Reply to Italy ending Child Support and redefining divorce laws

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think this is a great idea. And I'm female. I believe children would benefit if fathers shared more child rearing. You're not a father if you have the kids one weekend a month. [/quote]

Ideally, yes.

In reality? Not every man is a good father. There needs to be flexibility. My sister is divorced. Her husband, while a nice man, is not capable of being a 50% parent. He just is not. His idea of spending time with his son is going to a park and spending the entire time on his phone while the kid runs around or sits around, bored. And he's clueless on so many things about childrearing and what's appropriate or not appropriate for children. And will always be. That's just who he is. It would hurt the child if he was forced to spend 50% of his time with his father and would probably make their relationship more difficult.

And I say the same for some mothers too. There has to be a system that allows courts to award majority custody to one parent over the other because that's the best for the child. [/quote]

Moms can be lousy parents and still award custody.  Its all very subjective and its easy for a judge or evaluator to be bias and for a parent to encourage the kids to be negative the other parent to gain custody.  Most men are good fathers if given the chance.  It should be an automatic 50/50 in less there is evidence of abuse or neglect toward the kids.  Often, the house is set up in a way that works for the couple and Dad is blamed for not doing more when it may be for other reasons.  If a Dad is given a chance, he may step up.  If a parent doesn't have a 50% or just every other weekend its very hard to maintain a relationship and that parent status so of course they become the fun parent as you cannot parent much for 4 days a month, especially when the other parent is looking for anything to criticize about.

My husband's ex was a lousy parent.  Kids are all pretty screwed up.  My husband went to court many times over visitation and it was a joke as the judge would just tell mom to allow visitation, she'd say ok, then refuse it and repeat.  Eventually he gave up as it was too costly to have an attorney full-time and fly back and forth each time visits were refused and the unused plane tickets.  Both parents need to be held accountable, not just Dad's for child support.[/quote]

I agree that women can also be bad parents, but that's not what this is about- the 50% rule is not a progressive law recognizing men as parents. It's about child support and alimony laws that heavily favor the higher earning spouse, in most cases the husband. [/quote]

My husband didn't have a high income and paid an insane amount of child support, alimony and extras and she gets a portion of the retirement.  She refused to allow him to pay for anything directly and only wanted cash (which he refused as there was no documentation and she'd lie even when there was proof that she didn't receive the child support) so I don't think its such a bad thing to split kids expenses or have Dad pay directly.  Kids should know Dad is paying.  Lots of mom's I know pretend that the child support is their money and if Dad will not pay every other expense they claim they are deadbeats.  Child support should also be tied to visitation if the mother refuses visitation for no good reason.  Lots of changes need to be made.  [/quote]

I would have been fine with Dad paying directly. If he actually paid and was held responsible for not doing so. He was responsible for a few direct expenses and couldn’t follow through:
— 1/2 of daycare meals. A few times a year, he would not pay it on time and two things would happen: 1) a late fee was added to the overall account which was in my name and 2) I had to provide a bagged breakfast and lunch for DC although Dad got credit towards less CS for providing those meals. 
— flexible spending account to cover copays since medical insurance for DC came out of my paycheck. He’d regularly drain it to buy prescription sports goggles for himself but not tell me until I was at the ER with DC. Finally, one year, he just forgot to set it up at open enrollment. Guess who covers all health expenses now although he still gets credit against his CS for $350 in FSA.
— 1/2 of school supplies and uniforms. He bought the wrong stuff routinely, would refuse to exchange it or give me the receipts to exchange it. I ended up replacing it to satisfy the school’s requirements. So technically, he spent the money, but DC couldn’t benefit from the items and again, I had to take funds from other things to cover his responsibility.

Now imagine that all his financial responsibility to DC was paid directly. Who do you think would end up covering all of it when he “forgot?

[/quote]

All of things you quoted are incidentals that vary week-to-week or even day-to-day. Why didn't you just set it up so that he pays 75%/85%/100% of school tuition, you pay 25%/15%/0% and all incidentals related to every day things while the child is in your care? Including uniforms, daily school meals, supplies etc.

School fees are due at the beginning of term or year and they can be set up as direct withdrawals. No conversations on 'did you do this'. [/quote]

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