EXPEDITE DIVORCE CASES INVOLVING MINOR CHILDREN

LINK to online version

In 1997, Guam enacted a law authorizing no-fault divorce (P.L. 24-134). The legislative intent was “to reduce the pains that such turbulence causes in the lives of our people, especially our children.” In other words, if we let couples divorce more easily then we will have less conflict and healthier children.

The opposite has happened. Just read the news. Busted families and damaged children abound, with much of the burden falling to schools and teachers to try to put children back together again before they are able to teach them anything.

While I can’t prove causation, there is at least a demonstrable correlation between the rate of family fragmentation and the increasing number of children diagnosed with an ever widening array of dysfunctional behaviors and developmental disorders.

Since the legislature is never going to rescind the sacred cow of no-fault divorce (aka “irreconcilable differences”), there is something the legislature can and should do to address at least part of the fallout: expedite divorce cases involving minor children.

Right now, the only thing expedited is child support - wherein one parent is forced to pay the other simply because “the other” has the kids.

Because our society assumes that Mommy has the kids because Daddy left, our system has no problem immediately punishing Daddy. However, statistics from Divorce.com show that women initiate 69% of divorces, and in cases where a parent makes off with the children, MissingKids.com says that “mothers are the most common abductors.”

Contrary to common opinion, stealing your own children is not a crime if there is no custody order. A parent can simply pack up the children, abandon the marriage, file for divorce, and hold the children hostage.

Once divorce is filed, the child support law is mobilized and the parent without the kids is forced to pay the parent with the kids regardless of why the other parent has the kids in the first place.

The abandoned parent can fight to get his or her kids back, but that fight - usually an expensive one - is fought in the divorce court, not the child support court. And because the divorce is not expedited (as is child support), it can take months or even years for final custody to be determined.

It is ironic that among the stated purposes of our current Child Support Guidelines there is this:

“To eliminate the animosity associated with financial incentives to take sole custody of children (and) to prevent the Guidelines from being misconstrued as an income redistribution tool.”

It’s ironic because this is precisely what the Guidelines inadvertently encourage. Because the law immediately penalizes the abandoned parent and rewards the abandoning/"kidnapping" parent before any fault is determined, there exists the incentive for the abandoning parent to financially punish the abandoned parent so that he/she runs out of money and is unable to pursue the actual case.

Add to this the constant pressure by both attorneys and the courts to “settle,” and the abandoned parent is on a fast track to giving up - which is usually what the abandoning parent wants.

We already have a law on the books which mandates the best possible legal recourse in such sad situations. 19GCA§8404 requires “that children spend as much time with each of their parents as possible, when the parents are not living together.”

However, we first have to get into court to get the order, and as already mentioned, this can take a long time - precious time for a child whose psyche is being damaged by the day.

To make things even worse for an already traumatized child, in cases of parental “kidnapping,” there is usually also the manipulation of the child by the “kidnapper” parent to despise or even forget the other parent - otherwise known as “parental alienation.”

This happens, as one expert says, “when a parent hates the other parent more than he or she loves the child.” The more time the alienating parent has to do this, the more the child will be alienated from the abandoned parent, and, given the aforementioned correlation, the child becomes increasingly prone to developing dysfunctional behaviors and developmental disorders.

In “the best interest of the child” - a judicial mantra, the only way forward at this point, given the irreversible damage permitted by our divorce laws, is to expedite divorce cases involving minor children so that the child - as the law already requires - “can spend as much time with each parent as possible” - and as soon as possible.

Tim Rohr has resided in Guam since 1987. He has raised a family of 11 children, owned several businesses, and is active in local issues via his blog, JungleWatch.info, letters to local publications, and occasional public appearances. He may be contacted at timrohr.guam@gmail.com     

MORE MEN WITHOUT CHESTS

By Tim Rohr

"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." —C.S. Lewis

I was saving this post for a future Guam Daily Post column, but as I only get one column per month and there are many other things I will want to write about for the Post I've decided to share this here and now, especially given that JW has a much larger readership than the Post and there are many who may benefit from the following, and perhaps immediately. 

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It is not clear who said that “anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice in America.” But regardless of who said it, as a Catholic, I am inclined to mostly agree. 

I say “mostly” because there is another last “acceptable prejudice” that I believe is bigger than anti-Catholicism: the “acceptable prejudice” against men…especially white men. 

There is a mountain of data to support this but most of it would be pedantic and boring, so I’ll cut to the chase: 

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, in 2021, men died by suicide 3.9 times more than women, and white men killed themselves at a rate many times that of Blacks and Hispanics. 

Statistics from the Suicide Prevention Resource Center tell us that most of these white men were middle-aged: “between 2015 and 2020, persons over the age of 45 accounted for the majority of U.S. suicides.” 

Why are middle-aged white men killing themselves? Aren’t they members of the same demographic that is supposed to define “white privilege?” Aren’t they the racists, the sexists, the oppressors?

I could really launch off here as to why this is happening- shooting arrows at everything from the destruction of men and fathers in the family court system to the emasculation of men and fathers in just about every movie and TV program over the last twenty years, as well as the feminization of males from movie stars to Catholic pastors. 

The real culprit though appears to be divorce. 

According to Psychology Today, divorced men are nine times more likely to die by suicide than women.

Why? 

Aren’t middle-aged white men the dudes who run off with “young things” and leave their menopausal, putting-on-the pounds, greying wife?

The facts say otherwise. According to Divorce.com, it's the women who leave their men: women initiate 69% of divorces. 

One might think that a husband’s unfaithfulness is the reason women initiate divorce, but according to the same Divorce.com article, unmet needs are the top reason and unfaithfulness is third.

Interestingly, the number two reason is an earnings imbalance wherein women who make more than their husbands have an 8.4% chance of divorcing versus a 2.9% chance when the husband earns more.

But back to the serious matter at hand, despite all the propaganda to the contrary, the number one victim in America, based on the suicide facts, is not Black, is not Hispanic, is not a woman, but a white, middle-aged male whose wife has left him.

Without getting too personal, suffice it to say I have had some experience in this arena. And it is not pretty. 

You’re a guy. And a middle-aged guy. That means you’re a bad guy. I can’t tell you how many times I heard “What did you do?” or “You must have done something!” 

In fact, my own then-attorney on the eve of trial turned on me and said, “you know Mr. Rohr, you’re a really bad father.” 

It’s not hard to see how a middle-aged man, white or otherwise, can feel that the world is against him and simply take another way out. 

He is middle-aged. He is tired. Everything he ever worked for and dreamt of is gone in an instant. 

And he is being crucified in court in declarations from his wife - and even sometimes his adult children - with the most outrageous allegations, and all permissible because such declarations are considered “privileged communications.”

And all the while, his own lawyer is saying “You must have done something wrong. Look, your wife hates you, your children hate you, just give in and settle. Give her the house and the kids and sign here for child support.” 

At the risk of continuing to be too personal, I got rid of that lawyer (my 4th at the time), learned how to represent myself, later found an attorney willing to let me write my own papers, and, in the end, while I won’t say I won, I will say, I, a middle-aged white male, am still standing, quite alive, and not willing to accept the last acceptable prejudice in America, be it against Catholics or middle-aged white men. 

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I was saving the following for a separate article or JW post, but choose to add it here:

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Guam is very different.

First, we must note that -per a report published by Guam State Epidemiological Outcomes Workgroup (GSEOW), Guam’s suicide rate (in 2020), at 30 per 100,000 population, is more than double the suicide rate of the rest of the U.S. which is 13.5.

Next, Guam’s suicide facts are unique in other ways. 

According to Dr. Annette David, lead epidemiologist of GSEOW, in 2020, 34 percent of all Guam suicide victims were 20 to 29 years old - half the age of the national average.

Moreover, while men killed themselves at at a rate of 4 to 1 in the rest of the U.S., here in Guam, according to David, the male to female rate in Guam is 26 to 1. 

Let’s say that again. The male to female suicide ratio is 26 males for every one female.

Staying with the Guam facts, our outrageous suicide rate and its anomalous characteristics is really no surprise. 

Guam celebrates its matriarchal cultural superstructure wherein males are rarely encouraged to lead while we push females to the top of our matriarchy: witness our self-congratulations for electing our first female governor, our first openly gay Lt. Governor, and a dominant female majority in the legislature led by a female speaker.

But back to the original thrust of this post.

Guam is not unique in crushing males, we’re just especially adept at it. 

The rest of the nation, if not the western world, has functionally engendered a world of “men without chests” - as C.S. Lewis called them - but continues to demand that the same hollowed and psychologically castrated men perform as if they were not. 

KILLING FATHERS - PART I

By Tim Rohr

At the root of any successful society is the healthy, intact family. This is not a religious principle. It's a biological one. 

Since it takes a man and a woman to reproduce a child, and it takes that child the better part of two decades to become self-sufficient and in turn produce the next generation, the family unit, in terms of primal biological survival, has always been at least a two decade commitment which is renewed with the birth of every child. 

And in days gone by a couple produced many children, making the commitment usually "till death do we part" even before anyone ever thought of those words. 

But that was before government got involved. 

A recent article in Epoch Times has once again set out what has been set out so many times before: 1) America is in trouble; 2) it's in trouble because of the breakdown of the family; and 3) the breakdown of the family is due to "fatherlessness." 

Unfortunately, the article does not go much beyond simply reporting otherwise already well-known facts:

• one in four U.S. children are living in fatherless homes
• 63 percent of youth suicides occur in fatherless homes
• 85 percent of children in fatherless homes have behavioral disorders.
• fatherless kids are 20 times more likely to be incarcerated

The Epoch Times is not known for being mainstream, so here's hoping that one day its writers will go beyond reporting useless proposals like this:

"The AFPI (America First Policy Institute) is calling on officials and community leaders to support a pro-fatherhood campaign that would share the joys of fatherhood. 'Amplification from athletes, celebrities, musicians, actors, and national role models can push the importance of fatherhood to the forefront of public consciousness,' it said."

The article goes on to suggest that new legislation from Republican lawmakers holds promise:

A number of Republican lawmakers have been active in introducing pro-family legislation in the last couple of years. Notably, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) has introduced seven bills that seek to help young families, focusing mostly on pregnant women and new moms.

With many families now having two income providers, parenting is often burdened by busy agendas. “Laws in our country should work to chart a new course and help parents balance child-rearing, work, and other priorities throughout day-to-day life,” Rubio wrote earlier this year.

Talk about the blind leading the blind. One thing we don't need is for more stupid policies from stupid government people. What we need is for smart government people to get rid of stupid policies instituted by stupid government people which incentivize the destruction of families and fatherlessness in particular. 

Destructive Policy No. 1: NO FAULT DIVORCE

To illustrate, imagine this. You hire a contractor to fix your roof. Said contractor requires 50% up front. You pay him. He starts the work and then quits half way through. No reason. He's just tired of the job. Sure you only paid him 50% but your roof is open and rain is coming. And then he sues you for the other 50% because he doesn't like you anymore. 

That's no-fault divorce. Marriage is a legal contract. Imagine a society in which any other kind of contract is legally treated as marriage is: where the other party can just quit for no reason and with no consequence. 

In fact, not only no consequence, but the quitter has got the law on his side to take you for everything you have. Such a society would be considered lawless. In fact, it wouldn't be a society for long. But that's exactly what no-fault divorce law has done and is doing to society's most important contract. 

There is a lot more legislative idiocy, but for now, I'll just address one more, which, after no-fault divorce, is probably the second most destructive policy.

Destructive Policy No. 2: CHILD SUPPORT

In short (though I'll have much more to say in future posts), child support laws functionally incentivize a parent, usually the mother, to either take the children and abandon the father, or otherwise get rid of the father - usually through false abuse allegations. 

The mother, even before anything can be proven, is immediately awarded child support from the father, the enforcement of which is under pain of prison. What a deal...for mom anyway. 

The mother, upon receiving the coerced money from the father, is not held accountable in anyway for how she spends the money. Again, what a deal...for mom. 

The father at this point 1) has been abandoned by his wife; 2) has lost his children through functional - but legal - kidnapping; 3) has been presumed guilty (because he is immediately forced to pay child support) until proven innocent (if he ever gets a chance to prove it); and, 4) especially if he has been abandoned, has been left with all the usual family expenses - the mortgage, utilities, family health insurance, tuition, etc. - but now has the added burden of spending tens of thousands of dollars in family court to defend himself in a legal world where Dad is a "deadbeat" and is guilty of whatever his wife accuses him of until proven innocent - if ever. 

As Stephen Baskerville writes in TAKEN INTO CUSTODY, our child support laws enable:

"...a mother (to) simply escape the uncertainties, vicissitudes, and compromises inherent to life shared with a working husband by divorcing, whereupon she acquires the police as a private collection agency who will force him, at gunpoint if necessary, to pay her the family income that she then controls alone."

 TO BE CONTINUED