by Rob Lorei
Earlier this week The Florida Legislature passed a controversial bill that would change current alimony and child custody policies. Under S.B. 688, permanent alimony would be outlawed and instead the duration and amount of alimony would be determined using a formula based on the length of the marriage and income discrepancies between the two parties. When it comes to child custody, a judge could determine a split-custody agreement depending on 15 factors determining the fitness of the parent. The bill has been opposed by women’s organizations around the state, who say that it puts out women who decided to devote themselves to family care prior to divorcing, and changes the focus of child-sharing agreements in divorce to what parents want. Joining us to explain the opposition to the bill is Cynthia Lee Starnes, a law professor at Michigan State University who has has spent almost 25 years studying alimony.
4 Responses to “Is the new Florida alimony bill Anti-women?”
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No Comments! So here we go AGAIN! My position on this after spending over a decade fighting a man who was hell bent on destroying me using our child, using whatever he could use because I had the audacity to stand up and say he was not allowed to BEAT ME anymore is that the child sharing portion is simply insane.
Too many kids fall through the cracks now under a friendly parent/best interest of the child provision currently in use. What this means is they figure out what is in the best interests of a child whose parents are in court to determine custody of said child. AT THE SAME TIME, these parents must show that they would also be “friendly” to the other parent.
Now in cases of abuse (which are only about 5% of all cases as most cases are mediated before heading to court) this is often a nightmare. Thousands of dollars and lots of time wasted going to show that abuse exists. Money down the drain for lawyers. Those laws were a nightmare already due to the friendly parent provision. This basically means that the judge will decide in all contested custody cases, absent abuse (and I have no clue when abuse reaches a level where the friendly parent provision is no longer applied – I have yet to find one case in which it was), which of the two parents would be more friendly to the other parent – ie: including them on child activities, discussing important child related issues, etc.
This has already been shown to be a nightmare as 58,000 children have been placed into the care and custody of an abusive parent. Studies have shown that young fathers who are ill equipped to care for a young infant are getting angry due to baby crying and shaking baby to death or causing severe life long complications to the child. Studies are also showing in that some cases, sexually abusive fathers are getting sole custody using a debunked condition known as PAS/PA/MMS.
Now fast forward to this bill. This bill would create an even more difficult hurdle for “protective parents” to overcome. Beyond the friendly parent provisions, we would now have to show why the child does not need to live with an abusive parent 50% of the time. Before we would simply be fighting against approximately 20-40% of the time (22% in my case). This will create so much more litigation and has the potential for even more cases of abused children to slip through the cracks.
Again, these cases are not a huge portion of all divorce cases. But the question I pose in closing to you is this: How many abused children must there be in “collateral damage” before this issue is not acceptable? Who decides who those abused children will be and which ones will fall through the cracks and which ones will end up handicapped for life and which ones will simply end up dead? How many handicapped or dead children are acceptable before this is honestly reviewed? What IS acceptable collateral damage?
Equal opportunity and equality are a real bitch sometimes, ladies ya can’t have your cake and eat it to anymore .
Generally speaking, the best interest of our children after separation is for them to have a great relationship with both parents AND for the parents to have a peaceful co-parent relationship. In far too many cases, cases spin out of control due to parents unnecessary fighting over time with their kids and money. This bill says that Courts need to start at a point where both parents are considered equal, and then go from there. It’s sad that the law actually needs to say this! We are supposed to live in a country where gender discrimination is frowned upon, yet a simple look at custody outcomes proves that statistically speaking Dads and Kids are routinely kept from each other! Furthermore, after separation, people need to be put on a path of being financially independent from each other. Unnecessary financial dependence only creates more legal battles and animosity, which is bad for kids.
so shared custody is now anti women? Hopefully society soon wakes up to what these women’s advocacy groups and feminists really are – Gender supremacists bigots.