Fathers Also Have Rights

I write this letter from home, so I guess I am not one of the unfortunate 400 fathers arrested for the horrible crime of failing to provide child support. Perhaps many of the arrests are fully justified, but I venture a guess that many delinquent fathers find that withholding payments is the only means of protesting the mothers’ violations of provisions set forth in the very same document that justified the fathers’ arrests.

We can’t and must never submit that one rule is more right than another, that child support is more right than child visitation. If one parent violates a provision and the other refuses to provide support in response, then both parents are to blame and should be held equally accountable. Money is not the only child support that the court should enforce. The courts should enforce the child’s need for emotional support, role-model support, and the responsibility of both parents to obey the rules.

Unfortunately, complaints by fathers of violations fall on deaf ears in this nation’s family court systems. I feel confident that for every non-paying father there are two non-complying mothers. When was the last time you read about a mother being arrested?

I have spent many thousands on legal fees, taken my ex-wife to court four times and have managed only 3 1/2 hours of visitation in five years. Each and every court appearance (until the last one) resulted in a reiteration of my rights to unlimited visitation. Yet she has successfully ignored each order!

The last court appearance resulted in the judge denying my children’s right to visit with me because “they (the children) hardly know their father.”

I now refuse to comply with any divorce provisions and have written the judge informing him of my decision and why. I don’t feel like a criminal and will not be treated like one by the media. I have tried to use the system and it has failed me along with many others.

To all the judges who may by chance read this: Your decrees have become a mockery of justice, for you have no right to set a binding list of conditions with the intent to enforce only a select few. Now is the time to put this injustice quietly to rest. To persist will only amplify our voices and strengthen our resistance.

ADDISON H. DEBOI

Mission Viejo