MENZ Issues: news and discussion about New Zealand men, fathers, family law, divorce, courts, protests, gender politics, and male health.

By Kate Legge, The Weekend Australian

Thirty years after the introduction of no-fault divorce, Australia is experiencing a grand correction of the 1970s revolution that provided unhappy couples with an escape clause and introduced benefits to help single parents. Changes that brought adults greater freedom are being corrected at the shrine of personal responsibility.

Sole parents and disability support recipients are being encouraged to work or train in return for payments, while fathers and mothers who separate are being persuaded to settle up out of court and share the child-rearing between them. The importance of contact with our biological footprints has been borne out by the stolen generations and the efforts of adopted offspring who search out blood ties.

But the shadow of an ageing population lends an economic imperative to many social policy reforms that shape family life, even though this week’s recommendations to the Government for an overhaul of child support after relationship break-up was presented as a win for the interests of children. Almost two-thirds of these fathers will pay less in child support under about 30 recommended changes to the system for child support, although the Child Support Agency would be given more power to investigate the wealth of the non-custodial parent.

The costs of children would be distributed between the parents according to their capacity to pay and the time they spend with their children. Divorced fathers would be able to quarantine some of their income for their new children before having their income assessed for maintenance payments.
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The breadwinner model is resting in peace. The nuclear family is being recast. Both parents in the majority of intact families are working full or part time and the ministerial taskforce addressing child support went to great pains to remove obstacles blocking single mothers’ return to employment.
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The new child support formula is another brick on the pathway to creative parenting solutions. “Child support policy can no longer just be concerned with enforcing the financial obligations of reluctant non-resident parents,” the report says, referring to the gains that flow from the continuing involvement of parents as children grow.

Trickery, ideology and a largely sympathetic media behind anti-smacking lobby
Barbara Faithfull

As usual with the corporal punishment issue, with the publicity surrounding Sue Bradford’s bill to repeal Section 59 of the Crimes Act I see a mass of misleading and biased media coverage. Having followed attempts to ban smacking in N.Z. for 25 years, I can say categorically that it is ideologically driven. Therefore, instead of reasoned and informed debate the N.Z. public is constantly being deceived and misinformed.. The issue is invariably masked with devilishly fallacious argument and extreme and emotive rhetoric to sway public opinion.

Hence the latest pretext for this push to abolish CP: that the present law is inadequate because it “allows” parents to even use whips etc. on children. It allows no such thing. It only allows for reasonable force to be used, and if the courts/juries make problematic judgements and cannot even determine that using whips etc. is unreasonable, then that is a problem for the courts/juries to sort out, or for a clarification of the definition of what constitutes “reasonable force”. It is not good reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater and abolish a parent’s right to administer reasonable force to an errant child.
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Alexis Stuart

God does not think like MP John Tamihere and feminism hasn’t gone far enough. Men don’t wake up in the morning to give power away.

One can only assume that these claims from the Wellington Town Hall explain why Telecom and Westpac chose to sponsor the 2005 Women’s Convention June 3-7, their banners dwarfed by “Lesbian Nation”.

The sponsorship from five government departments was predictable: the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ministry for the Environment, Statistics New Zealand and the Ministry of Health.

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs armed everyone with a copy of the Action Plan for New Zealand Women and I heard ‘two ticks Labour’ more than I care to remember. The conference was to have an influence on government policy, but the decisions were already made. The ideologues could then talk to themselves via the authority of a public convention.
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Feminism is imploding. The ideologues might still have power but contemporary feminism is no longer attractive to the average suburban mother because it is no longer feminism; it is recycled Marxism.
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The Women’s Convention was not about women. Nor was it about equality. It was about state control. A dour Leninism barely stifled under the breath of a bitter hissy fit.

Marc Alexander MP – United Future NZ

“There is more difference within the sexes than between them.”
Ivy Compton-Burnett

What do our Prime Minister, Chief Justice, Governor-General, Speaker of the House, Chief Executive of Telecom NZ, and 60 per cent of those with degrees and post-graduate qualifications, have in common? They are the so-called weaker sex – the tender gender. These days it seems like it’s getting harder and harder to be a man. Either we’re too in touch with our feminine side (and therefore must be gay) or we’re misogynist macho red-necks whose idea of the perfect woman is pregnant, stupid, and in the kitchen. The men in between aren’t considered ‘balanced’ but wishy-washy and confused. And why shouldn’t they be?

Male role models are distinctly unreal. Males are scarce in all the places that matter. They’ve been chased out of kindergartens, primary schools…and increasingly from their role as fathers. And it starts with the young; we’re now called birthing partners not fathers! We have become so PC that we can’t discriminate against any alternative domestic arrangements!

Whatever happened to gender equity? Men are now relegated to lifting heavy things, being blamed when the toilet seat is left up and are a convenient excuse when our corporate partners want to opt out of social engagements.
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It is inevitable parents will lose the defence of “reasonable force” when punishing their children, the Prime Minister says, but she would not ban all smacking.

“The Government has been on quite a careful course with respect to this issue,” Helen Clark said yesterday. “That led us to absolutely rule out legislation banning smacking. That would be a very silly thing to do.”
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Earlier, Miss Clark said on TV One’s Breakfast that the repeal of Section 59 was only a matter of time. “My view is that it has to go; the question is when. (However) it would be quite wrong to have a law which banned smacking. That wouldn’t be tolerable because no one wants to see parents dragged before the courts for lightly touching a child.”
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Ms Bradford’s bill is due to have its first airing in Parliament on July 27, but there will not be time to pass it through all stages before August 11, the last possible sitting day before the election.

The law change has won the backing of the Plunket Society and Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro.

Plunket president Kaye Crowther said the 560 delegates at Plunket’s national conference saw it as a way of changing the culture of violence and sending a clear message that violence against children was not condoned.

ACT and United Future have said they will oppose the bill.

A radical new formula for calculating how much divorced parents should contribute to raising their children is the centrepiece of an overhaul of the nation’s child support system to be released today.

Under the more controversial of two models being proposed, the biological parents’ incomes would be combined and fathers would then pay a percentage of the cost of raising their child, irrespective of how much they earned.
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Under new formulas being proposed, both parents would contribute a percentage of the cost of raising their child based on how many nights a child spent in their care.

The most radical plan would see the cost of raising a child calculated at a standardised rate and applied to all children of divorced parents, regardless of their income.
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Many fathers to pay less child support

Single mothers’ groups reacted angrily while lone fathers cautiously welcomed yesterday’s release of the recommendations made by a Federal Government taskforce.

The changes would recognise the time both parents spend caring for their children. A non-residential parent – usually the father – who looks after the children for at least 14 per cent of nights each year could pay less child support in recognition of the costs involved.

About 60 per cent of parents currently providing child support, mostly men, would pay less than they do now under the recommendations.
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The president of the Shared Parenting Council of Australia, Michael Green, welcomed the recommendations as a “monumental achievement”.

“For the first time, the mother’s income is assessed in the same manner as the father’s, acknowledging the principle that both parents are responsible for the upkeep of children,” Mr Green said.

But the president of the Sole Parents Union, Kathleen Swinbourne, said there was too little in the report to force people to pay a fairer amount when they under-estimated their income to avoid their obligations.

Download the Taskforce Report:
‘In the Best Interests of Children – Reforming the Child Support Scheme’

Children can be disinherited under radical changes to property laws giving new power to estranged, de facto and surviving partners.

The “last will and testament” is no longer that say legal experts who want an overhaul of laws relating to the division of relationship property after death.

Under the death provisions of Property (Relationships) Act 2001, a surviving estranged partner, de facto partner or spouse can have children from previous relationships disinherited, superseding a will in the process.

Otago University associate law professor Nicola Peart said the law change went too far and should be reversed.

“The whole thing is very unbalanced. It has created for a lot of people enormous uncertainty – I have real problems with the legislation.”

The law change is resulting in complex and acrimonious legal battles between family members.

The law was changed to bring equality to the property rights of a surviving spouse or de facto partner.
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Peart, Professor Mark Henaghan and other Otago law faculty staff recently won an award for a critical analysis on the effect of the changes.

Henaghan said the law was particularly unfair in the way it dealt with de facto relationships, giving an advantage to the person left alive.

He said only the two in the relationship knew what property was shared and how long they were together.

If one of those people died, the other was free to make claims over a will that could not be contested.

Henaghan said the public was generally unaware of the law change because it was ignored in the debate about amendments that gave de facto and same-sex couples the same property rights as married couples.
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Henaghan’s advice to people was to settle property disputes at the end of all relationships.

“Otherwise it could came back to bite you when you die.”

Women who put their careers on hold to raise children or support their partner’s career are getting bigger payouts when they separate.
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Changes to property laws in 2002 allow men and women to sue estranged partners for lost earning potential as a result of being in a relationship. So far most payments have been made to women.

Payouts are lumped on top of the 50-50 split of property and child maintenance responsibilities.
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Law Society family law section chairman Simon Maude said that when changes to the act came into effect, courts conservative with compensation amounts.

That changed last July when a man was ordered to pay $142,000 to his ex-wife. The court recognised the woman’s 20-year career break while raising their two children.

Maude believes the $142,000 will be exceeded in future awards. He said compensation was not only awarded in cases when a partner had made sacrifices to raise children, but when couples decided on a lifestyle that would reduce the income of one partner in a relationship.

Canterbury University senior law lecturer John Caldwell said a huge number of cases were going through Family Court, and courts were struggling to determine compensation figures to reflect what was lost.

Claims were dealt with on case-by-case because there was no range of set tariffs for a court to refer to when awarding a payout.
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Caldwell said some men had used the new law to seek compensation after giving up their career to become househusbands.

Maude said the law change also affected how trusts or companies were treated when a relationship ended. Before the law change, it was difficult for a partner to gain equity when assets were transferred into a trust or company structure by the other partner.
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He said some lawyers were now trying to have courts determine that any interest in a trust should be classified as property, which would make it easier for an estranged partner to seek compensation.

“The Test of Parenthood Editorial” The Press – Friday, 10 June 2005

This goes beyond a load of tripe – it’s the offal of journalism. Such unbalanced articles should be offensive to any self respecting journalist, and a discredit to the Editor who allows publication.

This article concludes by saying “ the need for parents to accept their responsibilities in an adult fashion, and to realize their first priority must be the welfare of the child they helped create.”, yet started by suggesting that the 21 year case of Gordon Dowler was a fault of the system and not of the integrity of the women involved.

The lines in between however are the usual unwelcome diatribe of feminist propaganda that demonize the father and promote child support.
The media should not shoulder the blame alone – a repugnant state of politics that worships the incontestable occupation of the moral high ground could not represent our people and guide the state but only represent the state and guile our people.

A distinction needs to be drawn between the fatherless child and the de-fathered child. It is the state that must be called to account for the welfare of the child. If it should place but one obstacle in the way of the Father, then the state has assumed his role. The suggestion that the remedy is solely financial comes with the assumption that a father’s contribution can be quantified in a dollar value, and his absence compensated for by the ruthless and relentless application of a financial formula.

The state admits to its own negligence by describing fathers through the social consequence of their absence. If there is something unsavory in this country, it is not masculinity; it is arrogance of the law that has exceeded its purpose in the pursuit of power, and the butchers that have promulgated it.

To be as polite as possible about the states attitude toward fathers, one might say it is unfortunate that those in this country, who have assumed a greater responsibility than parenting, are perfectly inadequate and inadequately perfect.

Child Support has no integrity as it purports to be something it is not, and for that reason it will continue to be the case that some will challenge its deceit, some blindly comply and some wander off and wonder why.

The current focus on DNA paternity testing to deal with child support disputes should not divert attention from the real problem – the growing burden of child support debt and the disheartening number of parents who blithely abdicate their responsibilities towards their children, writes The Press in an editorial.
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The fact that the amount owed by errant parents spirals upwards every year – more than doubling since 2000 – does demonstrate significant problems with the Child Support Act, which has often been criticised as being too soft on parents who won’t pay up and too harsh on those who will. But at the root of this is a deeper failure. Parenting is a job for life and the most important responsibility most of us will ever take on. That this fundamental message seems to escape so many New Zealand men is disheartening. It says something unsavoury about the state of masculinity in this country that so many men feel untroubled by turning their backs on their children. Although fathers’ support groups reject attempts to label this as solely a men’s issue, it is nevertheless true that the large majority of non-custodial parents are men.
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Although there are likely to be other Gordon Dowlers who are frustrated by the difficulty of proving a child is not theirs, there is a more significant element of ducking for cover by men who do not want to accept their duty.
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The [law] commission also makes the valid point that the legal status of parent-child relationships has not kept pace with the increasing diversity of family structure arising both from social changes and new birth technologies. These are increasingly complex issues and ones that need addressing in law to bring both certainty to parents and children, not only in familial relationships but also in matters of child support. But again, at present these issues are still only a fraction of the picture.
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Of course, deep hurts and emotions are involved in many cases – often bound up in fraught custody disputes – but often it is simply a case of parents not facing up to their responsibilities to the life they helped create. Those who criticise the Child Support Act for being too rigid around the rights of non-custodial parents do have a valid argument. Certainly, many cases of non-payment arise when the father feels alienated from the life of his child and wants better access. But there is no indication that these emotive cases make up the bulk on unpaid support.

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Comment by JohnP:

With repeated anti-male / anti-father vilification and repeated assertions about incidence based on no known facts; this nasty bit of propaganda could have come straight from the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. I thought ‘blaming the victim’ had become passé, but it seems that males are still considered fair game.

This ‘editorial’ is the standard feminist response to complaints by fathers that the family law system treats them unfairly, and does nothing to advance the debate or inform readers about the true state of affairs. I was very disappointed to read this in what has until now been one of the best newspapers in the country at presenting gender issues in an unbiased fashion.