Do you see the problem here? Cox is sponsoring a contest to get mothers to get their kids to draw pictures blaming and badmouthing fathers—their own fathers probably--for allegedly not paying support! Mom tells kid how bad dad is, kid makes drawing showing how angry he is at his dad, whether it’s actually true that he’s a deadbeat or not. In family court that's called parental alienation—when one parent, usually mom, denigrates the other parent in front of the children, or tries to turn the children against the father. It happens all the time—that’s one of the lovely things about being a noncustodial father—you get to pay money to your ex-wife so she can limit your time with your children and turn them against you.  Many court orders specifically say that parents are not allowed to do this, and here we have the top law enforcement official in the state of Michigan telling custodial mothers to ignore that and instead have their kids design billboards targeting their fathers!!!

They've got an e-mail address and a phone number here, we'll post it on our show website, HisSide.com. 

Part of what’s happening is this myth that the courts and DAs go easy on fathers who owe child support. The exact opposite is true—I get letters from men all the time who tell me that they will be, are, or were in jail for nonpayment of a support obligation they couldn’t possibly pay. Sometimes they impute such an income to these men that they owe more than they earn!

My friend Dominic Romano in New Jersey told me about an interesting website the other day--www.kids4kids.com. It’s a site where children of divorce get together to chat on-line about their experiences with their parents’ divorces. I read one entry from a teenage girl that talks about the way child support enforcement helped destroy her father. She writes:

“My parents got divorced when I was 2 and a half and did nothing but fight for years and years. In my sophomore year of high school, my father was taken away from me by the Monmouth county court because he was deemed unfit to see me until he submitted to a psychological evaluation. He refused because he said that that would be proving the system right… In June of 2003 I got a phone call from my father, even though he was not supposed to be calling me, to tell me that he had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease and had 2-5 years to live. Nothing in my life has ever upset me or scared me as much as the thought of losing my father, who was always my best friend and the parent of reason. We fought to get visitation back, and I got to see him every Sunday along with my 7 year old sister and 4 year old brother, however, it had to be supervised by my grandparents. When I turned 18 the court's order was void, and I could finally see him whenever I wanted to.…On August 12th, 2004 my father was going to come see me to give me his last $200 to fix the car that he had bought me a few months earlier. He called me and said that he would be leaving in 10 minutes and that he would call me when he got to the area. I never got a call and neither did my grandparents. I got a call from my grandfather the next day Friday, August 13th, 2004 that my dad had died in his sleep. I have never cried so hard in my life and it has taken me till now to even be able to go a day without crying, even though I am crying now. I believe that the system got exactly what they wanted in taking down my father. He was imprisoned 3 weeks before he died for 1 week for non-payment of child support. When he got out, I went to see him, and he was much weaker than I had seen him in a while, and had scabs on his legs from where the police forced him down the steps even though his legs were too weak to carry him….”

Thanks guys--you really helped this girl out, didn’t you! Destroying him sure made her life better, didn’t it! There's another deadbeat dad for you, except this time I guess he’s just dead. And the fact that his children loved him and didn’t want to see him destroyed doesn’t matter one bit. Send that one to Mike Cox...."