Best interest of the child?

There is this concept in the legal world that “the best interest of the child” should prevail in terms of all decisions regarding custody and child support. Sounds like a great idea, right? Except, it sucks. See, best interest of the child has become a euphemism for best interest of the custodial parent. The flip side is that the non-custodial parent gets screwed. Now, I KNOW this is a site for women and I know that 80% of the time the custodial parent is the mother so I KNOW that most of you will take issue with what I’m about to say. So be it. . . this is how I think the law needs to change and why.

It used to be that women married for financial security—men had the advantage, if not an outright monopoly, in the work world and for women to access the comforts their salaries commanded, they needed to marry. This is no longer the case. Currently the law is organized so that the best way for a woman to get money from a man is to have his child. Forget any other route, this is the guaranteed access to his entire fortune for a woman. It does not matter if he thought his condom would work and she poked a hole in it. It does not matter if she swore she was on birth control. It does not matter if he thought she was someone else. It does not matter if she had a gazillion partners and he was the unlucky one. AND, in some cases, it does not matter if the child is not his based on DNA evidence. Remember that bit about best interest of the child—notice that justice to the non-custodial parent is not part of that equation?

The interesting twinge is that if a woman gets pregnant and does not tell the guy, even for years, and then springs it on him when he’s making bank, he can be responsible for back pay at the amount the judge deems, plus interest. Hopefully those of you with brothers and sons out there (and yes, husbands too) are taking notice. Also, if she decides to give the child up for adoption, he is supposed to have a say in the custody of the child but in reality he rarely does (http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=4073 someone show me how to do this please). Yes, that’s right, he has to pay all monies if she chooses to keep the child but he has no say and cannot claim custody if she gives it up.

So, what to do? Here are my suggestions:

1.       Acknowledge the difference between what is best for the child and what is best for the custodial parent. Establish that the two are often, and usually, different.

2.       Acknowledge that two parents who feel financially secure due to equal work efforts and equal involvement in their child’s/children’s lives is best for children. Thus establish joint legal and physical custody in all but the most egregious situations (and require judges to show cause beyond violence to the ex for those situations as domestic violence is the new buzz word for give me custody and give me money).

3.       Negate the current paradigm of one custodial parent gets the money and the kids and the other non-custodial parent works to provide the child support. In said scenario, the irony is that the non-custodial parent is penalized for working. Courts typically say the stay-at-home parent has the time for the kids but the working parent does not. Instead, require that both parents MUST work at least twenty hours a week or jeopardize both custody and child support. Working may no longer be held against a parent in custody cases but laziness would be. The non-custodial parent could have the children while the custodial parent is: working, providing a needed example of work ethic to the children and preparing for the day when the children no longer live with the custodial parent—ie: preparing for financial independence apart from child support.

4.       Insist that child support be spent on the child. Establish a child support fund from which expenses can be drawn for the child. No longer can the custodial parent fund family vacations (not kid vacations, no, but flying in relatives, even from other countries, for child support funded shopping extravaganzas). No longer does getting the right guy to knock you up guarantee a mansion and a luxury car.

5.       Allow the non-custodial parent a say in how a portion of the child support is spent. A portion of the child support (at least 10%) goes into a joint fund and the spending of it requires the agreement of both parties. If they are unable to agree, the money sits in the account and is saved for when the child reaches emancipation (marriage or high school graduation usually). Thus, the non-custodial parent can request funds for activities that said parent would like to engage in with the child. The current system? If a non-custodial parent wishes to sign kids up for soccer, that parent foots the bill in addition to the child support paid to the custodial parent who may, or may not, pay for piano lessons and then with the non-custodial parent having no say in the lessons or where or the quality.

6.       The non-custodial parent has first right of refusal on babysitting and a required one-week notice for any care that lasts more than two hours. This requirement would do a few things, it helps kids spend more time with parents than sitters or day care centers. It would also help the non-custodial parent know how often the custodial parent is leaving the children with sitters or day care centers and, if so, if they are sitters who have CORI clearance and who hold a degree in child development. Custodial parents can now send kids to day care or a sitters for entire weeks and still claim they are the better parent as they have more time to spend with the children than the working parent.

7.       Both parents have to provide an equal amount towards college savings, money that each parent earned (ie: not from child support).

8.       Schools, medical professionals, day care centers, kids activities and sitters ALL will be legally required to provide equal and accurate information to BOTH parents by law.

9.       Here’s the kicker: establish what the average amount is for a child to be well cared for in general (at a middle class level). For any amount of child support requested in excess of that amount, 70% go to a fund for foster care and the remaining 30% go to a fund that is decided on jointly by both parents. What does this do? It helps limit the gold diggers who eagerly seek pregnancy to fund their profligate lives. Suddenly tricking the basketball star into a blow job and then using the sperm to impregnate oneself has less of a monetary benefit. Also, there might actually be some funds for foster care. Oh, and a voluntary child support payment would not be subject to the cap, but it would be subject to joint decisions on how the money would be spent.

Imagine a world in which, regardless of divorce, children know and are raised by both parents and both parents are required to work to support the children. Imagine real gender equality regarding child custody and child support.

So, Mr. President, what do you think? I say make required joint physical and legal custody a requirement in all states—so that Massachusetts (where I live for the next few weeks) can no longer be a hold out along with ten other states. But, while you’re at it, could you consider the other eight suggestions too?

Freedom of Religion?

Religious Freedom? I honestly have a hard time with this concept. You see, there are things that I don’t just philosophically disagree with, I find them abhorrent and wrong! Things like: only men can rule, women need to dress differently/act differently/be submissive, men can have more than one wife (but not women) AND the government should help pay for the hordes of kids that result (i.e.: yes you guessed it, you and me the tax payers), that people are sinning if they love differently—well, my list goes on and on. What I don’t like is for religions to develop things that go directly and blatantly against the laws that the nation originally established or at least came to its senses and established over time—like no polygamy. There is a piece of me that would be ok with the government telling religions what to do. There is a bigger piece of me that is hyper pissed about faith-based funding (yes, girls and girls, that’s our dollars funding religious organizations for, oh, abstinence only programs or ‘adoption and pregnancy counseling’—Catholic Churches euphemism for scare to death some poor young woman and practically man-handle, good word, her into having a child, i.e. force her to give birth). So, what about religious freedom has me going today? Well, all of it honestly, I really do want religions to respect the laws of the land (and that means no more sister-wives) and not to cost the nation oodles through actions (i.e. unwanted children, multiple wife families all on welfare, sexually transmitted diseases—which abstinence only programs have been shown to increase, lovely). I say this even though the one tiny thing I really still like about the Catholic Church is support for undocumented people and many have made the case that in doing so the Church costs tax payers—but I have an answer for that, in a later post. . .

So, if we ARE going to have religious freedom but ask religions to respect the laws of the nation (so the Catholics get NO MONEY due to their sexist leadership, hah!!!!!), then I think it’s fair to ask religions to stay out of politics. I’m pretty proud that for the longest time in Mexico no clergy from any religion were allowed to campaign for any cause from the pulpit. It’s called separation of Church and State—and I value that. Preachers trying to sway elections really irk me, want to send them to a country that has a blend of religion and state, like the Vatican or the Middle East—liberal geography (Saudi, Pakistan, Israel, UAE, Iran, etc). If they want religion to influence government, go live in a nation where that is part of the value system.

Basically, there are many things that irk me about the Church/Temple/Mosque attempts to sway government. They include: gay marriage, abortion rights, stem cell research, anti-polygamy laws and protection for children from pedophiles. The two churches most strongly against gay marriage (no, not within their own church but for ANY church) are the Catholic Church and the Mormon one. However, they are also the two most guilty of lots of law breaking in their own right. Don’t get me started on the child rape and molestation scandal in Boston and elsewhere within the Catholic Church that the Diocese did NOTHING to stop and in fact even aided by sending offenders away if the flack got to big to go rape another communities children. Or, the Mormon Church’s turning a blind eye on the fundamentalist sects in Utah and Texas who routinely force young women into marriages with really old men who already have oodles of wives and kids, all living on tax payer money of course (read Under the Banner of Heaven and The 19^th Wife and Escape and Lost Boy), and who also often allow the rape of under-aged young women and who totally support a sexist leadership strategy.

I mean, PNN is for women right? So how is it that we have yet to tackle the issue of religion and sexism? People seem ok with talking about it from a Muslim perspective—oh those bad Islam nations that treat women so bad (I really miss you LadyVi) and such, because it’s all so far away. But let it get a little closer and . . . I think it’s time for some retrospection here. Wears Many Hats mentioned that there might be less war and devastation if kids and women (especially mothers) ruled more nations. Having worked LOTS with kids all my life, not so sure but I do have hope for a more balanced leadership structure. I would love to see it mandated for religions who request tax exemptions or who apply for federal funding of any kind. I would love to see it mandated for religions who are in any way recognized by the government. I would love to see “sister wives” counted as actual wives and then the men prosecuted for polygamy and welfare fraud. Oh, and while we are at it, let’s get them to all recognize gay marriage, which is not against the law as a law, it’s only fair for all the grief and persecution and discrimination these religions have put the gay communities through. Ok, said my piece. Slam me now.

How to fix the housing crisis?

Ok here’s the deal. I hear from so many people that it’s not fair to bail people out of poor decisions regarding buying more house that they can afford. I also hear that “they” need to learn their lesson. My problem with this, none of the disaster would have been possible without the banks to support it, yet no bankers are paying the same price. I mean, it’s not like Bank of America or Chase or Wells Fargo or any of the other biggies are being foreclosed upon and the government repossessing their real estate AND the real estate of the CEOs and the Board Members.

I see it like this. Obama got nice and tough on the auto companies. I may not have agreed with him but most of the companies have gone through some seriously difficult choices, none easy, in order to qualify for the money they borrowed from the feds (aka, tax payers). My problem? He was not nearly so tough on Wall Street banks. Now, I totally understand that the whole bank bailout began under Bush and he botched it as much as possible without just handing Paulson’s rival Lehman over to the sharks so his bank, Goldman, had less competition (wait, that’s just what he did) and bailing out AIG to a tune disastrously higher than it would have cost for Lehman. The banks promised to try really, really hard to work with lenders and not to foreclose so much. Of course, they then proceeded to take fed (aka tax payer) money and foreclose at a faster rate and at higher numbers than ever before. I guess those promises needed some teeth to back them up, kind of like for the auto companies?

Here is how I see it. No one held a gun to the heads of banks making loans to those who could not afford it, to those with no money down or to those whose home was over-valued but the assessor just kind of ‘rounded up.’ The banks are equally at fault, except I see them as more at fault, here’s why. The banks knew these were risky loans—and it was greed that drove them. They knew they would sell the loans as soon as possible and then they would not own the loss.

Here is what I would like the feds to do with the stimulus (aka tax payer) money: First, no bank may touch another cent without agreeing to this and those that have taken money must return 40% at 15% annual interest (see, I’m kind, my interest rate is way, way less than theirs). Each bank must hunt down the original owners in half of their foreclosures in the last 18 months and reinstate half of them back into their homes. This is the responsibility of both the banks that currently own the loan (they must fix half) and those that originally issued the loan (they must fix half). Believe it or not, this is a win-win for the feds (aka the tax payers). Why?

When a home is foreclosed upon, it often falls to ruin and brings down the value of the surrounding properties, even when the surrounding owners are those who are regularly paying their mortgage. Foreclosures are bad for the neighbors; fixing them is good for the neighbors. Also, when a home is foreclosed upon, it often falls prey to squatters and vandals and thieves. People steal the copper from the pipes in the walls, doors from the home and often even appliances. Squatters move in and totally destroy the property—why not, it’s not like the own it or have a deposit to worry about, and vandals are often either those squatters or just those angry at the bank who foreclosed on the property (either by kicking out the owners or the owners tenants). Also, someone is now homeless, whether owner or tenant. Also, the bank is losing money too because a vandalized, stripped, destroyed home has far less value than one that is lived in and loved. Finally, foreclosed properties increase the number of properties on the market, resulting in more for sale properties at a time that banks are issuing fewer mortgages (they discovered a need to be stricter, wow!), resulting in a drop in values. It’s simple economics—increase supply a lot, decrease demand even a little and prices will drop, a lot. Reducing foreclosures will decrease supply (demand is another issue) and prices will rise. They may not rise to previous highs, but they will rise. This is good news to anyone trying to sell a home.

Many people took out loans they could not possibly pay. I understand that. But, others were duped. I use myself as a case in point. I tend to read everything and I was buying my fourth property by myself of my life, so I felt I understood the process. Two of the former properties had had no pre-payment penalty but one did. I asked about it on the former property and got the answer that, if I paid off the loan in full early or sold early that I would pay a penalty as the bank would lose an amount of interest it had counted on receiving. This is because banks get their money first. See, if people buy a home on a thirty year mortgage and move/sell before the property is paid off, the bank has gotten oodles more (like 90% more) of its expected interest revenue than the owner has paid in principal. For those with a mortgage, notice how much you paid in interest that first year of ownership (looked good on taxes but a tad hard on the wallet) and how little you paid in interest. Ok, so I got the pre-payment penalty.

Except, I didn’t. I was pretty proud of myself. When I purchased my last property from the same company with (I thought) the same pre-payment penalty I had faced before, I thought the same rules applied. They did not. I had some slightly (very slightly) good months in which I budgeted a tad better than I had thought I might. I decided to pay an extra $50 monthly on my mortgage, nothing major but I felt pretty good doing it. Except, it turns out it was a really, disastrously bad idea. You see, the pre-payment penalty in this case was any pre-payment not originally written into the mortgage, even my $50. So, that tiny overage made my rate jump from 6% to 6.5%. Please, I am not a whining moron or foolish person who does not understand. I have a frickin’ doctorate from a pretty respectable university and I can read and write rather well and am more fiscally responsible that any of my evil relatives (you could ask them but we all hate each other, but they’ll probably cop to this because it’s so freakin’ obvious). So, the banks are playing fast ones with us all. The fact that they were making oodles off the new work situation of Americans—that most people were moving jobs and often locations about every five years and thus buying and selling and thus banks got lots and lots of interest and never had the pesky, last five to ten years of the mortgage when they got nearly nothing and the majority was principal. You would think the little buggers would have been happy.

Except, they weren’t. They were way, way to greedy to be happy with making money, they needed to make big bang bling and be dammed if people got hurt in the process. Well, lots of people, including myself, did get hurt. No, I have not lost my home but it has been painful and paying .5% more than I had figured on paying is pretty damn painful as I can’t refinance until I take my new job and stop just consulting. Ugh! So, these greedy little worms (cause that’s what those million dollar bonus buggers were), well, they need to pay up.

So, I say those banks either made generally good loans based on well-researched data about who could pay and who could not. These were generally local banks who generally were extremely cautious in who they extended money to. Given the bad economy, even these banks have foreclosed on some people. For them, though, finding and returning 50% of those turned out back into their homes is likely to be easier given their small numbers. In fact, most of those small banks never asked for, and never took, a penny in stimulus (aka tax payer) funds, so this doesn’t apply to them anyway (as long as they don’t borrow or receive support from a bank that did). Then, there are the greedy little buggers, yes, them. They foreclosed on lots and lots of people. In fact, they even tended to find people who were behind on payments and tack on fees and jack up interest and then tack on more fees and penalties until someone who was behind $8000 in payments now owed $28,000—just because, you know, some one who is behind in payments will find it so much easier to pay an extra $20,000 when they finally find the $8000. Just because this is all legal does not make it all ethical or right. For those banks, it will be a tad painful (as in really seriously, extraction or surgery with no pain killers or anesthesia). Guess what, that’s as it should be. They can choose the 50% they will not reinstate—so they can continue to write off the worst of their decisions, BUT they need to own up to half.

In addition, to keep banks from foreclosing on everyone so they can reinstate half and say see, we are good, we need to address foreclosures from this day forward. As of the day this program begins, each bank receiving any stimulus funds MUST also reduce by half the number of foreclosures from the same month last year. So, if in May of 2008 a bank foreclosed on a thousand homes, in May of 2009 that bank may foreclose on no more than 500. Get it. Yes, painful. Guess what, the penalty for being too greedy is painful—it should be.

So, who has Obama’s telephone number so I can call him about this?

New section for the President's ear

Ok, here goes. This will be a section on things Obama needs to hear from us. I will blog on education, health care, housing, banking, the economy, the military, social services, and other factors the executive office can affect, all from the grass level view. Help me out here. Even if you disagree, at least we can start a dialogue. Oh, and if you disagree? You must, must post your idea of how to fix the issue. Anyone have connections out there? If not, I'll try to hit up some of my politically active amigas.