Don’t get me wrong, I have done a lot of whining and bitching about what has happened to me lately but I am a proponent of paying child support. I was examining the concept and action of a “deadbeat dad”. Which according to the definitions I have found is “a father who defaults on his obligation to provide financial support for his offspring”. I found an article in the reader’s digest – an older article but still relevant nonetheless – http://www.readersdigest.ca/debate.html?a=v&di=118.
What I find interesting about most articles is the out of balance in the system and I doubt will ever get addressed. The local, Provincal and Federal governments are now phenomenally good at finding, punishing and extracting money from the fathers. As mentioned previously, they take everything away, including your ability to drive, work and obtain the basis necessities of life. It’s for the children they say however what about:
- There seems to be no way of addressing where the money once collected goes? Although the system extracts financial statments from the men and a complete listing of everything in their lives, nothing is required from the mother? It is assumed that mom can do no wrong – that the money will be spent on the children and their education. Upholding the mom as a downtrodden figure helps to give enormous power to the legislation is naive. It allows one party complete and utter control over another. As William Congreve said, “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned”. I would suggest that both parties be held accoutable in the system – this probably won’t happen as the system sees the “bad” guys as the “debtors” as Maintenance Enforcement puts it.
- What if the man’s postion changes? He gets sick or god forbid depressed? Now there is a problem. The system is setup to be immediately suspious of the man’s intent. You have to submit a financial statement with the threat of 3 years in prison should Maintenance Enforcement find anything wrong. If the woman’s position changes – lets say gets better? Who cares – the man has to continue paying.
- Let’s help the woman I say. I know this sounds strange but if all this is about maintaining the life of the children why wouldn’t we help the women to better to their position? I mean, the man can’t pay forever – he will eventually die and its hard to get money from a corpse. However the system is setup to ensure and encourage that the woman never better her position. She would lose that nice little cushion she is in while the man lives in poverty. I had the audacity to ask this question during the court hearings, the woman judge frowned and said that my ex should be bettering her position but no real encouragement behind it. I have read too many stories about this imbalance and the women sitting back and enjoying the money. Oh, yes its about the children, but how would I know where and how the money is spent?
I checked the website on Mainenance Enforcement, approximately 91 men and 1 woman. This is the MEP’s most wanted list. Out of 100,000 men paying (okay 6% are women) 92 have fled or 0.0092%. I would say there are little to no deadbeat dads. These are the men that have fled. I have to admit it did occur to me, I wanted to leave, if I had known I wouldn’t have enough money for food, I would have. Thank god for food banks.
The other option that keeps coming up even in the Readers Digest article is men committing suicide. Although through my reseach I find suicide mentioned I don’t find it anywhere on any official government websites. I don’t think they want to acknowledge that the harsh and brutual measures leave some men with no other way out than to kill themselves. When you take a man’s diginity, strip him of everything and do it continually, what did you think would happen?
