Now that we have some distance from Father’s Day and the requisite Hallmark sentiments around it, here’s a report on a Father’s Day weekend presentation in our woodsy (Lyme-disease-y) suburb by The Fatherhood Project, based at the Massachusetts General Hospital and affiliated with Harvard Medical School.
I spoke to one of the staffers who helps run a “Divorcing Fathers” program. It turned out that she had not carefully studied Massachusetts family law. She did not understand that a divorce was a civil lawsuit. She believed that it was usually a mutual decision and, when it wasn’t, it was usually the father who initiated a divorce (the stats show only about 17 percent of the time is there a “joint petition” and that, when there is a conventional lawsuit, mothers are 3.14X more likely to sue fathers than vice versa). She was aware that mothers nearly always turned out to be the “primary parent,” but believed that a father simply had to ask a judge for an equal parenting role and it would likely be unopposed by the mother and granted by the judge. She had no idea that, when both parents had similar-paying jobs, the mother would be cutting her after-tax spending power by 30-50 percent (depending on tax bracket and number of kids) by agreeing to a move from 67/33 to 50/50 parenting. She denied the relevance of economic incentives or the family law environment to the topic of “divorcing dads”.
[Coincidentally, as this local expert was explaining the irrelevance of family law, a friend of a friend was venting via text message from Pennsylvania. She is, well, rather spirited, and had threatened her husband repeatedly with divorce (though in fact she did not want one). He eventually consulted a litigator, learned that Pennsylvania is a 50/50 shared parenting state, and sued her. The result by formula is minimal child support revenue (both parents are high earners) and she has to compromise on the child’s schedule with a person whom she hates and whose equal importance to the child she disputes (she gave birth to the child, breastfed the child, fussed over the child, etc.). None of this bad stuff would have happened to her under Massachusetts law. Aware that Massachusetts was a winner-take-all state and that the often-enraged wife would end up with the house, the kid, and most of the money, the father probably would have signed her up for anger management classes instead of suing her. If for whatever reason they did end up divorced, her “pattern of historical [hysterical?] caregiving” would have enabled her to easily obtain primary/winner parent status. She would be getting a healthy slice of the father’s income until the child turned 23 and the father would be an every-other-weekend babysitter. All that she would have had to do to preserve her marriage was learn about family law and move across the border to Maryland (also a mom-friendly winner-take-all state) or New Jersey or up to New York or Massachusetts.]
The keynote speaker was Andre Dubus III, author of The House of Sand and Fog, who experienced a terrible childhood (described in Townie) and nonetheless turned out to a great writer just like his dad (demonstrates the power of genetics?). Dubus opened by saying that he had never texted, Facebooked, or used “Twatter.” He said “I’m bringing all of me here for the next 45 minutes and ask that if you need to text, otherwise use your phone, or urinate, that you go outside and do it.”
Dubus talked about the divorce lawsuit between his parents in a passive manner, as though it had simply happened to them or perhaps had been a mutual decision. He did mention that, prior to the divorce and “single parent” culture that developed in the 1960s, they probably would have just stayed together and maybe ended up being reasonably happy. In any case, after this divorce that somehow descended on the two parents for obscure reasons, his father was reduced to living in a small apartment and the mother and four kids were reduced to living in crummy rental houses. They went from “educated struggling academic family” to just-above-welfare status and Dubus went to a Haverhill, MA high school with “the 7th worst drug problems in America.” His elder sister turn into a promiscuous drug dealer by age 16. His younger sister padlocked herself into her room. He and his younger brother drank and got into fights. The four sibs’ only contact with the father was two hours every Sunday morning when he took them to a Catholic church (the father’s apartment was never large enough to permit an overnight stay). The single moms in the neighborhood abused drugs and alcohol and neglected their children. His mom was no exception. Dubus is a great storyteller and he was effective at communicating the suffering of the children and the permanent wreckage of some of his siblings, but it wasn’t clear what their parents could have done differently other than stayed together (not a likely scenario in our no-fault divorce age).
The professionals of MGH/Harvard talked to the assembled crowd as well.
The take-away perspective was pro-divorce, especially “expressive divorce” (see the History of Divorce chapter), in which one adult individual within a couple gets what he or she wants, as long as psychiatrists and psychologists (like themselves!) were brought in (on a paid basis) to help clean up the wreckage, run training programs, etc. The mantra used by cash-seeking plaintiffs, “I’m doing it for the kids,” was affirmed. Maybe Dubus’s childhood had been ruined by parental separation, but in general divorce could be great for kids because they would be spared exposure to fights between their parents (research psychologists have found the opposite, but that doesn’t stop anyone profiting from the divorce industry from asserting the widespread benefits of divorce for children as fact).
“The evening felt surreal to me,” said a guy who lost a divorce lawsuit 15 years ago and had lost nearly all of the subsequent rounds of custody and child support modification litigation. “These MGH people are out of touch with reality. We’re in what might be the most hostile-to-fatherhood state in the U.S. and these guys are going on about how important fathers are. It doesn’t even make sense for fathers in Massachusetts to invest in kids because they’re not really his from a legal point of view. They’re just on loan from the mother until she decides to take them away.” Certainly a move to a shared parenting state such as Pennsylvania, Delaware, Nevada, Arizona, or Alaska would be a lot more helpful for a man interested in fatherhood than any amount of advice from MGH psychiatrists and psychologists, however brilliant.
One thing that neighbors could agree on was that the successful divorce plaintiffs in our midst were the more relaxed mothers in town. Instead of being “on call” 24/7 they had every other weekend completely free of responsibilities (their children being with the loser parent) and, apparently, were using that time to recharge. There was no social stigma attached to being a “single mother” in our town, partly because the mothers were able to sell their divorce lawsuit as a means of protecting children from an unfit caregiver (result: Instead of the kids being in a house with the mother, a nanny, and the unfit father 24/7, the kids were under the exclusive and unsupervised care of the unfit father for about 33 percent of the time (the max free babysitting before the mother’s child support profits could be reduced).)
I thought the evening was a good illustration of the contradictory attitude Americans take toward marriage, divorce, and fatherhood. On the other hand we lead the world in maudlin expressions of sentiment. On the other, we lead the world in the portion of the economy and the cash rewards allocated to citizens who work to separate children from their fathers. In a two-hour period, nobody mentioned that, under Massachusetts law at least, including fathers would require a lot of mothers to act against their own economic interest (unlikely because, as a research psychologist at a recent shared parenting conference noted, “If mothers valued fathers none of us would need to be here.“).
[What else do the Millionaires for Obama discuss on a rainy Friday night? Over wine and cheese at the end, a neighbor talked about going back into the working world after being a stay-at-home mother. She has chosen to work for a non-profit organization helping refugees settle into American life. I said “I’ve offered to all of my Facebook friends to pay for the airfare from Kabul, Amman, or Beirut for any refugees that they want to shelter in their spacious suburban homes.” She said “Oh, that’s not nearly enough. They’re going to need help for 20 years or more.”]
Scary stuff.
I assume there is nothing much the high-income earning man in MA can do after divorce.
What do you suggest the high-income earning man in MA do before and during marriage ?
Very insightful. The system as it is currently designed creates large financial incentives favoring divorce and it is hard to see from a societal perspective that that is a good idea. When i was in law school and learned about “best interests of the child” that seemed like a great idea because who could oppose that. But what it really means is that the system is turned over to mental health professionals who probably have no greater insight than common sense into what a child’s best interests are. The system is insanely expensive for the high earner and very lucrative for very mediocre lawyers and the various parasites who feed off the system — the mental health people, the appointed guardians who supposedly protect the minor’s interests and so on.
I have never practiced in this area but as i understand it regarding the question of what you can do to protect yourself, if you come into the marriage with assets or expect to receive assets, say as a bequest, are a high earner or are likely to be a high earner retain a well reputed lawyer to draft a prenuptial agreement. Once kids are involved there isn’t much you can do because the court will decide what is in their best interest and who should pay for it regardless of what you contract.
They system as it is currently designed creates large financial incentives favoring divorce and it is hard to see from a societal perspective that that is a good idea. When i was in law school and learned about “best interests of the child” that seemed like a great idea because who could oppose that.
It sounds to me that this incentive exists mostly for rich people. In a typical marriage in the working class majority of the population, both husband and wife have jobs and their combined income barely covers the bills every month. In such a situation, both parents and the kids would suffer a significant decline in their standard of living, similar to what happened to Andre Dubus.
Vince,
What you said makes sense at first, but in my experience, it really does not stop the regular people from divorcing. Example I often see with people that may have a combined household income of $40-50k:
The female files a divorce and often quickly hooks up with another man, sticks the kids with her parents and tries to game the welfare system, while possibly sleeping around some more on the side. These are cases on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale that I see, so marriage is WAY less common and what usually happens is they go after the guy in family court as PhilG has pointed out.
These lower income guys in poorer areas do sometimes win custody eventually after the woman has become a financial and emotional wreck in their 30’s. The fact that only the “cucks” will have a relationship with her and her growing brood of family law cases eventually emotionally destroys her. The poor cucks that get into these situations don’t fair well. They think they are being a hero, but they will see the court soon enough…
These are cases on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale that I see, so marriage is WAY less common and what usually happens is they go after the guy in family court as PhilG has pointed out.
So do you mean to say there is no divorce because the people are not married in the first place? That quite a different scenario.
I suppose that all of this is a reflection of American’s ever-widening inequality. The rich, the middle class and the lower classes all have very different experiences.
Vince: “both parents and the kids would suffer a significant decline in their standard of living”
Family court is explicitly designed so that the kids don’t suffer a decline in their standard of living when they’re with the winner parent. In some cases the loser parent is ordered to pay more than 100 percent of income to the winner parent so that the winner parent’s lifestyle (and, in theory, that of the children) is not changed compared to the pre-lawsuit situation. So the winner parent will have most or, in some cases, all of the loser parent’s former income plus whatever money can be obtained from new sex partners.
[You might ask how it is possible to obtain more than 100 percent of a defendant’s income. A family court has the power to imprison a defendant for not paying and therefore the defendant can either work a second job (it is common in my experience for nighttime Uber drivers to be family court lawsuit losers supplementing their 9-5 income), drain savings and retirement funds, or borrow money from friends and family. When the alternative is prison, Americans can be creative and motivated.]
Vince,
My point is that people with limited means still grasp for the benefits of divorce, even if they are really small!
So yes, marriage is rarer there, but the incentives for divorce still operate even with check-to-check couples. It’s just that people are skipping the vows and counting the child support and welfare money first.
Overall, the moral is the same: People who would like more leisure time can use their victim-hood status to make other people pay for their stuff.
We delivered our daughter at MGH as they were the closest hospital. The first thing they did after some admissions paperwork was to lead my wife (who was being rocked by the building contractions) into a private room. Naturally I made to follow but the nurse changed her tone and said I had to wait outside. Turned out they needed to ask my wife whether I abused her and if she wanted me there.
The staff were wonderful otherwise but this sort of cackhanded punctiliousness leads you into fatherhood feeling like you’ve been accused of a crime, which I suppose you have.
My point is that people with limited means still grasp for the benefits of divorce, even if they are really small!
In the case of the low-income people who cohabitate and then break up after having a kid out of wedlock, it’s possible that the women aspire to the “stay at home mom” lifestyle funded an ex, even if it’s still a life of poverty and misery. On the other hand, the role of financial incentives is not so clear if there’s very little money involved. A lot of those relationships would break up even if child support was unavailable.
I think that I’m the same age that you are, Philip. My family was a suburban middle class (middle middle, not upper middle) family, My parents got a legal separation in the 1970s and then a divorce some time later. My parents, my sister and I all experienced a decline in our standard of living. The single famil home had to be sold and we moved into apartments. I also ended up meeting a lot of divorced adults. They were the new friends of my parents. I don’t ever recall a guy who took a second job to pay child support and alimony. That’s also true of the small number of divorced guys that I know now. So essentially a household with a certain income becomes two households with the same income. A decline in the standard of living is the obvious result. These days, that decline could take the form of a refinanced mortgage or lower contributions to 401(k) accounts, so it might not be apparent to friends and neighbors. Again, these are ordinary middle class people, not millionaires in those suburbs west and northwest of Boston.
Vince: There were huge legislative changes centered around 1990. The same term (“divorce”) continued to be used, but the outcome of family court litigation might be completely different in 1985 versus 1995 in the same state with the same facts. (We have the same situation today across jurisdictions; a “divorce” in Boston or London after two years of marriage could make a nonworking plaintiff rich while in Las Vegas or Berlin the profits from the same lawsuit with the same facts would be minimal.)
See http://www.realworlddivorce.com/History for some of the important dates and stated rationales for these changes.
Vince,
I think we all appreciate your skepticism and I feel you are totally right on, the benefits of divorce are little if not mostly negative for the majority of people. But you are trying to convince the wrong people here. You should convince women of that.
Most people I know post divorce are worse off, even the winners eventually. The stay at home party mom lifestyle that was great for a low income woman in her 20’s is boring once she hits her 30’s and needs a pound of makeup in a dark club to get noticed. Not to mention her older kids eventually figure out she has been sabotaging their relationship with their father and all her cool new “friends” are some guys coming by to get some cheap nookie.
The grown up children eventually do come by to see dad and often live with him because they have few survival skills after 10-18 years with mom.
So you are right Vince. But it won’t stop women or even men these days.
Vince: I’m not sure why you think that “very little money involved” could characterize a typical American child custody dispute. If both parties have low income then the winner parent will be the one collecting welfare benefits that are worth pretax $50,000-200,000 per year (depending on the quality of the free house that is provided) while the loser parent will be the one looking for minimum wage jobs and dodging imprisonment for nonpayment of child support. If the parties have a combined income that renders them ineligible for welfare, the custody outcome determines which adult will be able to spend the majority of the combined after-tax income.
[See https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/the_work_versus_welfare_trade-off_2013_wp.pdf for some data on the 2013 value of collecting welfare in the various U.S. states. Note that, while restrictions on collecting welfare were relaxed to some extent during the Obama Administration, quite a few benefits require obtaining custody of a child.]
I’m not sure why you think that “very little money involved” could characterize a typical American child custody dispute. If both parties have low income then the winner parent will be the one collecting welfare benefits that are worth pretax $50,000-200,000 per year (depending on the quality of the free house that is provided) while the loser parent will be the one looking for minimum wage jobs and dodging imprisonment for nonpayment of child support.
If the couple have a very low income, they can probably get welfare without splitting up. There’s rarely a free house involved either from the government, I bet. It’s probably most likely an apartment in a bad part of town, or worse, in a public housing project. The Cato document makes the interesting point that not all welfare recipients receive all of the benefits that their report indicates are available. The population in question is often not great at filling out all of the paperwork.
Scrolling through the document raises some interesting points. Medicaid (in other word, health care) is listed, but the free education provided by public schools to poor kids is not. That must be because Medicaid is means tested and public education is not. So If we implement Bernie Sanders’ plan to Medicare to cover every American, the amount of welfare would be significantly reduced along with the incentive to go on welfare and avoid work. It’s also noteworthy that, in the Conclusion section, that the Cato people suggest “reducing current benefit levels and tightening eligibility requirements”. They don’t mention making union organizing easier to raise wages for workers. That tells you something about the purpose of the document.
“Family court is explicitly designed so that the kids don’t suffer a decline in their standard of living” so, let me get this straight, if a kid has two married parents who both lose their jobs and thus end up in a trailer park in OK, that’s ok because this kind of stuff happens, but as soon as a divorce happens time better stay still? I presume there could be a case for the SCOTUS there. Anybody taking it forward?
Federico: Courts in some states have thought along the same lines. A 19-year-old child of an intact married couple cannot sue the parents demanding (a) monthly cash, and (b) college tuition. Why should a 19-year-old child of not-married parents be able to sue for these things (typically it is one adult parent suing the other and depositing the checks, but in theory the basis of the lawsuit is that the defendant parent is being sued on the child’s behalf). Courts in the western states have said “the 19-year-old can’t develop superior rights by virtue of one parent suing the other for divorce (or never being married in the first place)”. But in Massachusetts and New York, for example, the child has the right to sue until he or she turns 23 or 21, respectively.
Why not the SCOTUS? The federal courts have generally deferred to states in all family law matters. It doesn’t bother them that a child has a right under federally mandated child support guidelines to $10 million in Wisconsin (unlimited child support by formula) and only about $400,000 in neighboring Minnesota (capped child support). Nor does it bother the federal courts that states may deny a parent and minor child the right to voluntary association. Nor is it a problem under federal law if states run a custody system where women win more than percent of the cases (see http://www.realworlddivorce.com/Summary for a Harvard Law professor’s comment on this).
Vince: “If the couple have a very low income, they can probably get welfare without splitting up.”
Of course you are right. When Jack (above) said “the system as it is currently designed creates large financial incentives favoring divorce,” there are some unstated assumptions. The adult filing the divorce lawsuit also has some personal reasons for wanting to be divorced, e.g., “spend 30 percent time free of child care responsibilities,” or “have sex with other people without anyone being able to complain,” or “hook up with someone wealthier or more fun than current partner.” The divorce system in most U.S. states allows these personal goals to be achieved with minimal negative financial consequences to a successful plaintiff (or, if a wealthier partner can be found, with substantial positive financial consequences).
I don’t think that Jack was arguing that going to divorce court would automatically make a plaintiff richer. The system in most states is set up so that a plaintiff can achieve his or her personal goals without becoming poorer (which necessarily means that the defendant and, in the long run, the children, will become substantially poorer).
This is not to say that the system always works as designed. There are a lot of inconsistencies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and from judge to judge. Also, the law may not be a perfect fit for every plaintiff. However, the system works a lot better for plaintiffs than it did in the early days of no-fault (1970s and 1980s).
>The adult filing the divorce lawsuit also
>has some personal reasons for wanting
>to be divorced
or “get the children and themselves away from someone with an addiction” or “end a relationship with a partner who is unfaithful” or “protect themselves and their children from a partner who has become abusive” (subsequently allowing the children to spend time with their other parent does not necessarily indicate that a reason like one of these was not the initial impetus for the divorce).
Neal: Alleging http://www.realworlddivorce.com/DomesticViolence is a sensible and common legal strategy in most U.S. jurisdictions. Let’s accept that these plaintiff allegations are correct and that in the vast majority of U.S. marriages that end with a divorce lawsuit, the defendant was addicted and abusive. How does this “get the children away from someone with an addiction”? In almost every state the family court will park the children with the loser parent for at least 30 percent of the time. Now they’ve gone from 0 percent time being cared for by an unsupervised addict to 30 percent or 43 percent (Texas statutory schedule; see http://www.realworlddivorce.com/Texas ) being cared for by an unsupervised addict.
[Note that the roughly 200 litigators we interviewed for Real World Divorce did not mention a defendant’s abuse or addiction as being a common reason for a plaintiff to initiate a divorce lawsuit. See http://www.realworlddivorce.com/NewYork for the litigator who said “A person’s decision to divorce is primarily financial. Of course there are people who are concerned about the kids, but they are not very common. Sad to say it is all about money here in the U.S.” Also see http://www.realworlddivorce.com/Causes ]
philg, I have not been interested in divorce info but you got me started worrying for people I know… Here is some calming statistics from MA site (but I think they are for for US as a whole) http://www.massdivorceattorney.net/massachusetts-divorce-statistics-facts/
….
6. The divorce rate for couples with children is as much as 40 percent lower than for those without children.
7. An annual income of over $50,000 can decrease risk of divorce by as much as 30% versus those with an income of under $25k.
>the family court will park the children
If the person initiating the divorce doesn’t have control over the outcome then that outcome doesn’t really say anything about their motivation for initiating the divorce. Additionally, the “loser parent” is not *just* a person with an addiction or some other problem. They are also the child’s parent who can potentially contribute to the child’s upbringing. I would think that in many cases it makes sense to try and preserve some relationship between the child and “loser parent” even if it means some continued exposure to the loser parent’s problems. I would also think that for many adults it is much easier to control their behavior during limited duration visits than when living full time with the children and spouse. In any case, I did not mean to imply that the current system is producing good outcomes. I meant to point out that the list of possible reasons for initiating divorce given in comment #16 was incomplete and perhaps a bit misleading.
Alleging domestic violence is only “sensible” if the allegations are true. If the allegations are not true, then it is *perjury*. If given the way the current system operates committing this particular perjury is a low risk way of gaining advantage, then I might agree that alleging domestic violence is *feasible*, but I would not go so far as to call it “sensible”.
>Let’s accept that these plaintiff allegations
>are correct and that
>in the vast majority of U.S. marriages
>that end with a divorce lawsuit,
>the defendant was addicted and
>abusive
This is a straw man which seems to mock the premise even as you accept it as a basis for discussion: I did not claim that the defendant was “addictive and abusive” in the “vast majority” of divorce lawsuits. The statistics you give in comment #18 regarding overall outcomes are relevant only with your straw man premise; they may not apply to the subset of cases where the defendant was “addicted and abusive”.
“Alleging domestic violence is only ‘sensible’ if the allegations are true.” It looks like you don’t have a bright future as an American divorce litigator, Neal!
[Remember that there is no way to disprove many allegations that lead to restraining orders, e.g., “I am afraid of the defendant.” So it is unclear what would be meant by “true” in a layperson’s Perry Mason-style perception of what happens in court. The scenario in http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2015/04/29/au-pair-to-green-card/ (“Then she had the boyfriend punch her in the face. She showed the black eye to the police, got a restraining order against her husband, and had him kicked out of their house.”) is less popular than alleging perceived verbal abuse or an internal state of fear.]
Regarding your note that you “did not claim that the defendant was ‘addictive and abusive’ in the ‘vast majority’ of divorce lawsuits.” … according to the lawyers whom we interviewed, the vast majority of divorce lawsuits include an allegation of abuse (even when a restraining order per se is not sought). In only a minority of cases was addiction alleged. So if we accepted the cash-seeking plaintiffs at their words, it would be the “vast majority” of divorce lawsuit defendants who were addicted and/OR abusive.
Anonymous: The statistics on “divorce” per se don’t tell you a lot about what happens in family court because most lawsuits now are between people who were never married. Also, the divorce rate for Massachusetts might be lower than in other states because this is one of the most extreme of the winner-take-all states. Look at the anecdote about the Pennsylvania divorce in the original posting. The husband/father there might never have sued his wife in Massachusetts because he would have lost the child and about half of his after-tax income going forward. A Massachusetts “divorce” is a completely different process from a Pennsylvania “divorce” and it doesn’t make a lot of sense to compare statistics across the two states.
A simpler way to look at this is “in a winner-take-all state you would expect a reduction in divorce rate because people who can expect to be lawsuit losers won’t go down to the courthouse and sue.”
Another thing to look at is whether desired results can be obtained without being married in the first place. In the UK, for example, it is a lot more lucrative to get married and sue (to obtain 50% of a defendant’s premarital assets) than to get custody of an out-of-wedlock child. In a lot of U.S. states, though, it will be more lucrative to have an out-of-wedlock child and sue for child support than to be married, have a child, and sue for divorce/custody/child support. This is because most of the cash value of the marriage is in the child support and also because attorneys report that their typical client can find a casual sex partner with a higher income than a person who would agree to a marriage.
philg, I know few more divorce cases from Pennsylvania and other interior states and concur that yours example is regular case there. But divorce lawyers are involved too and they are getting paid so expenses are there. Many of my acquaintances tend to congregate in cool yuppie state of Massachusetts . Still, although divorce procedures are different across state, the result is the same: breaking forever marital vows, children that grow without active participation of both parents; house is usually left to a parent with a primary custody, usually mom. Although your post 22 seems to imply that Massachusetts laws working to reduce divorce rates they seem one-sided. Still, divorce rate in Pennsylvania seems to be roughly dame as in Massachusetts, maybe a little higher currently http://www.pafamilylawyers.com/blog/2014/06/marriage-and-divorce-statistics-in-pennsylvania.shtml