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

DATELINE: US (Grand Ledge) & IRAQ
Author: Scott Rees
From : F4J (US)
Via: The Honor Network

By SCOTT REES Staff Writer

GRAND LEDGE - For the past week, Joe McNeilly’s phone has been ringing off the hook. He’s been contacted by newspapers, radio shows, and even the major television networks.

That’s the way he wants it.

McNeilly, a Grand Ledge resident and specialist with the Army National Guard, said he believes he lost custody of his 10-year-old son, Joey, because he was in Iraq for 15 months.

“This is the awareness we’ve needed. It’s great,” he said. He said he’s already been approached by other soldiers in the similar predicament.

However, the boy’s mother and his ex-girlfriend - Holly Erb, of Mason, her lawyer, and the Friend of the Court, say McNeilly lost custody because of his parenting skills.

The court referee’s report found that Erb had established a custodial environment for the child while McNeilly was deployed.

A hearing set for Wednesday, Aug. 24, before Ingham County Family Judge Janelle Lawless was postponed. A new date has not been set.

The custody battle has spurred a media blitz locally and nationally and attracted the attention of local politicians. State Rep. Rick Jones, introduced legislation this past week barring courts from using soldiers’ absence for active duty against them in custody hearings.

Jones said t 15 to 20 similar custody issues state-wide have arisen in the past three years.

“Do I expect this legislation to help me? No … but somebody needs to do this. This will help our fellow soldiers who are coming back,” McNeilly said.

Before his deployment in January, 2004, McNeilly and Erb shared joint custody. The child spent one week with his dad and one week with his mother, who also lived in Grand Ledge at the time.

Erb had petitioned for full custody of the child seven months after McNeilly joined the National Guard in 2003.

McNeilly said he agreed to temporarily give the mother full custody of their son and was told the issue would be revisited upon his return. Instead, the court referee recommended against restoring the original agreement and instead gave McNeilly visitation rights for every other weekend and on holidays.

In a recommendation, court referee Louis Belzer expressed concern over e-mail correspondences between the McNeilly and his son during his time in Iraq.

Belzer said the e-mails display a much different relationship than a typical parent-child relationship, and more as a “counterpart to share his military adventure.”

Belzer wrote, “I also question the nature of some of the correspondence relating to how to kill people in multiple ways and then indicating that ‘next time someone touches you and leaves bruises on you, I’ll be ready.’ ”

Belzer said McNeilly seemed more of the disposition to be a friend and buddy rather than a parent.

McNeilly said his statements were taken out of context and he was merely telling his son that if anyone hurt him, he should come to his father.

As for sharing his life in the military, what young boy hasn’t played with G.I. Joes, he asked.

Belzer’s report stated McNeilly was married in January, 2004, while in the military and on active status, residing with his wife and three step-children in Grand Ledge.

The referee’s report said McNeilly made a general reference to spending part of the time with his wife, and also time at his parents house and his sister’s house. He denied marital difficulties.

The referee, in his recommendation to the judge, determined that Erb would provide Joey with a more stable environment as she now resides with her husband, a step-child, and a new child by her husband.

“Them pulling him out of a consistent environment (in Grand Ledge) of six years. That doesn’t make sense,” McNeilly said.

McNeilly filed an objection to the recommendations claiming incorrect procedural information regarding the temporary order, the referee stated information incorrectly, and biased direction of the friend of the court against men.

McNeilly also stated the referee failed to mention and take into account Erb’s negative actions. She was the defendant in the case.

He claims Erb intentionally made it difficult for him to keep in consistent contact with his son, not responding to e-mails and phone calls inquiring about grades and his son’s well-being.

“Why do I have to go through this? Why does anybody have to go through this? I mean, we’re parents,” McNeilly said.

“Give me time with my son, I’ve earned it,” he added.

21st Century Dear Joe Letter Might go like this:

Dear Joe,
I’ve found another bloke and I’m taking your kid. Dad stepping on an IUD isn’t good for a child. I’m really concerned about the child.

You can now get a paternity test at 5 weeks into a pregnancy:

www.australianpaternityfraud.org

The best way to secure yourself against paternity fraud is to either get the test done or to get a written statement from the mother that she has absolutely no doubts about the paternity of the child. In other words only she knows for certain whether or not she has slept around, been raped or visited a sperm bank during the possible conception time. Those who rile at what Meredith did to Liam may find it worthwhile putting energy into getting this test made available to men free of charge. That would be a good and positive cause.

You cannot change the past. DNA testing is new technology and what we know today we didn’t know ten years ago. All historical cases of so called paternity fraud are likely to be treated with caution and probably a certain amount of clumsiness and with mixed results by the courts. Only when DNA testing is a day to day reality will the issue ever be clarified.

The Magill case failed partly because it opened up a Pandora’s box of endless possibility with regards to litigation against private deceit. The tort of deceit is supposed to apply to commercial relationships. Because a marriage certificate is a legal document it could be used to bring a tort of deceit against a man who commits adultery and this is far more frequent than misattributed paternity. That is the kind of precedent that the original decision would have set. The only winners here are the lawyers. What is needed is new legislation to apply to private matters such as paternity fraud and the latter can only apply when it is beyond doubt that paternity has been misattributed and the only surefire way of achieving that is through a DNA test. Again, championing such a cause would be a positive step to take.

The existence of the DPB means that women have the choice of keeping a child if it was not fathered by their partner and he chooses not to formally adopt the child as his own. Until all men stop committing adultery, women cannot be expected to stop having children out of wedlock (which is not likely to happen anyway).

All in all, this focus on paternity fraud and biological fatherhood is only going help to reduce birth rates further below the less than replacement level that they are now.

Prior to DNA testing there was no way of knowing for sure that you weren’t the biological father of your children.� DNA testing has opened up a whole can of worms that society has yet to learn how to deal with.�

The term paternity fraud is� incorrect since 9 times out of 10 the woman cannot know for sure that a child is not the supposed father.� This reflects the judgment made� in the Australian High Court when Meredith Magill made her successful appeal against the previous $70,000 litigation.� To assume that all cases of misappropriated fatherhood are fraud� and that the mother is at fault completely lets off the hook the male who is invariably involved in all these cases.�

Actual statistics of misappropriated paternity are hard to quantify.� The link at http://www.australianpaternityfraud.org/statistics.htm� might give some idea.� Basically for most of humankind men have been bringing up children for whom they are not the biological father.� They have not been experiencing any devastation or stress because they haven’t known.� What they didn’t know didn’t hurt them.� Now that we have DNA testing we suddenly have this male insistence that the only true father is a biological one.

The existence of DNA testing changes everything.

We have to approach child birth from a completely new angle.� Some ideas can be found here

http://www.canadiancrc.com/articles/The_Age_Secrets_Lies_26NOV05.htm

What all this should make clear is that the current child-support payment system, which assigns payment obligations on the basis of biological paternity, not parenting commitment, is tragically flawed. Regardless of whether the father suspected, knew or had no idea that the child he was parenting was genetically unrelated, and notwithstanding however culpable his female partner’s behaviour was in creating that situation, the law needs to recognise and affirm men’s value to children as parents - and people - not sperm donors. Playing the biological card not only undercuts research findings that affirm the importance to children of having an active male parent in their lives, but lends support to the insulting claim made by a sperm donor interviewed on Four Corners last month that he, not the man who invested 20 years of time and love, was his daughter’s “real” father.

After the Magill case, this is where the law is quite likely to go.

And this too:

Of course, rejecting mandatory paternity testing at birth does not mean that men should not be assisted to accept the obligations of fatherhood in a more informed way. Upon the birth of a child, men ought to be given the opportunity to give one-time-only non-rescindable consent to their acceptance of the rights and responsibilities of fatherhood. If they feel unable to sign on the dotted line without conclusive proof that they are the biological progenitor, they should be offered a DNA test free of charge.

However, once a man does formally accept social and legal responsibility for a child - either with knowledge of their genetic paternity or in the face of a fully informed waiver of that knowledge - their status as the child’s legal father should rightly be set in stone. No DNA skeletons rattling out of the cupboards at a later date should affect what they legally owe their child or, hopefully, how they feel about the kid who calls him dad.

This site is supposed to be supportive of the need for� children to have a father� present in their lives.� I would expect nothing less than a positive response to these ideas from fellow posters.

�

�

By: CARLY CRAWFORD

“It’s probably a scare tactic — someone trying to scare me out of defending the appeal,” he said.

I guess they will now emotionally rationalize this into the Mr. Liam’s fault with some mental gymanstics of some sort! Oppressed minorites are always blamed for those who abuse them. If you get angry your an angry white male, if you take it on the chin again and again you deserve it. This is a no win game preached by those who want us to fail. We need to ignore them and unite the moderates and radicals and call out the pretenders (Kent).

Are a New Zealand dad and a victim of misattributed paternity?

Would you be prepared to share your story, this can be done anonymously, with a reporter from a major New Zealand daily news paper?

Email jnicolle@slingshot.co.nz with a brief summary and your contact details.

Regards

Scrap

Taken from BBC. Not copywrited so feel free to pass on -

Scientists have developed an easy-to-use contraceptive pill and hormone patch for men.
A three-month course of the pill used in combination with the hormone patch reduces the number of active sperm to zero.

However, once men stop taking the pill patch their sperm counts return to normal.

The success of clinical trials using the method brings an easy-to-take male contraceptive pill one step closer, researchers have said.

Family planning specialists said the research was a significant advance.

They said a male pill would offer men more choice and provide a clear alternative to vasectomies.
(more…)

DNA paternity-type tests to catch rustlers
22 July 2006

Genetic tests originally developed so farmers could check the parentage of their calves have been adapted so they can prove the guilt of rustlers.

Livestock Improvement (LIC) DNA arm, Genemark, has developed a system that allows farmers to take tissue samples from their livestock and prove ownership of an animal, or even steaks sliced from it.

What the hell’s that got to do with men’s issues you’re probably wondering.

Well folks, it’s now official - men are less valued than farm animals.
Yes, that’s right.

For whereas a nz father can’t legally get a DNA paternity test without the mom’s consent, but has to sneak off material to Oz for testing (which still won’t be accepted in a nz court as evidence!) farmers can DNA test thier cattle, no problems.

I wonder how long before nzers are microchipping males at birth for 24/7 GPS surveillance from feminazzi HQ.
Oops silly me, I may have given them an idea they hadn’t thought of!
Nah, on second thoughts they probably dreamed up that one already.

Hey guys, how does it feel to be less valued than a slab of steak?

Food for thought eh?

Dateline: Australia
Author: Soli
From: Dads On Air
Via: Honor Network

Down Under Takes On Whole New Meaning

The High Court is confronting that issue right now. Liam and Meredith Magill were married in April 1988. A son was born in April 1989. Unknown to her husband, a few months later Meredith began an affair with a man, having unprotected sex until early 1995. In July 1990 a second son was born. Then, the next year, a daughter. After separating, Meredith admitted to Liam her concerns over paternity. A few years later she agreed to DNA tests. Liam learned that the two younger children were not his.

He was left devastated, suffered chronic depression and was unable to work. He sued Meredith for the tort of deceit, claiming financial compensation for his pain and suffering, but not for money spent on the upbringing and maintenance of the children.

While the Victorian County Court found that Meredith had deceived Liam when she nominated him as the father on birth registration notices, that was overturned last year by the Victorian Court of Appeal. The High Court will now decide whether the tort of deceit will hold Meredith accountable for her actions.
(more…)

A shared parenting bill was presented to parliament in year 2000. Many people supported the bill yet it did not get the chance to go through all channels to make a new important law.
Many people took to public areas to support the change. In fact alot of people got together to express concerns for the rights of children regarding fathers, meetings were being held everywhere to gain support and the journalists spread the word through media.

Today and back then alot of people in parliament and those who work behind the scenes in law, research departments, etc agree that the Guardianship Act and Custody Act are old and out of date to today’s society.
Fathers are not just finance earners, not to their women that want time with them nor to their chidren that rely on good loving and caring parenting from them.
(more…)

This process of appeals to the High Court fascinates me.

It seems to me a judge becomes a judge having demonstrated a slightly greater degree of legal understanding than a mere lawyer.

Then said judge (with the aid of a lawyer to assist the court) comes out with a judgement which the mere lawyer finds (on several points) wrong in fact and law.

The mere lawyer then has to ask the judge who made the erroneous judgement for permission to appeal the judgement.

The mere lawyer sets out the grounds for the appeal.

The judge, having seen the ‘possible’ error of his ways allows the lawyers application to appeal against his own judgement.

Surely, this process is a farce? In fact a grande farce!
(more…)