Bring an End to Child Support NOW!! My letter to state lawmakers.
Dear State Legislator:
I hope this letter
has reached you in great health and in great spirits. I have written to share
with you my thoughts on the current child support laws. I am a single man with
no children. So my thoughts may appear odd being that I am not a father.
However, I am still a man and as a man I have to say that I am not happy at all
with how single men are treated so criminally under the current child support
laws in your state. I think the current laws are unfair, sexist and biased
against men. There have been times in the past when I have had thoughts about
having children, but those thoughts quickly left my mind whenever I pictured
the reality of a woman being able to and at the drop of a hat, potentially ruin
my life with one phone call to the Family Services Division of Juvenile Court.
Sadly, this usually occurs when she gets upset with the single man that she has
allowed to impregnate her. The stories are endless of men being railroaded into
the criminal justice system because of a woman being allowed to use the current
child support laws to financially and emotionally bury men whom she is usually
and most often not married to.
I think single men
should not be financially and criminally punished for having consensual sex
with single women. The current laws are often interpreted in such a way that
makes the man almost always and completely responsible for the act of
copulation, when in fact copulation cannot occur unless the woman gives
permission for him to join her in the act. If the popular belief is that
creating a child is 50-50, then both parties should be ordered to pay the same
amount in child support. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case under this
current child support system.
I think single men
who have not signed a marriage license nor a birth certificate should not be
attacked by the state and have money extorted from them under the threat of
imprisonment and having their lives financially ruined. Since single men are
legally harassed by a court of law for child support money, the judgments can
at least be consistent with some form of legal process. At least help make the
process make sense. I don’t understand why a single man, who has not signed a
legal document such as a marriage license or a birth certificate is allowed to
be harassed legally by the state. I have a question. When has the legal
extorting of this money from men ever had anything to do with actual support of
children? One would think that if a single woman decides to give birth while
financially unprepared, she has also decided to care for the child with her own
resources. I have another question. Why are the men being hit with such a hefty
fine for a reproductive decision that is made by women?
Let me explain.
It
is a woman’s decision to choose the man. It is the woman’s decision to give a
man permission to have sex with her. It’s a woman’s a decision to allow the man
to have unprotected sex with her. It is the woman’s decision to receive his
semen. It’s a woman’s decision to carry the baby. It’s the woman’s decision to
actually give birth to a baby. However, after she has made all of these
decisions, the man is the one who has the legal hammer dropped on him. Why?
Under
the current child support laws, why aren’t women being encouraged to take
responsibility for their bodies as well as take responsibility for the men they
choose to allow to impregnate them? Why aren’t women discouraged legally from
using the current child support system as a weapon to get back at the men they
believe they can’t control? Why aren’t they being held accountable for deciding
to allow a man who is not her husband to impregnate her by being denied child
support extortion payments? I can go further with questions as it relates to
the biases of the current child support laws. However, the letter will end up
being about 30 pages long. My intent is not to bog you down with all of the things
that don’t make moral, common or legal sense as they relate to the current
draconian child support laws. It is very clear that these laws totally ignore
the rights of single men while at the same giving extra privileges and passes
to single women.
This
is why I think the current child support laws should be done away with
completely. The way in which they are currently written and interpreted in your
state makes it virtually impossible to reach any level of fairness and balance
when it comes to men. I think your office should begin the process of working
with the other state legislators in changing the current child support laws or
completely wiping them out. I think your office should send out a letter
apologizing to single men in your state that have been negatively impacted by
the current and even past child support laws. The men who are currently serving
time in jail for supposedly getting behind on the mafia styled child support
payments, should be released immediately with time served and whatever balance
they owe in child support should be forgiven immediately. If your state has
used these laws to take away a man’s right to vote, get a passport, obtain a
driver’s license, had his driving privileges revoked, or income taxes seized at
the end of the year, he should have all of these rights and privileges restored
immediately. He should have all of his
confiscated taxes returned to him courtesy of the state. You and I know that
none of these things would ever happen to a woman should she miss even a
payment or two.
I
find it amazing that so many women in your state are allowed to give birth to
children that the men say to the woman, I don’t want to be a father!” or “I
don’t want any children!” but are still forced legally by your state to pay for
them. Let me paint you a scenario. Let’s say you go into a restaurant for
dinner. You order the dish that you want. You have completed your meal. You
enjoyed the meal you actually
ordered. The waiter brings out the check. You notice that an extra and more expensive
meal has arbitrarily been added onto your check that you did not order. The waiter then tells you, “Look. I know you did
not order this extra meal, but since you are sitting here and you appeared to
really enjoy the dish you actually ordered, I thought you might like this dish
as well.” Question. Would you accept his reasoning and actually pay for that
meal? Can the waiter and the owner of the restaurant force you to pay for that
extra and more expensive meal you didn’t order? Well, this appears to be the
case in most of the situations with the majority of children born out of
wedlock. The current child support laws allow the women to force far too many
men to pay for children they said they didn’t want. If he refuses, he is
threatened with incarceration and loss of other societal rights and privileges.
However,
and on the other hand, you have women that are allowed to abort babies that men
have expressed to them that they wanted the child and was willing to take on
the responsibility as the unborn child’s parent if she doesn’t want the child.
Interestingly, this is the time when the women are allowed to evoke the old,
“It’s my body.” Or “A man can’t tell me what to do with my body!” and in most
cases aborts the child that the man whom she'd chosen to impregnate her stated
emphatically that he wanted her to keep. There is nothing in the current child
support laws that attacks and punishes her for this low down act. This
obstruction of justice has to come to an end. Here’s another one. The woman is
often allowed to have as many children as she likes in your state and by as
many different men as she likes, but instead of the courts questioning her
mental health, the courts seemingly encourages this reckless and irresponsible
behavior with monetary benefits from the man and other “free stuff” from the
state.
The
current child support laws do nothing to place a limit on the number of “baby
daddies" the single and never married female can "hit up" for
child support. The current child support laws could at least discourage this
behavior by placing term limits on payments made by the man. 18 years is
entirely too long. The current laws also don’t have any safeguards in place to
protect men from having to pay extortion money to women for children that
aren’t biologically theirs. A man signing a birth certificate in the hospital
should not be used to legally hold a man emotionally and economically hostage
for 18 years even when it turns out that he is not the father. Also, there is
no legal safeguard in place for men against women lying about paternity and a
man paying child support for a number of years only to find out that the child
is not his. I think the women who do this should be prosecuted criminally for
falsification of legal documents and should serve time in prison. The man
should also have every cent he paid in extortion money returned to him, plus
pain and suffering.
I
would like to share with you a few websites where men all over the country are
taking their own lives and taking the lives of women and children because of
how these current child support laws are written and interpreted by the family
court system in your state. Please tell me that you are capable of gaining an
understanding of the emotional strain and weight that these current laws place
on men who want to be a part of their children’s lives, but are sometimes
unable to pay the state enforced visitation fee. Please tell me that you
possess the understanding of how these current child support laws embolden
women to be bullies and aggressive mobsters to fathers when they don’t have the
state approved entrance fee to see their child.
Finally,
I have some ideas that I think should be implemented and made into laws in your
state that you help to bring fairness to and currently unfair child support
system. I think no newborn baby should be allowed to leave any hospital until paternity
has been established by way of a blood test. If the woman does not know who the
father is at the moment, she should be deemed ineligible for any form of state
funded/tax payer public assistance until the father has been located. Any help
she receives should only come from family, friends, and community non-profit
organizations and churches. However, the non-profit organization cannot be
funded by any state funds or tax payer dollars. I am suggesting this because
under these current child support laws, women are applying for SNAP/TANF/WIC in
the absence of the father. Should the father be located, he is then charged
with paying child support and any back child support that may have accrued in
his absence. What's even more sickening, in my opinion, is that the man is also
forced to pay back any money received monetary welfare benefits the single
mother may have utilized in his absence when she was the one who applied for
the assistance in the first place.
I am of the opinion that if child support payments are discontinued to
single/never married women, this would also cut down significantly on babies
that are unplanned and born out of wedlock. A woman receiving “free stuff”
after behaving irresponsibly with her body does nothing to send the message to
single women and young girls of how important “planned parenthood” is when
deciding to bring a baby into the world. Here are some of the latest statistics
presented by the Center for Disease Control concerning out of wedlock births to
single/never married women in the United States.
•Number
of live births to unmarried women: 1,595,873
•Birth
rate for unmarried women: 44.3 births per 1,000 unmarried women aged 15-44
years
•Percent
of all births to unmarried women: 40.6%
I
hope this letter is taken seriously. I hope the idea of fairness is taken seriously
when enforcing the current child support laws when two single people are
involved. I hope the idea of encouraging the mother and the father to both be
EQUALLY responsible for the financial welfare of the child is taken into
consideration. I hope the day comes when
child support laws are a thing of the past. This can become a reality if you
would please take into consideration in the present the harm these current
child support laws are causing and have caused too many men and too many
families for too many decades by creating a piece of legislation that TOTALLY
does away with these current laws and allow un-married individuals to totally
foot the bill for the babies they decide to create.
Thank
you for taking the time to read my letter of concern.
Sincerely,
Rico Rivers
Rico Rivers
Masters Level Social Worker
Alcohol and Drug Counselor
Radio Talk Show Host
"The Rico Rivers Radio Show"
Sunday Nights @ 9PM
www.DFWiRadio.com
Masters Level Social Worker
Alcohol and Drug Counselor
Radio Talk Show Host
"The Rico Rivers Radio Show"
Sunday Nights @ 9PM
www.DFWiRadio.com
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