Child support payments and parental alienation

Parental alienation can devastate the relationship between parents and children. It can be a central issue in child custody disputes. There is, however, an apparent link between the child support scheme and malicious attempts by some custodial parents to completely eradicate the relationship between the child and the other parent. According to Daily Telegraph journalist Corrine Barraclough, 'countless parents are paying child support through the government yet alienated from their children. Given that child support is calculated on the number of nights children spend with each parent, a moral hazard is created that can tempt a primary carer to withhold access for the basest of reasons, money'.

One of the undeniable facts about divorce is that children often adapt better to their parents' separation if they are allowed to have a continuing contact with both parents. Indeed, a recurring theme in the field of child psychoanalysis is that children of divorced parents often desire to develop a meaningful relationship with both of their parents, including their non-residential parents. According to a significant academic paper endorsed by 110 leading international experts, it is not correct to assume that sharing overnight care is necessarily problematic for the little child. Written by Richard A. Warshak, this peer-reviewed academic article analyses existing research and it finds that little children commonly develop attachment relationships with more than one caregiver. It also finds that, in normal circumstances, children are likely to do considerably better if they have overnight contact with both parents. Thus the article concludes, beyond reasonable doubt, that 'sufficient evidence does not exist to support postponing the introduction of regular and frequent involvement, including overnights, of both parents with their babies and toddlers. The theoretical and practical considerations favoring overnights for most young children are more compelling than concerns that overnights might jeopardize children's development'.

As mentioned, 110 leading researchers and practitioners have read, provided comments, and offered revisions to Dr Warshak's article and they endorse his article's conclusions. This includes Dr Don Edgar, former foundation director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies; Judy Cashmore AO, Professor in Socio-Legal Studies at Sydney University; and Barry Nurcombe, Emeritus Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Queensland. According to Nurcombe, 'the experts who signed the report are amongst the best in the world in their fields'. As he also explains, 'the paper highlights the fact that current policies relating to overnight contact with […] young children have been excessively affected by misplaced concern to the mother'.

This leads to the important discussion of government policies in Australia. Policies across many areas of public administration appear to tacitly endorse the concept of easily available divorce. In doing so these government policies have seriously encouraged the irresponsible behavior of parents who apply for a divorce at the first sign of trouble with their relationship. Instead of trying to resolve their problems, state-sponsored financial incentives will tempt a parent to leave the marriage and subsequently alienate their children from the other parent, so as to collect a sole parent's pension in the form of support payments.

Here in Australia the Department of Human Services (DoHS) is the federal agency responsible for determining the level of financial support that non-residential parents are expected to pay. The amount is based on the amount of care received by a child from each parent, which is then determined by the time this child spends with his or her non-residential parent. There are some obvious financial advantages available for those who maliciously alienate another parent from their children. Indeed, support payments have become a lucrative reward for a more narcissistic parent who make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the other parent to develop any meaningful relationship with their children. After all, if the non-residential parent spends a more substantial or meaningful time with his children, then the amount paid to the other parent is lower than it would be if the relationship with that other parent had completely broken down, or if their children were cared for after separation entirely by one parent.

Contrary to popular belief, child-support payments have nothing to do with irresponsible fathers abandoning their children. The Child Support Agency was establishedin 1988 and legislation passed in 1989 imposed a mandatory formula for all parents who separated. This support scheme, writes Patrick Parkinson, Dean of Law at the University of Queensland and an internationally renowned expert on family law, 'was certainly motivated by concerns about growing welfare expenditure'.

Developed to outset the jurisdiction of the courts in relation to child support, he notes that such a scheme 'was largely driven by the need to ensure … that private transfers of money from fathers to mothers reduced the burden of the state in terms of welfare expenditure'. According to Professor Parkinson, the child-support scheme provides 'perverse incentives … for primary caregivers to resist children spending more time with the other parent to avoid a reduction in the child support obligation.' As far as possible, such 'perverse incentives need to be avoided, and legislative policies in these areas should be in harmony rather than conflict', Parkinson says.

Originally justified as a method of recovering welfare costs, child-support payments have been transformed into a massive subsidy on unilateral divorce. Because in a 'no-fault' system nobody can contest a unilateral divorce, these payments are an entitlement to be assessed on parents and even on those who are unwillingly divorced against their will. As a result, a loving parent may be forcibly separated from his or her children, and such payments awarded ostensibly and regardless of any reference to 'fault'. As noted by U.S. sociology professor Stephen Baskerville:

No-fault divorce allowed a mother to divorce her husband for any reason or no reason and to take the children with her. Child support took the process a step further by allowing the divorcing mother to use the now-fatherless children to claim her husband's income – also regardless of any fault on her part (or lack of fault on his) in abrogating the marriage agreement.

Across Australia, many parents are being told in mediation sessions or by lawyers that there is no hope of overnight contact with their children. In view of the financial reward acquired, the position of some parents is that the other parent should spend the littlest time possible with their children. A parent holding temporary custody may decide to procrastinate custody litigation so as to prevent the other parent's access to their children. When this awful situation occurs, a loving parent may completely lose access to their children through no fault or agreement of their volition. As noted by Bettina Arndt, a psychologist who has served on two federal committees concerned with children support and family law, 'thousands of Australian fathers have had their contact with their young children limited to a few hours often spend huge sums on lawyers, fighting to be able to care for their children overnight'.

According to Sir Paul Coleridge, a former High Court Judge in the United Kingdom, 'mothers who refuse to let separated fathers see their children should have them taken away. The children should be handed over to the full-time care of the father if the mother persistently defies court orders'. In the UK, around 5,000 new cases a year come before the family courts in which parents – almost always mothers – defy orders to let the other parent have contact. Judges are extremely reluctant to jail mothers because of the damaging effects on the children, so many continue to get away with it. And yet, as Justice Coleridge points out, 'occasionally it might be necessary to send a mother to jail.

What is happening is not merely an accident but the product of a radical ideology that has declared open war on the institution of marriage. As stated in a January, 2015, submission of the Australian Family Association to the Parliamentary Inquiry into the Child Support Program, womens groups' that had also lodged submissions to that same inquiry have displayed a remarkable lack of consideration or recognition of the problems that non-residential parents might face. 'The payer appears to be recognised as only a financial source', noted this family association in its review of all these submissions, thus observing that some of the women groups 'are open about the fact that they provide services to women based on gender equality and/or a feminist framework'. It is worth also noting what this "feminist framework" essentially means. According to the Australian Family Association,

Radical feminists regard [traditional] marriage … as a "patriarchal" institution based on gender inequality and the division of labour between men and women. In this context the transfer of money between the payer man and the payee woman is essentially viewed as compensation to be expected and earned for every woman who separates from her male "oppressor". Hence, it is not surprising that women groups emphasise the "oppressor" male with repetitive claims about financial manipulation and domestic violence. Of course most of these claims are based on reports and generally we can never know which claims might be true or not true. Also with this categorising of the "oppressor" male the male's (father's) contact with the children has no importance. The feminist view appears to be that children are "all-right" without contact with the father. This situation perhaps explains the assertion by [one of these submissions] about fathers not having contact with children.

By contrast, the Association noted how the father groups had a special focus on the parallel of child contact and child financial support. These submissions reveal an alarming level of suicides by post-separation fathers who are alienated from their children. One such submission reminded that 'over 1 million children are living without their fathers and that … the legislation underpinning the Family Court of Australia and the Child Support Agency has been a major factor contributing to the fatherlessness crisis'. After analyzing the suicide rate amongst non-residential fathers, that submission reported that 'the death rate amongst child support payer fathers is almost double the rate of Australian males who do not have administrative child support assessments'.

During most of the 20th century the basis of mortality data in Australia fluctuated around 20 deaths per 100,000 population for males, and 5 deaths per 100,000 population for females. The rate of suicide in males in 1997 was 29.8 per 100,000 and 17.0 per 100,000 in 2006. Equivalent rates for females were 7.8 and 4.8 per 100,000. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare now reports that the suicide rate for men aged 20 to 39 years has risen by 70 per cent over the last two decades.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 1,901 males (16.8 per 100,000) and 634 females (5.6 per 100,000) died by suicide in 2012 alone. This finding has been highlighted in an academic paper by Susan Beaton and Peter Forster. Published by the Australian Psychological Society, these two experts in suicide preventions explain that 'suicide is the number one killer of men under 44 years' in Australia, and that the dramatic increase in male suicide is at least partially due to 'marriage breakdown ' coupled with 'poorer social support among … divorced males'.

Suicide is therefore much more common among Australian males than females, which is consistent with current trends observed particularly in other western countries. If a similar rise in female suicides were also occurring, one may assume that there would be a public outcry and a demand for remedy. Yet the extraordinarily high rate of male suicide is rarely discussed. According to a round of studies carried out in America, Europe, and Australia, one fundamental reason for the dramatic increase in male suicide is associated with the apparent discrimination encountered by fathers in the family courts, especially the denial of access to their children.

According to sociology professor Augustine Kpsowa of the University of California at Riverside, divorce following the loss of contact with their children has become a major factor of male suicide. 'As far as the divorced man is concerned, he has lost his marriage and lost his children and that can lead to depression and suicide', Professor Kpsowa says. The primary purpose of his important study was to examine the effect of marital status on the risk of suicide. Using a large nationally representative sample, Professor Kpsowa noted that the risk of suicide among divorced men was 2.4 times higher than that of their married counterparts. Amongst women, however, there was actually no statistically significant differentials in the risk of suicide by marital status categories. Indeed, divorced men were nearly 9.7 times more likely to commit suicide than comparable divorced women.

This leads to the conclusion beyond any reasonable doubt that marital status, especially divorce followed by the loss of assess to children, has strong net effect on mortality from suicide, 'but only among men'. Thus an important question arises: 'Why are divorced men killing themselves?' Professor Kpsowa provides the following answer to this question:

Some analysts argue that societal institutions tend to ignore or minimise male problems as evident in suicide statistics. For instance, in many jurisdictions … there seems to be an implicit assumption that the bound between a women and her children is stronger than that between a man and his children. As a consequence, in a divorce settlement, custody of children is more likely to be given to the wife.

In the end, the father loses not only his marriage, but his children. The result may be anger at the court system especially in situations wherein the husband feels betrayed because it was the wife that initiated the divorce, or because the courts virtually gave away everything that was previously owned by the ex-husband or the now defunct household to the former wife.

Events could spiral into resentment (toward the spouse and "the system"), bitterness, anxiety, and depression, reduced self-esteem, and a sense of "life not worth living". As depression and poor mental health are known markers of suicide risk, it may well be that one of the fundamental reasons for the observed association between divorce and suicide in men is the impact of post divorce (court sanctioned) "arrangements".

This explanation helps us understand what happened to people like Martin Romanchick, the police officer who hanged himself after being denied access due to charges brought by his ex-wife, which the court found to be frivolous. Or to Darryn White, the loving and caring father who hanged himself after being denied access to his children because he could not afford paying child support that was twice his take-home pay. In a letter signed 'In Memory of My Loving Father', his distressed 14 year-old daughter stated: 'I know my father was a good man and a good father … He obviously reached a point where he could see that justice was beyond his reach and decided that taking his life was the only way to end his suffering'.

Of course, the problem is not restricted to Australia. In the UK, a study commissioned by the Samaritans involving eleven leading social scientists concluded that marriage breakdown and a family court system perceived to favour women with the custody of children and the family home (even where these men are unemployed and have nowhere else to go) are significant factors in the suicide of countless men. When marriages fail, the research papertudy concluded, 'men are less likely to be awarded full custody of their children, more likely to be displaced from the family home and have less access to their children'. This means the loss of personal identity, social status and respect. Adding to loneliness and the natural isolation of so many men in their mid-life, these are significant causes the high risk of male suicide.

But returning to the problem in Australia, according to David Collier, a retiring judge from the Parramatta Family Court, such accusations have now become a 'major weapon' in the war between parents who wish to secure full custody of their children. Unfortunately, some excellent parents have completely lost any access to their children. This is particularly so when non-residential parents are falsely accused of child abuse and neglect, and even the sexual molestation of their children. Even after the Department of Child Protection (DCP) and the family courts entirely clear the innocent parent of any wrongdoing, more often than not the courts end up keeping the custody with the parent who made the false allegations.

A common strategy in these false accusations is to apply for a restraining order. Family Violence Orders (FVOs) are a common strategy for the purposes of generating parental alienation. Such orders are easily obtainable and they can be used to alienate an innocent parent from their children. The residential parent only has to defame the other parent without the slightest need of proof. Such accusations completely tear apart entire families, all on the word of one person and with no need of evidence. As noted by Dr Adam Blanch, a family counsellor and provisional psychologist working in Melbourne,

The more a single parent can restrict the other parent's access to the children the more financial support they receive from the alienated parent and the government, and a restraining order even when based on allegations that have been unsubstantiated is a great weapon in the fight for primary custody and restricted access.

Since the amount of payment is proportional to the time of visitation, the alienation strategy is undoubtedly linked to financial reward in the form of child-support payments. Contrary to popular belief, support payments have nothing to do with parental neglect or abandonment. Since the entirely alienated parent is forced to pay 100 per cent of support, this scheme undeniably provides a perverse and sinister incentive for complete alienation of the non-residential parent. In sum, the parent who maliciously provokes such alienation will be fully entitled by law to obtain a financial reward through a deeply flawed system that ultimately rewards their behaviour.

To conclude, support payments have been transformed into a perverse incentive to unilateral divorce and parental alienation. And so it is important to consider that maliciously separating an innocent parent from his or her children so as to obtain undue financial advantage constitutes an extremely serious form of child abuse and neglect. Perpetrators of false allegations for the purposes of obtaining undue financial gain should not go unpunished, as is so often the situation now. Once it is possible to testify beyond reasonable doubt that no abuse has actually occurred, such false accusations should be approached as a serious form of child abuse and give rise to the loss of custody to the parent who has made such false accusations.