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Divorce and Bankruptcy Reform March 9, 2005 by David R. Usher Let’s break this down: Feminists came up with the idea that men and marriage are unnecessary – but motherhood and men’s money is. It took two people to create a marriage, and only one person to conveniently end it (for no reason whatsoever). For no reason whatsoever, divorce could presume fault against men, and charge them anything imaginable (to protect the state from having a welfare problem). Trial lawyers found this to be a profitable triptych. The wide body of evidence proves this alliance of neo-Marxist political and feminist social interests has created all of the greatest social problems in American history – most notably the child support problem, poverty, and the majority of child abuse and neglect. Most everyone glossed over the fact that divorce causes a substantial percentage of bankruptcies too. Now, lets see how serious the problem is. Why bankruptcy “reform” avoids dealing with the divorce problem Divorce is a primary predictor of bankruptcy. Data on the actual percentage of bankruptcies driven by divorce is often considered “too hot” to talk about, so most studies keep things lumped (or merely expressed in terms of the women’s perspective). It is difficult to clearly identify the real percentage. But we do know this: In the “Fragile Middle Class”, Teresa Sullivan first emphasizes divorce as the primary cause; “Because people’s financial troubles so often arise from other sources, such as divorce or serious illness, they also reflect in part the social pathology of the great middle of American society.” The National Consumer Law Center placed an emphasis on divorce as a primary causal factor in their testimony before Congress in 1998: the average bankruptcy occurs “because of the convergence of consumer debt, job loss and divorce ... when a family splits up, the pressure of running a household with less total income is impossible.” They also cite downsizing, economic dislocation, income disruptions and underemployment as major factors. The President of Easton Bank and Trust Company not only emphasized the problem of divorce in his congressional testimony, but also pointed out the real reason why banks want bankruptcy reform in the first place: “The industry has long understood, and since 1997, testified before both the House and Senate that many factors such as divorce, lack of health insurance etc. all play a role in causing bankruptcy. We cannot and would not underwrite for these types of factors—can you imagine if on the credit application, we asked about such matters?” What the bank is saying here, in direct language, is that they don’t like getting stuck holding a bag emptied by the divorce industry. They want to become another non-dischargeable creditor. The Easton Bank apparently doesn’t know this fact: Divorce and non-marriage is a primary reason why so many individuals do not have health insurance. When welfare reform became a major issue in the 1992 races, Hillary Clinton tried to recreate the welfare state under the guise of “National Health Care Reform”. But folks figured out where this was going before jumping on this trojan horse. Banks must understand that the two most prevalent items cited in their call for bankruptcy reform – divorce and lack of health insurance -- would largely disappear if the divorce revolution was reformed. Bankruptcy reform will not get banks what they want. Existing criminal and civil child support enforcement laws already have placed hundreds of thousands of innocent men into debtor’s prison (while their unmodifiable child support bills keep growing). Adding the banks to the end of the line of contemnors would only place more men into perennial debt prison, where they cannot earn anything at all. The most astonishing thing is this: Banks want this at a time when they are reporting record profits. The cause – effect relationship of problems falling out of the divorce revolution are immaterial Let’s talk about cause and effect for a minute, since the banks brought the subject up. Researchers with political goals often delay reform by moving the discussion onto the turf of cause and effect. If the “professionals” can’t decide what the cause is, you can’t reform the problem This is what feminists have done to block divorce reform. Studies suggest that job loss and underemployment (which cause marital friction), may be a factor in stimulating divorce. Other studies show that divorced men have higher job-loss rates attributed to divorce-induced stress. There is ample evidence that divorce may cause serious post traumatic stress disorder in men (however feminists controlling the APA refuse to talk about it). PTSD after a shocking divorce causes poor job performance, and the result is a trip into bankruptcy. Whether divorce stimulates job loss or the reverse is immaterial. One bad divorce can put any good husband deeply into bankruptcy. Two strikes and he’s “out”, regardless of the sequence of events. This is not to mention the plight of women, who thought they would “have it all” in divorce, but found out they have to “do it all” on far less money, ending up in bankruptcy too. Why PTSD is a major factor in post-divorce job loss and economic hardship for men I did not mention PTSD lightly in the preceding bullet point. What I am about to say cannot be passed off as a cute parallel of “Officer Krupke”, the psychological farce in the movie “West Side Story”. Divorce is an unexpected, deeply shocking event for most men. The vast majority of men are decent fathers and husbands who deeply love their wives and children. Young men innocently (and perhaps blindly) believe that divorce only happens to all those “bad guys” out there. They get married without any understanding that they just got in line for the divorce revolution. The “D” word is not in their vocabulary, and nobody on earth can get them to even think about it. Unfortunately, half of husbands have already been moved into the “bad guy” category via “no fault divorce”, and this statistic remains the same to this day. Perhaps only 5% of men deserved it. I have had hundreds of calls from frantic good husbands, astonished with when this happened to them. Feminist social violence in western civilizations is, in my opinion, every bit as horrible as other forms of more-visible forms of physical violence. Terror and torture can be either physical or emotional. Emotional terrorism is perhaps the most dangerous, because you can’t see the guns and blood on the street, and is therefore harder to portray. But to those tortured, it is every bit as damaging. In my front-line support-group work helping thousands of men over the years, I have come to understand this terrorism for what it is. Now it is your turn to wear the shoes of an average man destroyed by the divorce revolution: One day you are served a piece of paper by surprise, informing you that your children have been “kidnapped”, your bank accounts seized, and you are homeless as well. To top things off, a garnishment of about 1/3 of your paycheck has been levied, and you can’t even get his underpants out of the house unless your liberated spouse is “in the mood”. You frantically get an attorney, who probably tells you there isn’t anything you can do but sit there while your children, life savings, social identity, and place in society are taken away. You are urged to accept whatever terms the opposing attorney proposes – fair or not. Your attorney tells you that he isn’t going to fight for anything better, unless you can come up with a $5,000-$10,000 cash advance for litigation – and tells you he probably won’t get much better even if he does fight for your rights. Now, what might you do in these circumstances? Is this not an act of social terrorism, a situation of threat to one’s person and life, accompanied by powerlessness so devastating that you will never be able to reconcile it? Now, here is the definition of PTSD as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV) (1994) at Section 309.81. This disorder is described as occurring when a person has been exposed to an extreme traumatic stressor in which both of the following were present:
For a diagnosis of PTSD, the traumatic event is then persistently re-experienced in at least one of the following ways:
This sequence of events is a true living nightmare that has been lived by millions of undeserving good husbands in America, Canada, and Europe. I have helped thousands of such men over the past eighteen years, and can speak endlessly about them in detail. It is my experience that it takes years for most men to recover. Most men are “not sane” for a period of months or years. Too many of them commit suicide, attack their ex-spouse, or a public official. And too many of them never recover. Instead of shifting the focus towards human rights abuses in other countries, America should focus on the tremendous social, economic, and parental human rights abuses committed right here in America, and the tremendous costs it inflicts on society, the taxpayer, and public safety. The divorce industry is an industry that is out of control Evidence now credibly proves that the divorce industry is, in fact, and industry that is out of control. This is best illustrated, in brief, by Dr. Stephen Baskerville in his Crisis Magazine article, “The Politics of Family Destruction”. It is no longer possible for any politician to credibly suggest that the divorce industry does not exist, or to pretend that it is not a very serious problem requiring immediate attention in Western cultures. The role of states in the divorce industry The role of the state in the divorce industry is now well known, and is perhaps described best by Dr. Stephen Baskerville in his Independent Review article, Is There Really a Fatherhood Crisis?. States grant as many divorces as possible, to maximize federal entitlement revenues. The more divorce and illegitimacy states engender, the more federal funds they receive for a long list of needs-based-entitlement programs. As a result, social services (which includes child support enforcement) is now the largest budgetary line item in many states. The seriousness of this problem is indicated by that fact that it is an expenditure even greater than education – and these expenditures do nothing visible or useful other than engender more divorce and attempt to conceal or play “Humpty Dumpty” pretending we can put it back together again absent the intact family. The role of Bar Associations and attorneys in the divorce industry The state Bar and the ABA have been hyperactive partners in the divorce revolution, and perhaps the true leaders of it. It is my experience over years of working the legislature that the Bar will oppose any legislation or policy that would decrease the amount of divorce-related business. They support anything that will make more work for attorneys, regardless of any other factors. Their reasons are rarely based on citable fact or sensibility. They tend to rely on a combination of emotional anecdotal stories and fact-censored studies created by radical scholars in women’s organizations, which are noisily injected into hearings to ram their agenda through legislatures and Congress This is what we would expect of any trade association. If we would not let abortion clinics define when life begins, then we cannot allow the Bar to continue running the divorce revolution unchallenged. We should no longer pay any attention to the Bar when considering reforms of family law. They have a direct conflict of interest; and where they also pretend to be the proprietors of law, their testimony should only be heard with the greatest of skepticism. Certainly, there are a few good attorneys with morals and the courage to seek reform. But they are hamstrung in their efforts, because rules of court prevent them from saying anything nasty about other members of the legal profession or exposing unethical behavior of them. Even the Republican party is layered with neo-conservative attorneys who immediately shift the focus from sensible family law reforms to things such as child support enforcement, VAWA, crime prevention, and other downstream feel-good programs which fail to reverse any of the problems they pretend to address. Clearly, the bulk of the hard work will necessarily fall to non-lawyers in Congress and the state legislatures, who possess the morals, principles and drive to demand these changes. Only they can expose judges and attorneys who block progress. They will succeed if they go directly to the voters to build pressure for reform. The role of trial courts in the divorce industry The main role of the trial court is to protect the state from having a welfare problem, and to provide a nice place for divorce lawyers to make money. Trial courts fall over backwards to over-assess child support orders, sequester assets to mothers, give debts to fathers, and place procedural and cost impediments to prevent fathers in trouble from seeking relief. These men are subsequently deemed “deadbeats” and end up filing for bankruptcy. Even so-called “free” legal services for the poor refuse to help men. Richard B. Teitelman, who now sits on the Missouri Supreme Court bench, was President of Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. In an extended conversation I had with him a few years back, he stated that his organization only helps indigent women. He refused to help indigent men, regardless of the situation. He could not see anything unconstitutional about presiding over a sexist organization operated by the Missouri Bar Association. Phyllis Schlafly reminded us recently of the grim reality of the situation, in her article The Price Some Reservists Have To Pay:The (New York) “Times reported that, as of 2003, fathers allegedly owed $96 billion in child-support. However, 70 percent is owed by men who earn less than $10,000 a year or have no wage earnings at all, so we have a $3 billion government bureaucracy working to get blood out of a turnip.” It is truly unconstitutional that only one state protects reservists. I foresaw this problem in 1991, when we went into Kuwait, and got RSMo 452.416 passed by both sides of the Missouri Legislature in just six weeks. This law requires immediate modification of support for all reservists called into active duty for more than thirty days. Unfortunately, Congress enacted cruel and unusual punishment of reservists inThe Bradley Amendment and US Code, Title 42, Sec 666, sub sec(a), para (9), part c, which actually bars courts from reducing child support arrearages. What is sadder is that there is no reason, in Missouri or any other state requiring modification of support to match actual or even realistic income. The only exception is death -- but some states have even excluded this, too. I have met thousands of men driven to the edge of sanity, who through no fault of their own, found themselves many thousands of dollars in debt, no driver’s license or professional license, and no way to relieve the situation in which they were placed. These include men savaged in the dot-com collapse and who could not find equivalent work, men laid off from McDonnell Douglas (not Boeing), men who became seriously and permanently disabled through no fault of their own. The above proves with crystalline clarity that Congress had a duty to act immediately – to stop state abuses of men that it is funding with hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Congress’s Major Role fueling the divorce industry Congress has never acted responsibly dealing with the problems of divorce and illegitimacy. All it has done is stimulate it – perhaps in hopes the states can cover up the problem or somehow make it go away. Bankruptcy reform is of the same cloth. It is merely the latest attempt to sweep the problem under the carpet. Congress responded to divorce and illegitimacy problems with programs which, since 1960, have spent more than the national debt. It started by fighting the “War on Poverty” under Lyndon Johnson. When folks got wise to this “welfare state”, the focus was changed to blame men. Congress created the child support enforcement machine thus forcing men to support two households. They found that most men cannot do this, and child support debt mounted. When Republicans took the majority in 1994, the divorce-avoidance mechanism morphed into the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996”. In the name of “personal responsibility”, welfare was renamed an “advance on child support” to make the welfare problem appear invisible. Government also relaxed hiring standards so that virtually any welfare mother can qualify for a job in social services or child support enforcement with no experience or education whatsoever. This moved men, who are the mandated insurers of the welfare state, to the end of the very job lines they need to fulfill their responsibility. The results? Since 1996, child support debt has skyrocketed, divorce and illegitimacy rates remain near historic highs, and the percentage of children living in intact families has remained static. Instead of dealing with a problem that should have honestly addressed forty years ago, Congress is continuing down the same dangerously irresponsible path -- this time lubricated with political donations from the banking industry. Why Congress is ultimately responsible for the bankruptcy debacle Congress established many of its programs, such as child support enforcement, under the URESA, which is founded on the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution (U.S. Const., Art. 1, sec. 8, cl. 3). The idea of URESA was to make child support enforcement across state lines consistent. But Congress never did anything to make sure that child support orders and dissolution decisions made in different states meet any standards under the Commerce Clause. The game works like this: In the name of “states rights”, state divorce courts are permitted to order anything they want. In the name of “women’s rights”, federal government enforces the orders on the theory that they must be valid. Federal courts refuse to entertain any constitutional litigation within the gaping crater on the basis that they are “state’s issues”. Millions of men have been pushed into the gaping lawless crevasse that exists between state and federal law. This occurred solely because Congress has failed to do what it should have done in 1968 when URESA was created. The failure of Congress to act properly has stimulated and funded state irresponsibility, fueling the divorce revolution, so as to maximize federal child support and social services funding they receive to address the problems they create to entitle themselves to more funding. My thesis is this: Federal government has no authority to permit or fund enforcement of state divorce court orders where it has not also established uniform requirements to ensure that dissolution decisions meet certain minimum standards in the first place. Congress must mandate states meet rational standards for child support orders and distributions of assets and debts, in order to qualify for federal funding, and to have authority under federal law to enforce a particular order. It must also cap what states can enforce, expressed as a percentage of the actual earnings of the obligor, to end the cycle of chronic legal violence wreaked on innocent fathers and husbands. It believe it is unconstitutional for Congress to have applied the Commerce Clause in creating URESA to fund the enforcement of child support, monetary dissolution orders, welfare recoupments, and other provisions thereto; where Congress failed to establish clear federal maximums and guidelines on an element-by-element basis establishing what states may order and subsequently enforce. I expect some “states rights” advocates will disagree heartily with me. Let me respond in advance. If you are right, then Congress also has no business passing legislation to regulate abortion or to protect prayer. What if states could prosecute criminals in any manner they wanted, using billions in federal funding, without any limitation on what techniques they used or punishments they could render? What if the Federal Appeals Courts and U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear any appeals from California 9 th District by invoking “states rights” as the wholesale rationale? This is precisely what Federal courts do – when child support and the conditions under which divorce are rendered at issue. Conservatives, whom I expect to have the wisdom and responsibility to deal with the issue, have failed to do so. I had two meetings with Congressman Jim Talent on these issues. He said it they were “state issues”. Given the astonishing facts at hand, it is frankly surprising that Federal Courts have not ruled URESA unconstitutional pending balancing regulation from Congress. Acting Responsibly: What Congress must do to correct the situation.
Divorce and bankruptcy are well known to banks. In polite banking parlance, this is known as being “house poor”. This is the model of wholesale feminist fraud: husbands end up having to file for bankruptcy with few assets to declare, while the women walk away with everything pretty much free and clear. If the banking industry has something to lobby about, this is the mother lode.
Why politicians who wish to succeed should take advantage of the political situation Child support is perhaps the best example of the havoc government wreaks when symbolism is more important than substance. It is astonishing that Conservatives of all stripes, who have morals and intelligence, are not falling all over themselves to demand reform of this problem. Reforms would not only break the cycle of divorce, poverty, and illegitimacy forever; but also substantially alleviate the very serious problems divorce and illegitimacy causes, including bankruptcy, child support enforcement, suicide, illegitimacy, lack of medical insurance, child abuse, and reduce the federal deficit. It would improve the lives of all Americans, make heterosexual marriage an important secular cultural institution again, and reduce the need for abortion via healthy moral channels. Congress’s failure to address these problems means that the current “Marriage Movement” programs, and other pro-family agenda, offered up by the few serious players in the pro-marriage movement, have little chance of achieving anything. We couldn’t free Iraq without saving it from Saddam Hussein, and we are not going to free the American family from the divorce revolution until we save it from the machinery of the self-entitling welfare state /.child support machine. It is my experience that the majority of women who bought into the welfare state don’t like what happened when they became part of it. Most women remarry, because being a single mother and having to do it all on less money does not work. When these women remarry, they usually end up hating the government that is destroying their new husband. In fact, some of the most vocal activists in the men’s movement are second wives who realized that feminism sold them a bill of goods. Many of these expasperated women have told me they would forego their own child support if government would stop destroying their new family. The majority of Americans have now been adversely affected by the welfare/child support industry, or have children negatively affected by it. The burgeoning group of older voters is perhaps the wisest of all voting blocks in this regard. This constitutes an overwhelming majority block of highly-motivated voters politicians have never recognized or spoken to. Conservative political analysts should recognize that this block exists and can easily be the controlling block of votes if their needs are addressed and met. The first political party who brings forth intelligent legislation coordinated with a positive political campaign will find itself in a nearly unimpeachable position of long-term political strength. Republicans who wish to stay in power literally hold the key to make this happen. All they need to do is use it. Why banks must support reforms to unwind the divorce revolution, instead of pressing for bankruptcy reform: My message to banks is this: if you want to extricate yourselves from your unwanted role financing the divorce revolution, you must lobby on behalf of the above. You can’t get blood out of a torched turnip. Proposed bankruptcy law reforms will only turn the millions of men served up on the platter of feminism into perennial debtors in prison. Even under bankruptcy reform, banks will be the fourth hand in line, behind child support, welfare collections, and attorneys. Economic data suggests that few hands in this line will see anything at all. The only way out of this situation is for banks to join forces with social conservatives who truly wish to end the divorce revolution. We are in the same boat. None of us likes bankruptcy. Men didn’t ask to be thrown out of family and society. and you don’t like being swindled by divorce lawyers and family courts. Here’s my promise to banks: If you help fathers and husbands extricate America from the divorce revolution, you will get paid. This is an iron-clad money-back guarantee. Any questions? David R. Usher is a Legislative Analyst for the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, Missouri Coalition. |
In 1969, Governor Ronald Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce law into effect in California. The feminist fad ate about half the families in America. Ever since then, Congress has been avoiding dealing with the issues, claiming they are a “state problem”. |
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