Child Support System Abuses Drive Fathers out of Their Children's Lives

Hundreds of thousands of divorced and unwed fathers are victims of the government's war on so-called "deadbeat dads." Patti Diroff of the Children's Rights Council joined Glenn to discuss these abuses and how they drive decent fathers out of the lives of their children.

Callers included: Cynthia, a custodial mother who says she has seen the abuses of the system from both sides in the ways both her ex-husband who owed her support and her current husband who owed his ex-wife support have been mistreated; Dan, a low income father who was exiled from his daughter's life and currently struggles under a child support and alimony arrearage of over $200,000; and Mary Jo, an unwed mother who chose to raise her son along with her son's father and stay out of the child support/family court system.

Diroff said that the California Child Support Guidelines are unrealistically high and that the state has never even produced the economic data upon which the guidelines were allegedly based. She also explained that noncustodial parents are the unheard voices in divorce, the people whom "nobody listens to," and that the system hurts children by valuing fathers only for their financial child support and ignoring all of the other ways in which children need their fathers.

Diroff and Sacks also discussed the case of Chinese immigrant Daniel Chang , a divorced New Jersey father of two who has been abused by the child support enforcement system and who has been on hunger strike in protest since Friday, May 16.

To learn more about the Chang case, visit the New Jersey Council for Children's Rights website. To learn more about the irrationality of the current child support system and the pain and misery it causes, see Glenn's columns "Distraught Father's Courthouse Suicide Highlights America's Male Suicide Epidemic" (San Diego Union-Tribune, 1/11/02), "California Child Support Bill Will Help Newly Released Prisoners Rebuild Their Lives" (Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Francisco Daily Journal, 5/9/02), "Divorced from Reality on Child Support" (Newark Star-Ledger, 9/6/02), "Tennessee Appellate Court Sends Message: Second Families Count" (Memphis Commercial Appeal, 8/23/02), and "Families and the War" (Washington Times, 11/21/02). The latter three were co-authored by Dianna Thompson, Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children.