to establish access and visitation responsibilities in all initial child support orders; and
• Encourage states to undertake activities that support access and visitation, implementing domestic violence safeguards as a critical component of this new state responsibility.
• Short-term Increase to Incentive Pool. The CSE program clearly demonstrates a high return on investment. For every dollar invested in the program, CSE collected $4.78 in child support. The Budget includes $600 million for a temporary increase in incentive payments to States based on performance in FY 2012 and FY 2013. These payments are to be based on state performance, which continues an emphasis on program outcomes and efficiency while also helping states overcome short term fiscal stresses.The Budget also continues a commitment to vigorous enforcement. The FY 2012 proposal includes several additional proposals aimed at increasing and improving collections and improving efficiency and effectiveness by:
• Requiring States to amend their uniform interstate child support laws to ensure efficient international child support case processing as required by The Hague Child Support Treaty;
• Closing a loophole to allow garnishment of longshoremen’s benefits;
• Improving the processes for freezing and seizing assets in multistate financial institutions;
• Providing tribal child support programs with access to the Federal Parent Locator Service and other enforcement tools and grant programs currently available to state child support programs, as well as sustained support for model tribal computer systems;
• Modifying the threshold at which states become subject to performance penalty based upon their paternity establishment percentage to better reflect state performance;
• Requiring each state’s use of procedures to review and adjust child support debt owed to the state, and to discourage accumulation of unpaid child support debt during incarceration;
• Revising title IV-D to consolidate and clarify various data matching, safeguarding and disclosure authorities.

HEALTHY MARRIAGE and RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD GRANTS

The FY 2012 budget proposes continued funding of $150 million to support Healthy Marriages and Responsible Fatherhood to be administered by HHS’ Office of Family Assistance within the Administration for Children and Families. These funds will be split equally among Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood activities. Under the law:

• Healthy Marriage funds may be used for a number of services including pre-marital education; marriage enhancement programs; divorce reduction programs; marriage mentoring programs; and marriage education, marriage skills, and relationship skills programs, that may include parenting skills, financial management, conflict resolution, and job and career advancement.
• The $75 million in Responsible Fatherhood funds may be used for fatherhood activities intended to promote or sustain marriage, responsible parenting, economic stability, and media campaigns that reach families with important messages about responsible fatherhood.

Fatherhood Conference

I highly recommend that you consider attending the Thirteenth National Conference sponsored by NPCL (The National Partnership for Community Leadership) June 8-11, 2011 at the Sheraton National Hotel, Arlington, Virginia (D.C. area).

I have just been informed that I will be honored by NPCL with their prestigious Charles E. Ballard Pioneer Award for 25 years of service through CRC to children and families Ballard was longtime president of the Institute for Responsible Fatherhood and Family Revitalization. He was known for sending married couples to live in housing projects to show the people living there that marriage could work. The award will be given at an awards lunch on Thursday June 9. I will accept this award on behalf of the thousands of children and families that CRC has helped over the years.

NPCL, headed by Dr. Jeffery Johnson, is one of the leading organizations in the country working primarily with low-income minority fathers, to get them off the streets, away from crime and drugs, to jobs and job training, and to function as good parents to their children. Groups such as NPCL are increasingly aware that they must partner with groups that work towards providing fair custody arrangements and access (visitation), including the use of transfer of children and supervised access centers.

At the conference, you will gain insights into fatherhood programs around the country that you may not be aware of.

I will be on a panel Wednesday June 8 at 3:15 p.m.discussing the $75 million in fatherhood grants that were authorized and funded by Congress. Regulations outlining the application process are expected to be issued by HHS (The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) in June, right about the time of the conference.

Learn more at the NPCL website about the International Fatherhood Conference.

David L. Levy

Board Member, Children's Rights Council

Parental Alienation Conference, Terrific New DVD, Joint Custody

Conference:   An international conference on Parental Alienation will be held in New York City on October 2-3, 2010.  Amy Baker, J. Michael Bone, Richard Sauber and other  experts on the recognition, evaluation, and treatment of parental alienation will speak.  See conference program at www.cspas.ca   Goldberg sponsored a successful, well-publicized conference in Toronto, Canada in 2009.  This will be his second conference on this important topic affecting children and families.   

Parental alienation occurs when a parent bad-mouths or alienates the child from the other  parent, and gets the child to join in the attack.  Experts learn to recognize the difference between poor parenting skills and parental alienation, as reasons why the child may not want to spend time with a parent.  Parental alienation occurs when a child will often forget good times he or she had with the alienated parent, will often also accuse other relatives of abuse, will be “eager” to make the attack (truly abused children are often reluctant to make accusations), and will sound jut like the alienating parent in how the child describes the alienation. 

Parental alienation can be committed by either the father or the mother; it is a gender-neutral issue.  Parental alienation is an impediment to joint custody, and to any other cooperative arrangement in the raising of children whose parents are separated, divorced, or never-married. 

                                                 x x x x x x x x x

DVD:  Dr. Richard Warshak has done it again!  The author of "Divorce Poison: How to Protect Your Family From Bad-Mouthing and Brainwashing", now in its 24th printing, has produced a terrific DVD entitled "Welcome Back, Pluto, Understanding, Preventing, and Overcoming Parental Alienation."  The video, which has been watched by various parents and children together, has already produced positive results among some of those children.   I have watched the video, and Dr. Richard Sauber (a forensic psychologist) and I (an attorney) have joined together to write a positive review of the DVD which will appear in the American Journal of Family Therapy (JFT), which Dr. Sauber edits.   

Look up "Welcome Back, Pluto," named for the celestial body that was “removed” from planet status by scientists in 2006.  What Warshak means is that even though an attempt may be made to remove a parent from the child’s life, there is a “way back” for that parent.  Copies are $28.99 including shipping.   On the internet, look up “Warshak” or “Welcome Back, Pluto.” 

                                                  x x x x x x x x x

After a hiatus, I have been welcomed back onto the Children’s Rights Council’s Board of Trustees.   I have offered to help CRC with fundraising.   



Joint Custody: Congressional Fatherhood Hearing

 [Judge Recommends More Co-Parenting (Joint Custody)]

A House Subcommittee held a hearing Thursday June 17 on Fatherhood.  Chairman Jim McDermott (D-WA) of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support explained that the $150 million a year-for-five years fatherhood grants ($750 million total, most of which went to marriage preparation) expire this September 30.  As Congress looks to re-authorization, the Committee wanted to assess the grants awarded so far and to discuss the importance of fatherhood.  

It was clear during the hearing (and in lead-ups to the hearing), that marriage will no longer be the focus of any new grants.  The Obama Administration, Rep. Lanny Davis (D-IL), sponsor of a bill on fatherhood, and advocates for low-income fathers, who will receive most of any new grants, want the money to be for fatherhood regardless of its form -- especially for never-married fathers.  The testifiers could find no direct correlation between the existing grants and any increase in marriage due to the grants.

The hearing emphasized jobs and the ability of fathers to pay their financial child support if they have jobs, and then being better able to connect them to their families.

Committee member John Lewis (D-GA), a hero of the Civil Rights Movement, asked Ralph Smith of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the largest family foundation in America, why the foundation has been funding fatherhood initiatives for the past 10 years.  Smith said that the importance of fathers to children could not be over-estimated.  Smith urged that Congress "stop the clock" on child support when a father is in jail, calling the argument that jail is "voluntary unemployment" an "oxymoron."  Smith also said that non-custodial fathers who pay child support should be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, currently available essentially only to low-income custodial mothers.

 
Ron Mincy of Columbia University, considered the academic "guru" of the never-married movement, said that when he was with the Ford Foundation prior to Columbia, he was able to secure funding for organizations that reached out to low-income fathers.  He said that about 80 percent of never-married fathers are involved with the mother at the time of the child's birth, and America must do more to ensure that those fathers remain involved in children's lives.

Judge Milton Lee Jr. of the District of Columbia discussed the "fathering court" that graduates up to 40 fathers a year with jobs and relationship training.  After the 2-hour hearing, he told me that even though Washington, D.C. has a presumption for joint custody (physical and legal), co-parenting and shared parenting are just an afterthought because of America's legal emphasis on paying child support.  He said that Congress needs to change the emphasis for America so that co-parenting (joint custody) receive more attention   

Other testifiers included David Hensel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS),.Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute, Kirk Harris of the National Fatherhood Leaders Group in Chicago, and Nathaniel Rauschendorfer, Parenting Services Program Manager, Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Unless TV cameras are present, usually only one or two members of any Congressional committee show up for a hearing, but at one time, there were five subcommittee members present for this fatherhood hearing.

 
Written statements may be submitted for the record.  Go to "House Ways and Means Committee," and click on "Recent Hearings -- Hearing to Review Responsible Fatherhood Programs."  You can listen to the hearing (probably by next week) and obtain instructions on how to submit up to 10 pages of testimony by July 1, 2010.   The more testimony that is submitted, the better.  "Divorce" was mentioned only once during the hearing, by Chairman McDermott, who, although he is a medical doctor, referred to the many upsetting cases of divorce he is aware of.  Explain in your testimony why low-income divorced fathers also need a mix of services to help them be better parents to their children.