Newsletters::1999 December

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Minutes Of R-KIDS Directors Meeting On October 7, 1999

R-Kids will have an office at 469 Wabasha Street in St.

Paul (corner of 7th St. & Wabasha St.).

Members Meetings schedule: Members meetings are held at the

Brookdale-Hennepin Area Library, 6125 Shingle Creek Parkway,

Brooklyn Center. Meetings are scheduled for:

Thursday, December 16, 1999 at 7:00 PM.

Upcoming legislation

The Bar Association Family Law section?s Legislative Committee will be meeting December 8 to review proposed legislation. We hope to get an e-bulletin and update to our website to this regard.

Rep Steve Smith is chair of the Civil Law Committee

This is where divorce law is generated in the house. Rep Smith attended the Child Support Task Force meeting on Oct 27, 1999. He has been getting complaints from constituents about their treatment by the divorce system. He plans legislation. A hearing is scheduled for early February. His commented that visitation and child support are the two areas that need to be addressed.

We should all write, call or e-mail our comments, concerns and wishes to Rep Smith. Ask to speak at his hearing and provide the text of your speech. This seems to be the first chance in a long while to get something positive for

  1. Child support fairness (guidelines model)
  2. Child support audit
  3. Visitation enforcement
  4. Imputed income

The Child Support Task Force does not plan to submit legislation until next year (2001). This is an opportunity for others to start something positive.

To contact Rep. Smith: 

Representative Steve Smith ( R ) 
District 34A, 
2710 Clare Lane 
Mound, MN 55364-1812 
(h) (612) 472-7664 
Mail to: 
503 State Office Building 
St. Paul, MN 55155-1206 
(w) (651) 296-9188 
e-mail rep.steve.smith@house.leg.state.mn.us

Audit finds child support money mostly handled properly

Jean Hopfensperger / Star Tribune

Published Saturday, October 9, 1999

The state department that coordinates childsupport for more than 230,000 Minnesota children adequately handles payments in routine transactions but may have made errors in thousands of more complex cases, according to a legislative auditor's report.

The report found that the child-support system could have shortchanged as many as 13,000 children whose fathers owed money to more than one family, as well as an unknown number of former welfare recipients.

It also found that an employee of a private agency that contracts with state child-support offices stole and cashed more than $7,200 in child-support checks. The agency's insurance company reportedly reimbursed the state. "We feel for the most part, the Department of Human Services does a good job with most of the childsupport that comes in for the current month," said Jeanine Leifeld, audit manager. "It's unique situations involving arrearages [overdue child-support payments] where we started having problems." Leifeld characterized those problems as "serious."

She said her office decided to audit the system after receiving complaints from parents and because the department had begun a new centralized child-support collection system in 1997. Her office checked records from Oct. 1, 1997, to March 31, 1999.

The state's child-support enforcement system collects payments for parents on welfare and other families. It typically gets involved after a court orders a noncustodial parent to pay childsupport. That money is sent to the state, which distributes it to the appropriate parent or parents. If the parent is on welfare, the money is used to reimburse people with public assistance.

It's difficult to gauge the extent of the problems in the child-support system, because the auditor's report doesn't provide specific numbers to detail its findings, such as the actual number of children who were shortchanged payments. And it reviewed activities only under the direct control of the Human Services Department, which oversaw the distribution of $624 million in child-support payments in the 18-month period under review. It didn't examine child-support activities administered by counties.

The report found:

Payments in the system were adequately safeguarded and promptly deposited. The department didn't perform criminal background checks of potential employees who would have access to child-support computer systems -- a step that the audit recommends.

Payments weren't always distributed according to law. For example, the system sometimes erroneously sent past-due child-support checks to public assistance coffers instead of forwarding them to the custodial parent. This typically occurred if the parent had once been on welfare. The audit didn't say how many cases were affected by this; the department estimated that it involved fewer than 1,500 cases.

When noncustodial parents who owed money to more than one family made past-due payments, the money should have gone to pay off their oldest debt first. But that didn't always happen, because when the department switched to the new centralized system, it set a single date for many debt obligations that actually had different dates. As a result, older debts that should have had priority weren't given it.

The department didn't adequately prevent employees who were a party to a child-support case from being able to access and modify their own data. The audit, however, found no evidence that such tampering occurred. Laura Kadwell, director of the state child-support enforcement division, said the department is taking the auditor's findings seriously. "Our job is to get childsupport to families regularly and on time," she said. "When we are not distributing money in the way it is supposed to be distributed, we are concerned about that. We're taking these recommendations very seriously, and we're working to make the corrections needed. "That said . . . if you look at all the money that flows in and out of the system, it's a relatively small percentage of persons and payments affected," Kadwell said. "But if you're a person who is supposed to be getting a payment, we're obviously concerned about it."

The audit was viewed as a "first step" toward investigating problems in the child-support system by parent advocates such as Marjory Aldrich of Buffalo, Minn., who runs the Center for Victims of Professional Abuse from her home. The center advocates for people who feel they've been mistreated by government agencies.

Aldrich said she urged the auditor's office to look into the child-support system after working with a woman in her community who was denied access to a $3,000 child-support payment made by her former husband. The woman was on welfare for about five weeks, Aldrich said, during which time she signed a document saying she would turn over child-support payments to a public assistance office. The office was supposed to withhold up to the amount needed to cover her welfare benefits. However, when her former husband made the $3,000 overdue payment to the Wright County, the county wouldn't give her the balance of the cash, Aldrich said. "That's when I realized something was terribly wrong," said Aldrich, who contacted the legislative auditor about the case.

After four months of haggling, her client finally received $1,700, she said. Aldrich called the audit "limited," and said she planned to lobby the Legislature for a full examination of the county and state child-support system.

If you have questions about your child-support payment, you can call your county child-support worker or the Department of Human Services help line at 651-296-4085.

Leving Says Child Support Accountability is needed

Jeffrey M. Leving, a Des Plaines attorney who specializes in pursuing the rights of divorced fathers, says legislation is needed to make divorced parents accountable for how they spend child support money.

He is actively lobbying lawmakers in Springfield to create laws that accomplish that purpose. "Child support received by the custodial parent, who usually is the mother, is received not for that parents' own use, but in trust for the child," Leving said in a statement to the Journal.

"But, from some of the stories I have heard from many of the fathers I have represented over the last 18 years, you'd never know that. In law, when one person receives funds on behalf of another, the trustee is accountable for how those funds are spent so they are used correctly. However, many fathers in Illinois pay child support and yet their children lack proper food, clothing and other necessities; the support money never reaches the children. And these fathers are now powerless to seek an accounting to protect their own children.

"We don't think twice about requiring a guardian to account for how he or she spends a disabled person's money, and there is no reason why this same concept should not apply to the custodial parents' spending of money received from the other parent.

He said four states have laws authorizing courts to order the custodial parent to account for child support received, but Illinois is not one of them.

Leving applauded the Illinois House, which passed a law earlier this year prohibiting a custodial parent from moving more than 100 miles within the state without prior permission of a court. But the measure died in the Senate.

"Accountability laws are for children and parents who care about them," Leving concluded.

The District Courts in our Nation are now well under fire by litigators

challenging their unlawful actions in Federal Court, and we must

continue the fight in Minnesota!


September 30, 1999 Decision Of The United States District Court, Eastern District Of Michigan, Case No. 98-Cv-73896-Dt

Enclosed please find Memorandum Opinion and Order of the United States District Court granting Declaratory Judgment against Defendants Wayne County Circuit Court, Wayne County Friend of Court, and, Wayne County Sheriff, declaring that Defendants' use of pre-printed, pre-signed, computer generated Orders to Show Cause and Bench Warrants for the arrest of allegedly delinquent child support payers violates constitutionally guaranteed rights to due process of law under the 4th and the 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

[Ed. note: The full decision is not being reproduced on this page. For a copy, contact Trombly Tindall at TTFIRM@aol.com

This decision represents a monumental development that will forever change the manner in which domestic relations and support orders are enforced in Michigan and across the United States. The decision is legally significant for the following reasons:

  1. This decision is the first and the only case in which a Plaintiff has successfully obtained review and relief from a federal court of allegations of violation of federal constitutional rights by state domestic relations/support enforcement officials. Although numerous cases over the past 30 years have been brought in federal courts throughout the country seeking relief for alleged violations of federally protected constitutional rights by state domestic relations/support officials and state judges, all previous cases across the country have been denied access to and review by the federal courts on grounds of abstention. This is the first and the only case to ever obtain review or relief from a federal court.
  2. This decision is the first and only case to recognize and declare a federally protected constitutional right to due process of law in state domestic relations/support enforcement proceedings.
  3. This decision is the first and only case to recognize and declare the existence of a federally protected constitutional liberty interest which must be protected in all state domestic relations/enforcement proceedings.
  4. This decision declares that state domestic relations and child support enforcement personnel (prosecutors and Friend of Court) may not issue court orders or bench warrants for arrest as they do now throughout most of the state of Michigan and in other states. Such orders and warrants must be issued by a judge; and, only after legitimate judicial review and consideration of the allegations giving rise to the request for the order/warrant.
  5. The decision makes clear that state judges and courts must consider and enforce federal constitutional challenges/objections raised by a party to the actions, procedures and practices used by state agencies and courts to enforce domestic relations/support orders.

This decision is particularly timely and has immediate practical significance at this time. Over a period of some years recently, child support enforcement has become a politically hot issue. See, Attachments Nos. 1 and 2, as well as a crucial economic one. Politically, judges and elected law makers have adopted an aggressive enforcement posture in response to increasingly vocal pressure from special interest and voter groups. Economically, states have been subjected to ever increasing pressure from the federal government, through the federal Department of Health and Human Services, to improve state support collection statistics, by practically any available means; and, thereby, reduce state welfare burdens. Incentives to do this have included: federally funded bounties, penalties (reductions) in levels of federal funding for states that do not meet pre-determined federal collection quotas; and, federally assisted/subsidized collection techniques. This immense political and financial pressure has resulted in:

  1. Sweeping misuse of civil contempt powers of the courts to arrest and jail alleged delinquent support payers without adequate hearing or trial.
  2. Carefully timed, orchestrated, and, publicized "sweeps" of delinquent support payers who are then "paraded" into county circuit courts before local television cameras to publicize aggressive enforcement efforts shortly before judicial elections. (1.e. Oakland County, 1998).
  3. The recent mass use of state court appointed receivers to seize private property and sell or liquidate it, usually without proper notice and hearing as to either the appointment of the receiver or the seizure and sale of the property, to satisfy alleged support arrearages which are frequently inaccurate, and, of course, to pay the fees of the receiver who is often chosen from the judge's own political and/or campaign supporters.
  4. Highly publicized arrests of prominent/high profile individuals on questionable or invalid arrest warrants based on computer records of arrearages which are often proved, later, to be inaccurate and incorrect.

There is good news and bad news for families as this is written. The good news is that the importance of fathers in their children's lives is increasingly acceptable to discuss publicly, after so many years of suppression. The harmful effects on children of father absence that we have been talking about for years, are becoming increasingly a matter of public common knowledge.

The bad news is that most of government and the family court system is still lost in the dark ages of family policy. Although now forced to pay lip service to the importance of fathers, most of the solutions to the crisis of families proposed by politicians, bureaucrats, and their legions of fellow-traveler consultants and "experts", amount to thinly veiled attempts to simply continue or intensify the same empire building bureaucratic mentality that has already destroyed half of the families in America.

A note on joint physical custody

A recent email from the Children?s Justice Organization called for a Congressional resolution, in favor of making joint physical custody (JPC) presumptive. That proposal is not included in this newsletter for purposes of brevity. As a brief reply, most RKIDS members believe that the virtual presumption against JPC in Minnesota is unfair, we realize that a presumption in favor of it is unlikely to prevail. Moreover, we have advocated in the past against federalization of family law, such as Congress' attempts to make custody laws more gender biased in the Violence Against Women act. However, at least your undersigned editor has suggested that a presumption in favor of JPC at temporary hearings would be appropriate. That gives parents to try it for a while, and see how and if it works. (One of the arguments against JPC is that the dad is just trying to lower his support, and will not exercise all the time he is accorded). More importantly, it prevents the custody evaluator from being tainted by a temporary hearing, and it also keeps the both parties on equal ground, to lessen the likelihood that the judge at the final hearing will base her decision mainly on an unwillingness to upset the status quo. (What I call the bump-set-spike effect of losing temporary custody).

-Tim Theisen Newsletter editor

The Violence Against Women Act

The Violence Against Women Act might be worth a letter to your congressman.

Submitted by Bruce Kaskubar (For most of you I think that's Gil Gutknecht Gil.Gutknecht@mail.house.gov

Representative _________________

U.S. House of Representatives

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Representative _________________:

I believe that the Violence Against Women Act (H.R. 357) would have the unintended consequence of hurting women, men, children and families. I would like to make several points: :

  1. Sec. 241 would ask the states to "have a presumption that children shall have their main physical residence with their primary caretaker parent unless that parent is unfit." This resolution in the Violence Against Women Act is a clever and indirect way to abolish shared parenting. Congressmembers Tom Davis (R-VA) and Albert Wynn (D-MD) strongly oppose violence against women, but they have withdrawn their support from Sec. 241 because they support shared parenting.
  2. Domestic violence is an important issue, but the bill as drafted ignores violence against men and children. It would be unconstitutional and a denial of due process for Congress to adopt a law that is gender based.and gender biased.
  3. If a parent needs supervised access (visitation) with his children, churches or day care centers, many of them run by women, are more positive environments than domestic violence shelters. Yet the bill would require that the supervision take place in a domestic violence shelter. Congress refused to adopt such a provision in a bill several years ago, and it should refuse to adopt such a restrictive measure now. The bill would have the unintended consequence of pathologizing every custody case, and treat every noncustodial parent as a perpetrator. Women and men of good conscience must not allow this to happen.

Thank you.

Sign

Letter from Dave Witte

I've recently noticed that there has been an plethora of 'battered women' advertisements and info-mercial type programs on the tube. As you may have noticed, Phillip Morris, presumably as a part of the tobacco settlement, is airing a strong ad promoting the issue violence against women in the context of domestic violence in a rather graphic manner. They continue to portray this violence as men against women, instead of revealing the true statistics that show women acting violently against men in the same numbers -- and more often seriously injuring or killing men.


Just last night, on local station, I also saw a full-featured program, funded by our tax dollars, addressing the 'need' for domestic abuse enforcement rather graphically by various 'interviews' and a scene play of a man who had a restraining order against him, in which his wife had him arrested when he attempted to make amends. They provided instruction on getting restraining orders and promotion of the 'abuse against women' cause at the workplace and using bumper stickers... etc.


It was truly sickening! Of course, no mention was made to the possible misuse of these domestic abuse laws, and the subsequent adverse affects upon children.

The following article gives a small ray of hope that there are some who are willing to speak the truth.


Dave

NOW'S NO-MEN AGENDA

Kathleen Parker

Tribune Media Services

October 27, 1999


You no longer have to read between the lines to divine the National Organization for Women's agenda. In a way, it seems refreshingly simple: No Men. That's the only conclusion one can draw upon reviewing NOW's objections to proposed federal legislation popularly known as the "Fathers-count" bill. The bill isn't exactly a mainstream father's dream.

Mostly, the bill creates programs to help unemployed fathers find jobs so they can produce child support for their welfare progeny. In fact, men's-rights activists aren't wild about the bill, saying that it addresses only the financial responsibilities of fathers while ignoring more pressing (child access) concerns of fathers disenfranchised by courts that favor mothers.

Still, on Planet Deadbeat, it's better than nothing. But NOW really doesn't like the bill because, well, it seems helpful to men. The fact that helping men might result ultimately in helping women and children is irrelevant. Anything that purports to help men is suspect. In the case of the Fathers-count bill, NOW claims it's unconstitutional.

Martha F. Davis, legal director for NOW's Legal Defense and Education Fund, recently wrote the following to Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.), chair of the subcommittee on Human Resources: "Because they (the bill's authors) tie the federal benefits available under the Act to gender (i.e. "fatherhood"), hese provisions violate the equal protection guarantee of the 5th Amendment to the Constitution."

At NOW's insistence, language has been added to the Fathers-count bill so that mothers, expectant mothers and married mothers are eligible for benefits and services on the same basis as fathers, expectant fathers and married fathers. Even so, NOW is challenging the bill on its gender constitutionality.

One could cast NOW's protest in a favorable light. They just want to advance equality, right? But one would be wrong. When it comes to legislation aimed only at helping women, NOW forgets everything it knows about the equal protection guarantee of the 5th Amendment.

For example, NOW issued no such protest to the grant application kit for victim services under the Violence Against Women Act Fund, which specifically states:

"A VAWA-funded project may not use VAWA funds or matching funds for projects that focus on children or men." Selective constitutionality at its shameless best.

Then, last week--in an astonishing show of its true colors--NOW began protesting Vice President Al Gore's support of the Fathers-count bill, pointing out that the bill would funnel $150 million to "local and national organizations, many of them likely to be fathers'-rights groups and right-wing (as opposed to left-wing) religious organizations."

In an e-mail alert, NOW urged its members to lobby Gore to oppose the bill because, get this, the act would give money to organizations that: "promote marriage; enhance relationship skills; teach how to control aggressive behavior; promote successful parenting; train parents in money management; encourage regular visitation between fathers and children; help fathers and their families avoid or leave welfare; improve fathers' economic status" by providing work services and education.

Well, hell's bells. Who'd want such a thing as that?

Successful marriage, responsible parenting, financial independence? What we clearly need in this country are more bad marriages, more bad parenting, more welfare families.

You have to wonder why anyone would find fault with a government program that promotes the concept of people looking after their own families, trying to get along. You have to wonder, and then you remember what they say: Follow the money.

NOW's livelihood depends on the perception of women as victims. Strengthening families and reinstating fatherhood threatens that status and the organizations that thrive on it.


Increasingly, women are being arrested for domestic violence

Published Thursday, November 25, 1999 Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO -- There was a time when police officers handled a domestic-violence call by telling angry men to take a walk and cool off. They still do, but the walk is straight to jail. And increasingly, it's the woman who takes the hike.

Police in at least 24 states now receive training in how to decide who is the "primary aggressor," a term that doesn't necessarily mean the person who struck the first blow or even caused the most damage, according to the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

"Primary" means "most significant." The definition requires officers on the scene to go down a long checklist of things to look for, including a history of violent or coercive behavior.

Backers of the "primary-aggressor" law hoped it would reduce domestic violence and the number of women arrested for defending themselves.

In 1987, women were arrested in 5 percent of California's domestic-violence cases; that rate had risen to 15 percent by the time the state passed its primary-aggressor law in 1997.

Last year, as overall domestic-violence arrests declined in California, the percentage of women arrested rose still further, to 16 percent: 9,373 arrests compared with 47,519 for men.

Just why more women are being arrested is unclear. Social scientists and police departments are stumped. But some possibilities are that women are being more aggressive, that women are beating other women, and that male victims are increasingly likely to come forward and be believed by officers.

Another possible reason is that there are more female police officers, said Katharine Killeen, director of the California District Attorney Association's Violence Against Women Project.

"They don't just let a woman go the way some men cops might," she said. "Also, men are learning how to work the system better and bring charges."

Women's groups campaigned heavily for primary-aggressor laws, which were designed to prevent battered women from also having to go through the trauma of being arrested for fighting back.

New York Gov. George Pataki made note of that in 1997 at the signing ceremony for his state's law. "Women who are the targets of domestic violence should not be victimized again by being arrested simply for defending themselves," he said.

That is one reason the increase in the arrests of women under primary-aggressor laws is surprising. "This is geared to the prosecution of men," said Deputy Public Defender Lidia Stiglich, who handles arraignments in San Francisco's domestic-violence court. Whoever calls the police first wins, she said. And that is usually the woman.

The guidelines police in California use to determine who is mainly responsible for domestic violence suggest she may have a point. It asks such questions as "Have you ever called a battered women's hot line?" and "Has he hit you before?"

© Copyright 1999 Associated Press. All rights reserved.


Studies showing women are just as violent as men.

FYI, the following citations constitute the first 19 (out of 53) included in Warren Farrell's "Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say":

  1. John Archer and Natasha Ray, "Dating Violence in the United Kingdom: a Preliminary Study," "Aggressive Behavior", Vol. 15, 1989, pp. 337-43. Dating couples (college students) report that 48% of male partners and 65% of female partners committed at least one violent act in their current relationship (using Conflict Tactics Scale).
  2. Ileana Arias and Patti Johnson, "Evaluations of Physical Aggression Among Intimate Dyads," "Journal of Interpersonal Violence", Vol. 4, September 1989, pp. 289-307. Ten percent of female college students and 15% of male students were physically aggressive in a current relationship; 19% of female students and 18% of male students were physically aggressive in a past relationship (using Conflict Tacktics Scale).
  3. Ileana Arias, Mary Samos, and K. Daniel O'Leary, "Prevalence and Correlates of Phyusical Aggression During Courship," "Journal of Interpersonal Violence", Vol.2, March 1987, pp. 82-90. Ten percent of female and 10% of male students used severe physical aggression against current dating partner; 19% of female and 10% of male students used severe physical aggression against current dating partner; 19% of female and 10% of male students used severe physical aggression against past dating partners (using Conflict Tactics Scale).
  4. M. L. Bernard and J. Bernard, "Violent Intimacy: The Family as a Model for Love Relationships," "Family Relations", Vol. 32, 1983, pp. 283-86. Four hundred sixty-one college students revealed that more females than males were abusive in dating relationships (21% vs. 15%).
  5. R. E. Billingham and A. R. Sack, "Courtship Violence and the Interactive Status of the Relationship," "Journal of Adolecent Research", Vol. 1, 1986, pp. 315-25. A survey of 526 university students revealed similar rates of violence between men and women, but women were three times more likely (9% vs. 3%) to have initiated violence when their parner did not.
  6. Roger Bland and Helene Orn, "Family Violence and Psychiatric Disorder," "Canadian Journal of Psychiatry", Vol. 31, March 1986, pp. 129-37. Random sample of 1,200 Canadians found that 14.6% of men and 22.6% of women hit or threw things at their spouse or partner.
  7. Judy Rollins Bhannon, David A. Dosser Jr., and S. Eugene Lindley, "Using Couple Data to Determine Domestic Violence Rates: An Attempt to Replicate Previous Work," "Violence and Victims", Vol. 10, 1995, pp. 133-41. Eleven percent of wives and 7% of husbands in military couples were physically aggressive, as reported by the wives. 8. Jamaica Bookwala, Irene H. Frieze, Christine Smith, and Katheryn Ryan, "Predictors of Dating Violence: A Multivariate Analysis," "Violence and Victims", Vol. 7, 1992, pp. 297-311. Twnenty-two percent of women and 17% of men admitted being violent while their partner was not violent, in their current relationship.
  8. Merlin B. Brinkerhoff and Eugene Lupri, "Interspousal Violence," "Canadian Journal of Sociology", Vol. 13, 1988, pp. 407-34. A random sample of 562 couples in Calgary, Alberta, revealed severe violence rates of 10.7% wife-to-husband, and 4.8% husband-to-wife. Overall violence rates were 13.2% wife-to-husband and 10.3% husband-to-wife.
  9. Lisa Brush, "Violent Acts and Injurious Outcomes in Married Couples: Methodological Issues in the ""National Survey of Families and Household," Gender and Society", Vol. 4, March 1990, pp. 56-67. A feminist found both sexes agree that 2.8% of women were victims of men; 3.8% of men were victims of women. The survey contained over 13,000 respondents.
  10. Judith Brutz and Bron B. Ingoldsby, "Conflict Resolution in Quaker Families," "Journal of Marriage and the Family", Vol. 46, 1984, pp. 21-26. Quaker females acknowledged inflicting severe violence three times as frequently as Quaker males did (2.5% vs. 0.8%).
  11. P. J. Burke, Jan E. Stets, and Maureen A. Prog-Good, "Gender Identity, Self-Esteem, and Physical and Sexual abuse in Dating Relationships," "Social Psychology Quarterly", Vol. 51, 1988, pp. 272-85. A sample of 505 college students reported that in a one-year period, 14% of the men and 18% of the women inflicted physical abuse on their partners, while 10% of the men and 14% of the women received physical abuse from their partners.
  12. Michelle Carrado, Malcolm George, Elizabeth Loxam, L. Jones, and Dale Templar, "Aggression in British heterosexual Relationships: A Descriptive Analysis," "Aggressive Behavior", Vol. 22, 1996, pp. 401-15. Eleven percent of men and 5% of women were victimized in their current relationships. A representative sample of 1,978 men and women in Great Britain was surveyed.
  13. Michele Cascardi, Jenifer Langinrichen, and Dina Vivian, "Marital Aggression: Impact, Injury and Heath Correlates for Husbands and Wives," "Archives of Internal Medicine", Vol. 152, June 1992, pp. 1178-84. According to the "wives", 33% of husbands and 36% of wives were severely aggressive toward their spouse.
  14. Marie B. Caulfield and David S. Riggs, "The Assessment of Dating Aggression: Empirical Evaluation of the Conflict Tactics Scale," "Journal of Interpersonal Violence", Vol. 7, December 1992, pp. 549-58. In a sample of 667 college students, more women than men beat up their partner (2.3% vs. 1.9%), threw something at their partner (14.6% vs. 6.9%) and kicked, bit, or hit their partner with a fist (13.0% vs. 3.1%).
  15. James E. Deal and Karen Smith Wampler, "Dating Violence: the Primacy of Previous Experience," "Journal of Social and Personal Relationships", Vol. 3, 1986, pp 457-71. Of 410 students at two southern universities, 6% of females and 4% of males were aggressors; 15% of males and 5% of females were victims in a current or most recent relationship.
  16. Alfred DeMaris, "The Efficacy of a Spouse Abuse Model in Accounting for Courtship Violence," "Journal of Family Issues", Vol. 8, September 1987, pp 291-305. Of 484 students from four southeastern universities, 31.1% of females and 23.5% of males inflicted violence on their partneres in the previous year (using the Conflict Tactics Scale).
  17. Diane R. Foolingstad, Shannon Wright, Shirley Lloyd, and Jeri A. Sebastian, "Sex Differences in Motivations and Effects in Dating Violence," "Family Relations", Vol. 40, 1991, pp. 51-57. In a sample of 495 college students, 20% of females and 12% of males admitted using physical force in a relationship.
  18. June Henton, Rodney Cate, James Koval, Sally Lloyd, and Scott Christopher, "Romance and Violence in Dating Relationships," "Journal of

Family Issues", Vol. 4, September 1983, pp. 467-82. Female high school students were more likely than male students to be the sole abuser of the other sex (5.7% vs. 1.4%). Sample size: 644.

ABOUT R-KIDS OF MINNESOTA

  • R-KIDS is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating law makers, family law professionals and the public with regard to family law and social services and their effects on children, families, and the consequences to the taxpayer.
  • Our main concern is for our community of children of divorced, separated, or unwed families. We believe that children need, want and deserve the love, support and involvement of both parents regardless of marital status.
  • Founded in 1985, our membership is comprised of both moms and dads, custodial and non-custodial parents, grandparents, stepparents, and professionals such as social workers, doctors, attorneys, and family law practitioners.
  • It is the objective of R-KIDS to develop equitable family law legislation in an effort to improve the lives of all Minnesota children.

"ALL CHILDREN NEED BOTH PARENTS AND ALL GRANDPARENTS IN THEIR LIVES"

  • Unless those affected by the current family law system voice an opinion and demand positive change, we and our children will continue to suffer. This change will not occur without your help! Legislators and family law professionals need to hear from; parents, grandparents, and constituents. Until they do, things will not change.

R-KIDS CONCERNS AND ISSUES

  1. The needs of children to have frequent and meaningful contact with both parents.
  2. The lack of effective consequences for denied visitation or parental interference.
  3. Consideration of the financial and emotional responsibility of both parents to provide for their children equally.
  4. Dissemination of information to the public about current family law issues and the long term consequences for our children, families and the tax payer.
  5. The harmful impact of out-of-state or long distance relocation on the parent- child relationship.
  6. Fair and equitable sharing of child support responsibilities which takes into consideration the financial needs of children in second families, as well.
  7. The negative impact of the adversarial court system and social services upon divorcing families with children.
  8. Removal of the myth perpetuated in our judicial and family law professional systems that only mothers are nurturing and fathers are financial providers.
  9. Accountability for the use of child support.
  10. The impact of the no-fault divorce system on families with children and the need for effective education for parents considering marriage, separation, or divorce.

R-KIDS website is http://www.rkids.org

Do you want to express your viewpoint or share your story in the newsletter? E-mail to ttheisen@bitstream.net, or mail to Tim Theisen, R-KIDS Newsletter Editor, 229 Jackson Street, Suite 105, , Anoka MN 55303. We reserve the right to edit. We will use your name unless asked not to do so. Obviously, viewpoints expressed by readers do not necessarily reflect the position of R-KIDS.

Give to RKIDS Charitable Fund

R-KIDS Charitable fund is a tax exempt, 501(c )(3) foundation. The proceeds WILL NOT BE USED FOR LOBBYING. The fund currently needs money for various charitable activities of benefit to children of divorce. Send your tax deductible donation of $25, $50, or $100 today! Make checks payable to R-KIDS Charitable Fund. Mail to R-KIDS PO Box 24658, Mpls, MN 55424.

This newsletter is distributed via US mail and e-mail. If you are getting it via regular mail, but you have an e-mail address, let us know your e-mail address. Send a note to Editor Tim Theisen, ttheisen@bitstream.net . Not only will you get the newsletter a couple weeks sooner, but you’ll also get certain bulletins between newsletters, and you’ll save us postage costs as well! Also, the e-mail version of the newsletter sometimes has extra articles that didn’t make the editor’s final cut for the print version.

The R-KIDS newsletter does not purport to give legal advice. The information contained herein is general in nature; individual circumstances will always vary.

Feel free to disseminate this newsletter. We want to spread our message!

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