Newsletters::2000 June

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Both parents must pay child support!

Rogers case from Court of Appeals mandates that both parents must pay child support!

In the recent case of Rogers v. Rogers, Court of Appeals No. C2-99-1325 (March 7, 2000), the Court of Appeals held that "if a noncustodial parent provides a significant amount of physical care for his or her children, the district court must apply the Valento formula." The Valento is a cross award of child support, where each party pays guidelines child support to the other, and then reduces their obligation by the percentage of time they have the child. The difference is then paid from the parent with the higher obligation to the other parent.

This is a very significant and positive change in child support law; a simple premise that years of R-KIDS’ lobbying the legislature has fallen on deaf ears. Now, both parents can be required by the Court to support their children. The actual expenses of raising a child, by a parent who has his or her kids a significant amount of time, must now be taken into account. The court did not define what a significant amount of time is; in the Rogers case, the noncustodial parent (who happened to be the mother), had the children 45% of the time. Because the father’s income was actually higher, he was the one ordered to pay support, and he appealed & lost. Poor guy, but sometimes that’s how good laws get made. By losing his case, he’s doing the other fathers and noncustodial parents of this state a great favor. Hopefully, he won’t appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court accepts very few family law cases. We’ll update you if this case is appealed further.

Before you get excited, remember that in order to modify child support, you still need to show that there is a substantial change in circumstances since the time of the last court order.

The case can be found on the internet at www.state.mn.us/courts/library/archive/ctappub/0003/c2991325.htm

We can expect the DHS to try to reverse this well-thought out caselaw in next year’s session. The DHS has a standing committee to review child support guidelines, which is supposed to report every four years, and next year is the year. The DHS has ousted R-KIDS representatives, which is a story that will likely be covered in our next newsletter.

Custodial parent and child must return to Minnesota

Court of Appeals orders custodial parent and child to return to Minnesota

In another encouraging Court of Appeals case, LaChapelle v. Mitten, Court of Appeals No. C5-99-1304 (March 14, 2000), the Court ordered a custodial parent to return to Minnesota from Michigan, or else lose custody. There are three interesting aspects to this holding.

First, the notion that a court can condition custody on living someplace, or even condition custody on any other factor. In a prior case from last year, the Minnesota Supreme Court said that even when parents agree to condition custody on remaining in Minnesota, such an agreement is not enforcible, because the statutes do not give courts authority to change the standard for custody modification.

Second, the Court flatly rejected the notion that ordering a custodial parent to live in one state violates the constitutional right to travel, as well as the other weak constitutional arguments we’ve seen custodial parents make to support moves out of state.

Third, this case will hopefully start an encouraging trend toward denying moves out of state. It’s pretty strongly written. The case can be found online at

www.state.mn.us/courts/library/archive/ctappub/0003/c5991304.htm

Legislative Disappointments

To R-Kids Newsletter Editor From Knute Gladen

Good Bills

HF460 Required the person receiving child support payments to verify that the money was spent on the child and not on a live-in boyfriend or live-in girlfriend or on adult entertainment. (died)

HF461 Required that the courts review, six month after a divorce, that visitation was being observed and that child support payments were current. (died)

HF1646/SF1646 Visitation to extended families - uncles, aunts , cousins. (died)

HF764/SF1994 Visitation to grandparents. (died)

HF1787/SF1686 Visitation to foster care siblings - for children who have been in foster care and have become attached to, and miss, the other children in the foster care home. (died)

HF3124/SF3647 Penalty for of $500 for denying visitation, but with the $500 returned if visitation was being followed after six months. (died)

HF1571/SF1955 Covenant Marriage which would allow couples to have marriage counseling with the intent that the marriage would have a deeper relationship and that the couple would be less likely to divorce. Also required a waiting period after filing for divorce. (died)

HF3311/SF3169 Parenting Plan requires that divorcing couples prepare a plan on how they intend to provide for the emotional and financial needs of the children. The bill was weakened to the point that it is voluntary. Either party can refuse to work out a plan with no penalty. (passed).

Bad Bills

HF47/SF11 Permits an alleged victim of abuse to collect attorneys fees, punitive damages, and all costs from the person being accused. (passed).

HF1067/SF0551 Deals only with abused women, does not help abused men. Increases an order for protection to two years, from one year. Provides a short form order that requires the accused person to go to the Sheriff to get the order for protection. Provides for arrest without a warrant, for possible violation, and requires imprisonment for at least 36 hours not including Sundays and holidays. (passed)

HF2919/SF2478 Creates a secret Domestic Fatality Review Team to collect and review information on domestic violence deaths. Membership on the Team is secret. Information is passed by word of mouth only, except for intermittent reports to the legislature based on small portions of the data collected. Most of the bill deals with secrecy and immunity from prosecution and immunity from testifying. (passed)

HF3315 Garnishment - Allows a debtor to keep less than $10.00. (passed committee and incorporated into another bill)

HF3331/SF2980 Appears to create a new department under the governor called the Department of Crime Victims and Violence Prevention. Creates an office within this department for violence against women, not men. We keep hearing that Senator Ember Richgott Junge created this new department so she would have a job when she retired from the legislature this year. (passed)

HF3345/SF3016 Provides for seizing of bank accounts when a payer of child support is three months in arrears, without notification to the obligor, and without court action. (passed)

HF3553/SF2931 Provides per diem payments to Battered Women’s Shelters, not to Battered men’s Shelters. (passed)

HF3721/SF3553 Prohibits a payer of child support from purchasing license plates or tabs if the payer is three months in arrears. (passed)

HF3761/SF3388 Gender biased non-traditional job training program for women only. Does not provide for training a man as a male nurse, for example. (passed)

Note: (passed) means the bills passed committee and were incorporated into law as far as this writer knows, perhaps in some other omnibus bill. (died) means the bills failed in committee. To find out which bills became law, call (651) 296-2146 and ask for New Laws 2000 (published about July 1). You can obtain a copy of New Laws 1999 immediately. Some of them are interesting. We will provide another summary in our next newsletter.

Statistics

National Statistics

Excerpt from Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say by Warren Farrell, page 235.

It was the Department of Justice that censored abuse by women from a 1979 poll. Finally some professors discovered the data on the original computer tape. The Bureau of Justice Statistics' "Murder in Families" stressed women-as-victims although its own raw data showed 55.5 percent male and 44.5 percent female victims of family murder.

Minnesota Statistics

Data from the Minnesota Department of Justice for the years 1989 through 1998 shows that for juvenile homicide victims under age ten, 74 percent were killed my a women or by the mothers boyfriend whereas men were responsible for the remaining 26 percent.

Welfare reform in Oklahoma

The Welfare Reform Bill passed by Congress and signed by the President contained clear direction for the future of the public assistance program. Two of the four statements of purpose pertain to encouraging the formation of families and reducing out-of-wedlock births. To date, states have failed to implement either of these policies, even though TANF funds were clearly intended for their use.

Oklahoma becomes the first state to begin implementing welfare reform as it was meant to be. Our thanks to Dr. Palumbo, a member of the Men's Health Network community, for his tireless work on this project, both in Oklahoma and in Washington, DC. Out "thanks" also to Governor Keating for taking the lead on the support of families.

Unfortunately, most policy makers have never seen the "Purposes" of welfare reform. You may wish to take this message of success to your state legislative and executive offices and explain to them the Congress would be very happy to find that TANF funds are being spent to create and strengthen families.

The language referenced can be found on page 9 of the Conference Report to Accompany HR 3734. Report 104-725 printed July 30, 1996. Please let us know the outcomes of your efforts by contacting us at:

TANF@menshealthnetwork.org

PART A--BLOCK GRANTS TO STATES FOR TEMPORARY ASSISTANCE FOR NEEDY FAMILIES

SEC. 401. PURPOSE.

  1. IN GENERAL- The purpose of this part is to increase the flexibility of States in operating a program designed to--
    1. provide assistance to needy families so that children may be cared for in their own homes or in the homes of relatives;
    2. end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage;
    3. prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and establish annual numerical goals for preventing and reducing the incidence of these pregnancies; and
    4. encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families.
  2. NO INDIVIDUAL ENTITLEMENT- This part shall not be interpreted to entitle any individual or family to assistance under any State program funded under this part.

Dr. Palumbo's report

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. After 3 years of Pro-Family Day Rallies at the Capitol there is finally going to be a change in direction in Oklahoma....the winds are for beginning proactive approaches to saving families.

Three years ago at our 1st annual Pro-Family Day Rally at the Capitol Governor Keating addressed the need to strengthen families in Oklahoma. Last year in the Governor's State of the State address, and at our 2nd annual Pro-Family Rally at the Capitol, Governor Frank Keating focused on divorce rates, out-of-wedlock birth rates, and marriage rates in Oklahoma and the need to fix them, making families a top priority of his administration. Governor Keating reaffirmed his commitment to the importance of strengthening family as an important issue to Oklahomans last year by holding conferences on marriage and fatherhood. This year at our 3rd Annual Pro-Family Day Rally he again stressed the need to help strengthen families in Oklahoma, and he outlined some ideas on how to go about accomplishing this goal. And now, Oklahoma is set to be the first state in the nation to take a first step in strengthening marriage and families using TANF funds to do so.

Governor Frank Keating in Oklahoma, and Mr. Jerry Regier who is his Cabinet Secretary of Human Services while in Washington, D.C., yesterday announced that they had received the waivers necessary from the Department of Health and Human Services to use 10 million dollars in unspent TANF funds to promote marriage and families in Oklahoma. Hopefully this is only the down payment.

The welfare reform legislation passed by Congress in 1996 allowed states to use TANF funds to promote healthy families. Congresswoman Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, who chairs the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources, has urged states to use the TANF funds for this purpose to no avail. Utilizing TANF funds to promote healthy families is also part of her Fatherhood Counts Act of 1999 that passed the House of Representatives by a 3 to 1 margin, yet now languishes in the U.S. Senate.

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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