State wants to know if you might be a dad - Virginia

State wants to know if you might be a dad

Excerpts:

The state Department of Social Services wants any man who is not married to a woman but could be the father of a child with her to voluntarily fill out a one-page registration.

The law, which went into effect July 1, is designed to protect men's rights in the case of a future adoption.

State officials emphasized that the confidential database is not an attempt to track sexual activity or partners. But it suggests men register "after relations with new partners or continued relations with the same woman."

Lawmakers passed the law creating the voluntary registry as a way to protect a man's rights and allow the state to notify him more quickly if a child he may have fathered is placed up for adoption.

DSS officials said registering means the state doesn't have to search high and low for the biological father, allowing an adoption to speed along. It also gives papa a chance to block the adoption if he wants to raise the child.

A father can register before a child is born, even if he is not aware of a pregnancy. Also the state suggests registering within 10 days of the birth, of receiving notice to register or within 10 days of discovering fraud by the mother.

If fathers don't file the paperwork, they give up their right for the state to inform them about a possible adoption or if they've lost their parental rights.

The registration doesn't establish paternity, which is a separate process. But DSS officials confirmed that the state's child support enforcement office will have access to the registry.

To register, men are asked to fill out a form they can get at their local DSS office or online at http://www.vaputativefather.com/. The hotline number is (877) IF-DADDY.

The form asks for the name of the mother and potential father along with his Social Security number and employment information, and it contains questions that try to pinpoint where and when the man and woman may have conceived the child.

The state requires the men to sign the form and mail it to Richmond, said Carla Harris, a DSS spokeswoman. Registration is free.

If the form contains the address of the woman, she will be notified.

Virginia Support Groups

Fathers United for Equal Rights -- Information about divorce, custody and support proceedings. 559-7090.

Kid Care -- Resource and referral service for parents looking for child care in the Richmond and Tri-Cities area. Training and resources for child-care providers. 282-5993.

Virginia Lawyer Referral Service Monday-Friday, 8:45 a.m.-4:15 p.m. (800) 552-7977.

Kleptocracy in Virginia

This is an article about proposed child support increases in Virginia. Click the article title to read it in full.

Kleptocracy in Virginia

Excerpts:

Yet another rigged government panel is groping for any justification to railroad through higher child support, though it already is at punitive levels. Under current guidelines, a father clearing $2,100 monthly, pays $1,137.50 and lives on less than $1,000. Add-ons for health insurance can easily bring it to $2,000. This is how Virginia officials subsidize divorce, plunder fathers and create instant criminals out of law-abiding citizens.

Twice their efforts failed when the chicanery was exposed in this newspaper in 1999 and 2001. Now Richard Byrd, a divorce lawyer, has devised a new excuse: Child support must be increased because of inflation. Never mind that child support adjusts automatically for inflation because it increases with income. This is like saying taxes must be raised due to inflation.

Mr. Byrd hopes to tie child support to the Consumer Price Index, based largely on adult consumption of adult clothing, tobacco, alcohol, taxes and the like. His proposal is an admission child support is not really for children but more for the enrichment of grown-ups. Officials are in open violation of federal law, plus Section 20-108.2 of the state domestic relations code and Senate Joint Resolution 192 specifically requiring them to examine "the costs of raising children in Virginia." Officials claim that study "would cost millions" and have never done it, despite receiving federal funds to do so.

The self-serving economics of child support has been harshly criticized by scholars. Yet the panel only consults "experts" who urge increases. They ignore scholars like Bryce Christensen, who notes "evidence of the linkage between aggressive child-support policies and the erosion of wedlock," and who writes in Society that "the advocates of ever-more-aggressive measures for collecting child support ... have moved us a dangerous step closer to a police state."

Legal Services For Underprivileged - Virginia

WCAV Legal Services For Underprivileged

The University of Virginia Law School is teaming up with Hunton & Williams to provide free legal services to low-income Charlottesville residents.

The pilot program began in the fall with eight law students and four lawyers housed in The Legal Aid Justice Center, who also refers most of the clients.

"We'll be handling primarily immigration alyssum cases, which is what we piloted this year, and then family law and domestic violence cases," said Kimberly Emery of UVa School of Law.

Family law clients will include domestic matters such as child custody, support, and divorce. The work is primarily volunteer with a long-term goal in mind.

"[The goal is] to expose law students to a structured and well supervised pro-bono experience while in law school with a hope that they will learn to do pro bono and as they practice will continue to do pro bono," said Emery.

The partnership currently works out of 1000 Preston Ave., but will move to the nearby Rock House after renovation.

A Virginia Family Bill of Rights

An article from Stephen Baskerville published in the Washington Times.

Forum: A Virginia Family Bill of Rights

Bold legislation is being introduced that will put the Commonwealth of Virginia on the cutting edge of the worldwide campaign to reverse the family's seemingly inexorable decline.

Many states have now passed laws or constitutional amendments preserving marriage as one man and one woman, and more are set to follow. But Virginia is poised to go further.

Riding the momentum from the November election and the huge public opposition to same-sex "marriage," Delegate Kathy Byron and other legislators have introduced a "Family Bill of Rights." This ambitious bill will check not only the homosexual challenge to marriage, but also the huge erosion of parental rights. Stronger still, state Sen. Ken Cuccinelli has offered a bill to begin countering the "no-fault" divorce epidemic.

Together, these measures would give Virginia the strongest family-protection provisions in the nation. Moreover, they would do so by protecting rather than limiting citizens' rights.

Why is this necessary? Because same-sex "marriage" is not only a threat to the marriage and the family. It may not even be the most serious. As Michael McManus of Marriage Savers points out, "Divorce is a far more grievous blow to marriage than today's challenge by gays.

"Indeed, it is very likely same-sex "marriage" would not even be an issue were it not for the severe weakening of marriage that has already occurred due to divorce and out-of-wedlock births. "Commentators miss the point when they oppose homosexual marriage on the grounds that it would undermine traditional understandings of marriage," writes Bryce Christensen of Southern Utah University. "It is only because traditional understandings of marriage have already been severely undermined that homosexuals are now laying claim to it."

Virginia's initiative will for the first time address the underlying, long-term causes of marriage decline and family dissolution, of which same-sex "marriage" is only the latest symptom. While it cannot rectify cultural pressures, it does directly confront the legal mechanisms that allow
government officials to forcibly destroy families, often against the wishes of family members.

Many have commented on how many voters in this election cast their ballots on the basis of "moral values." Yet it isn't clear same-sex "marriage" was all the voters had in mind.

A 1999 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found 78 percent of Americans regard the high divorce rate as a serious problem, and a Time/CNN poll found 61 percent believe it should be harder for married couples with young children to divorce.

Equally important to preserving the marital bond is protecting the bond between parents and their children, increasingly threatened by government:Home-schoolers are harassed. Parents are pressured to put their children on dangerous psychotropic drugs under threat of child-abuse charges. Others face obviously trumped-up charges of child abuse and risk losing their children for exercising ordinary parental discipline, for poverty or during divorce proceedings.

With all these mechanisms available for government to sink its talons into children, hardly a family in America is safe. And parents are becoming an active political force.

The gap between parents and childless voters was one of the widest in the election and was especially marked for fathers. According to Gary Andres in The Washington Times, "Men with children favored the president on the question of agreement on cultural direction by nearly 60 percentage points (Bush 77, Kerry 18, while men without kids slightly favored John Kerry.)

"Same-sex "marriage" is not the only area of family policy where upheavals occur. Bill Cosby's celebrated remarks last summer on parenthood and the family has placed a once-taboo subject at the top of the African-American agenda.

And another election result has not received the attention it deserves: In ultra-liberal Massachusetts, a whopping 85 percent of voters defied the strident opposition of feminists and lawyers to approve resolutions giving fathers equality in custody decisions. This measure could drastically reduce Massachusetts' divorce rate and curtail the power of the divorce industry, including judges like Supreme Judicial Court Justice Margaret Marshall. In Britain and Australia, fathers are literally marching in the streets over child custody.

We stand today on the brink of an upheaval of civilizational proportions. Same-sex "marriage" does not begin to describe the possible dimensions of disaster.

On the other hand, the determination of parents could develop into a worldwide revolt against the almost totalitarian power government now assumes over families.

STEPHEN BASKERVILLE President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. Mr. Baskerville is a professor of political science at Howard University.

Virginia Beach, VA. A juvenile and domestic relations judge is removed from the bench after being censured in 2002 for his handling of a custody case. Pilot Online If you have experience with this judge, please share your story...