Family Court Services That Destroy Families

The Honolulu Advertiser reports, on Monday, June 30, 2008, that the county government on the island of Kauai will be providing free legal assistance for income-eligible individuals in certain civil and family court cases. The legal assistance includes help for divorces and temporary restraining orders (TRO) among other civil matters.

But, divorce and TROs are the bread and butter of over half the court cases in Hawaii. This bread and butter is usually extracted from the sweat and blood of the fathers of children in family law cases.

Men, traditionally, do not get “help” from the legal system. The financial and emotional hurdles for fathers to overcome to see their children in divorce are bad enough. When lawyers get involved these men face nearly insurmountable odds that they will see their children again on a regular basis.

Fathers are not only held responsible for paying child support that is ordered beyond their means, but the Hawaii Family Court–as have other courts across this country–has been known to order the father to work two or more jobs to pay ordered child support. Can you hear the children asking: Where is Daddy?

Until the divorcing model is changed to shared parenting, mandatory mediation before court, and a default 50/50 joint custody, announcements like this only forbode more fatherless families.

In addition, until Hawaiian laws quit providing financial incentives for women to divorce their husbands, the divorce rates will continue to increase. No fault divorce laws must be changed.

Further, opening Family Courts to court monitors who can make sure that Constitutional rights are not being stripped from “income-eligible” clients can help far more than providing fathers with lawyers who will steer them towards a life without their children.

Finally, the laws that allow charges of domestic violence to stand on a preponderance of allegations must give way to the standard of clear and convincing evidence. Laws that hold women accountable for making false allegations of domestic violence must be instituted to address the explosively high numbers of TROs being issued in this state.

Even if the people targeted by this law are men (and I do not believe men are its intended beneficiaries) more lawyers will only steer fathers towards easy outs that are heavily lopsided in favor of the women who dominate our Family Court.

To learn more about the injustice of Hawaiian Family Court and how its current practices are anti-family and anti-patriotic, visit my web site at www.mywiferanoffwithourkids.com.