I found this story interesting especially since it highlights how child abduction is such a fast growing crime.
Also little warning to mothers of infants: if a mother doesn’t have legal custody of her children, one of these so-called parental abductions can result in a custody switch as the police do not always follow up if the abductor is a father, even a recreational sperm donor w/o his name on the child’s birth certificate. If he manages to get his name on the certificate in this interim period, he can race down to the courthouse with it and get himself named as the custodial parent.
One of the stats the FBI had released was that mothers keep their kids longer when they are abducted and I think the reason this happens is that men manipulate the system better and wind up becoming the custodial parent...so it's wiped off the record as an abduction...
Also once again we find some woman helping this jerk, his mother. Thank god she got jail time. Often these idiots get away with it…Imagine what kind of a life these girls would have had as they entered puberty living in a trailor in a place like Nicaragua. It remains me of these terrible people who are always abducting young girls to countries in the middle east. PS a horror!!!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/30/delaware.family.abductions/index.html
The untold tale of family abductions: 3 girls missing, an international hunt
By Stephanie Chen, CNN
December 9, 2009
Christine Belford was reunited with her three daughters, who were kidnapped by their father for 19 months.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
• More than 200,000 incidents of family abductions occur in the U.S. each year
• Christine Belford's three daughters were kidnapped by their father in 2007
• Authorities launched a search that spanned at least four countries and several states
• The children were found in Nicaragua, living in a trailer with their father and grandmother
RELATED TOPICS
• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• Missing Children
• National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
• Delaware
(CNN) -- Christine Belford agreed to let her ex-husband take their three daughters to Disney World for a two-week vacation. In August 2007, the Delaware mother kissed her little blond girls goodbye.
Those two weeks were unsettling for Belford, then 34. The couple went through a bitter divorce in 2006 which resulted in joint custody of the children. Belford said when the girls were with their dad, they were always difficult to reach.
Two days into the trip, Belford connected by cell phone with her oldest daughter, Laura, then 5. Already homesick, chubby-faced Laura cried as her father checked them into a hotel room.
"I want to come home," Laura pleaded with her mother.
But Laura and her sisters wouldn't return to their Delaware home for 19 months.
Their father, David Matusiewicz, pleaded guilty to international parental kidnapping and bank fraud charges in September. He faces up to 30 years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday. CNN attempted to reach Matusiewichz in jail through his attorney, Heriberto "Eddie" Medrano, in Houston, Texas, but Medrano did not return the calls.
Kidnapping victims like Laura and her sisters -- Leigh, then 4, and Karen, then 2 -- often don't make national headlines the way victims of alleged abductions by strangers do, such as Jaycee Dugard and Elizabeth Smart. But each year, most child abductions are perpetrated by someone the victim knows.
The U.S. Department of Justice reports more than 200,000 children are victims of family abductions in the United States each year. Of that figure, about 56,500 cases are reported to local law enforcement authorities and require investigation, studies show. In comparison, the U.S. Department of Justice reports an average of 115 stranger abductions a year.
Family abductions commonly involve children under 6, too young to comprehend that a crime is occurring, studies show.
Over the last few decades, high divorce rates have led to custody disputes and to kidnappings, experts say. Yet the public still perceives family abductions as a less serious crime because the victims are with a family member who is less likely to hurt them.
"The view is that this is not really a criminal problem," said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. "[The view is] this is a civil problem and lawyers need to work it out."
There are 1,600 unsolved family abduction cases involving children who have been missing for more than six months, he said.
A puzzling escape
In 15 years on the police force, Cpl. Jeff Shriner of the New Castle, Delaware, Police Department said he found Matusiewicz's abduction of his children to be the most bizarre missing person case he'd encountered.
Normally, the perpetrator in a family abduction is located within hours or days. Sometimes, abductions occur because the parent is angry, Shriner said, but they usually change their minds within a few days.
But Matusiewicz "was a needle in a haystack and that needle was buried very deep," said Shriner, who was assigned as the lead detective on the case.
Shriner quickly determined the Disney World vacation never happened.
Sales records showed Matusiewicz's mother, Lenore, had purchased a 33-foot Winnebago mobile home weeks before the disappearance, according to court records. She also was missing.
That month, Matusiewicz had sold his optometry business to a partner, police said. He had also committed mortgage fraud by forging his wife's signature on a $249,000 loan from a bank in Delaware, police said.
The couple had met in 1993 when Belford worked as a receptionist at an eye doctor's office in Delaware. Matusiewicz worked as an optometrist there. They were married in October 2001.
The couple's union became problematic in 2003 when his parents moved in, Belford said. Matusiewicz was a loving father to his girls, but during the breakup, she said, the couple had problems.
Some parents say they take their children away to protect them from an abusive or unfit parent, said Liss Hart-Haviv, founding executive director of Take Root, a national organization that works with victims of family abduction. In other instances, Hart-Haviv said, parents may take children out of spite.
"The critical thing to remember," she said, "is there's not one face to family abduction. It's a multifaceted issue."
Abduction goes abroad
In most family abduction cases, studies show victims often remain within the country. But circumstances are changing. Easier access to foreign countries and a growing number of intercontinental marriages have made international hideouts more common, missing children experts said.
In October, Japanese authorities released an American man, Christopher Savoie, who was jailed for allegedly trying to take back his children from his estranged wife. His wife, Noriko Savoie, had fled with the children to Japan in August, authorities say. Japanese officials said the couple's U.S.-recognized divorce did not apply in Japan. Christopher Savoie, who was not charged, returned to the U.S. The children remained with their mother in Japan.
A multilateral treaty known as the Hague Convention was ratified in 1980. It provides member countries with rules on returning abducted children under the age of 16. Today, more than 80 countries have signed the treaty. But with countries that haven't, like Japan, determining what happens to the children is murky.
In Belford's case, local and federal agencies initially launched a search for the girls. They began in New Jersey, where Matusiewicz was raised. Then they combed through dozens of leads in Virginia and West Virginia. A tip led them to become suspicious the girls might be in Texas or Mexico.
By November 2007, authorities shifted their attention to Central America. They hunted for Matusiewicz in Panama and Costa Rica over the next year. Locating him was tricky, authorities say, because he relied on cash transactions and limited phone calls with his family in the United States.
"He was very smart and did a lot of things before leaving and during the time he was gone to cover his tracks," said Rick Long, chief deputy U.S. Marshal in Delaware, who helped with the search efforts.
It wasn't until March 2009 that a lead, on which authorities declined to elaborate, brought law enforcement officers to a town about 40 miles outside of the Managua, Nicaragua.
There, at the end of a 19-month search, authorities discovered the girls inside a messy Winnebago trailer, overfilled with items from their Delaware home, said a U.S. Marshal who arrived on the scene. Matusiewicz had less than $100.
Reunited at last
Christine Belford took the first flight she could to Nicaragua. Her girls were healthy, though disheveled. The eldest, Laura, now 7, told her mother about sleeping on the beach in Costa Rica. The once-plump girl had become thin. Her autistic daughter, Leigh, now 6, hadn't received treatment. When Leigh smiled, Belford noticed her teeth had rotted.
The most changed child was Karen, who left at age 2. She had transformed from a baby into a 4-year-old who could speak and run alongside her sisters.
Family abductions are less likely to result in death or sexual abuse than stranger abductions, but psychologists warn that the experience can still greatly impact a child's development. In three decades counseling family abduction victims, clinical psychologist Linda Gunsberg has seen children with trust, identity and attachment issues. The deceit and the abrupt changes in living conditions can cause a child to be confused, anxious and depressed.
"The younger girls say they miss Daddy," said Belford, now 37. "I tell them he's in time out right now." Laura, the oldest, is doing well in the second grade, but she continues to experience nightmares. During the time she was abducted, she was told her mother was dead, Belford said.
"She's in her angry phase," Belford said. "I tell her it's OK to love them and miss them because they are still your dad and grandma."
In September, the grandmother, Lenore Matusiewicz, 64, was sentenced to 1½ years in prison for her role in the abduction. She is being held in Baylor Women's Correctional Institution in Delaware.
"She is very sorry for her choice," said her attorney, Demetrio Duarte Jr., based at a Texas firm. "In life, it's not all black and all white. To be severed from mom wasn't the right thing to do. To be severed from grandma isn't the right thing to do. It's just tragic.
225 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 225 of 225PK said: "You're buying into a paradigm by V and NYMOM that unless women all get cushy jobs handed to them, then they shouldn't even start thinking about equal responsibility"
I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that they have as much access to that stuff as we have nowadays, and if they don't make the most of it then that's on them. It doesn't entitle them to stipends from those who do.
When NY talks about these "new paths" she wants women to forge I can't help thinking back to her visions of young women "living like lionesses." Bruna Goldman was absolutely living the equivalent of a lioness' life in her marriage (except for having to share the lion!). And what did she do? She upended her 4-year-old's entire world to get back to the patriarchal binkie.
While Dr. Chen didn't do her kids any direct harm, she still threw away equality for the same binkie and made fools of feminists and woman-firsters in the process. Which they can't even see because they're too busy crowing about a woman putting one over on a man. Woo fuckin hoo!
If women forge new paths it won't be because they want to but because men no longer see any reason to carry them along the old ones.
R.
Moscow does not believe in tears
Richard, I'd like to address another remark you made and the relationship to "self-sufficiency": "I'll admit that my wife and the women of her generation grew up with lots of old-school moms whispering in their ears about how it's as easy to love a rich man as a poor one and to have a baby when you're ready to quit working but the new crop of young people seem to know little about such things."
Whether it's whispered in young girls' ears or not, most professional career women still do get the message to "marry up" or, at least, lateral if only from their own biological impulses. If they can't find a successful man, they wind up not marrying and becoming spinsters and then facing the prospect of being a single mother (at best). We're now living in a post feminist world hence the existance of this blog: It really _IS_ difficult for women to find a rich man as easily as a poor one hence the delightful panic in modern culture. If rich men still grew on trees, then there wouldn't be any need for such women to fight over the scraps from poor guys to fund their lifestyle.
Despite NYMOM saying the welfare state is an aberration, the fact is that single motherhood, and feminism for that matter, cannot survive without a welfare state to rescue children (and their mothers) who fail to procure a breadwinner and the mother decides to have children anyway. Without that safety valve, women would turn upon each other. In many ways, this is already happening. You just gotta keep turning up the pressure...
SENSIBLE women of the past were told by their mothers (and fathers) to find _stable_ (not rich) breadwinners AND not that it was "easy" but just the opposite: That it was truly very hard (and important.) Only in YOUR generation did middle and upper class women think that rich men grew on trees, they could have it all, etc. This attitude largely doesn't exist outside of the west.
There's a wonderful Russian film from communist times: "Moscow does not believe in tears" about the fortunes of 3 different women who chose different paths: One married an athlete, another a farmer, and another became a career woman. It was a commentary about the impact of feminism back when feminism was in it's peak in the west. I highly recommend you rent it (even available at ballbusters if they still exist.)
"Whether it's whispered in young girls' ears or not, most professional career women still do get the message to "marry up" or, at least, lateral if only from their own biological impulses."
I know they would like to marry equals or better, kind of like we guys would too if we had our 'druthers. What I meant is that girls coming out of school now don't seem to have much expectation of retiring into housewifery. Most of their moms have had to work whether they wanted to or not. And hell, they know what housing and college for the kids and all the rest costs, not to mention the repaying of student loans.
Some will even settle for marrying down a little bit. As long as the guy is working his ass off as much as she is. Women will not tolerate the un- or under-employed spouse at home because THEY KNOW exactly what a scam it is in a way most guys don't. They'll take it if some sap offers it to them of course but they sure won't be the sap offering it.
My baby sister always comes to mind here. Her husband makes about half what she does and she's fine with that. No matter if the net cost of having him at work equals or exceeds what he brings in, what she would NOT stand for is a house-spouse.
Guys should take their cues from women themselves as to the value of the domestic role and quit being such doormats on this issue. The more they indulge, the more they'll be expected to fork over when princess has to go "find herself" and that will keep them from rebuilding their own lives.
The can call us stingy till they're blue in the face but the fact remains that if we were half as stingy as women are in this respect there would never have been any such thing as SAHMs, chilimony or welfare to begin with.
R.
The Palestinian Liberation Front: Suicide Squad
Richard, I'm well aware of women being willing to "settle" for marrying "equal" or even silghtly down. But this is hardly a sign of actual progress since many of these women then gripe that their husbands are "unambitious" or "lazy" or don't do at least 1/2 of the housechores (according to her standards, of course.)
Suggesting to us men to try to think more like women would be a mistake since women who are unable to find a breadwinner are now winding up as single mothers or spinsters. I'm reminded of the Palestinian Suicide Squad in Monty Python who kill themselves in protest and chuckle: "That'll show 'em, eh?" I tried to require women to live up to equality standards myself and found it to be a lost cause and, at best, would have to settle for D-lister women.
What's important, the bottom line, is that the millions of women today who are well-to-do would rather die alone and/or childless than settle for marrying down. This is not the fault of evil patriarchs of days past. It's not something that will change 10,000 years from now. Blah blah blah. It's CHOICES these women made! All on their own. Nobody had a gun to their head. They couldn't find chivalrous patriarchal providers and they chose not to breed.
What would Darwin say that should indicate?
Women work for a living, share Nobel with Obama
Richard says: "What I meant is that girls coming out of school now don't seem to have much expectation of retiring into housewifery."
As I said, Richard, aside from middle and upper class women from the 1950's most didn't have that expectation either throughout most of history and in the rest of the world. The ability to be a suburban SAH mother was a LUXURY that few women had and only naive women could buy feminists claiming that such a PRIVILEGE was oppression. It's really amazing. Like medieval thinking about witches. Same people, different times...
While such women don't "expect" housewifery to be theirs by default that hardly makes them equal only minimally pragmatic. They got the message. Good. But that doesn't mean they're happy about it.
This brings up the main contention I have with you: The notion that your daughter is better off in a world of equality. When most women are miserable and unhappy with their mates because they don't earn enough or help out around the house AND society is baggaged with handholding this equality via higher taxes and a crime ridden welfare state, how is that helping her or all of us?
Sorry for the delay. Been out of town.
"When most women are miserable and unhappy with their mates because they don't earn enough or help out around the house..."
PK, none of the solutions we bandy about here are going to keep everyone from being miserable or unhappy. Just look around. Here in the US we have women unhappy because men no longer want them to "sacrifice" their careers to cook steak and wear blue dresses or whatever it is that layabouts do. In Japan women are unhappy because the men DO want them to make said "sacrifice."
We have no business trying to make decisions for everyone to make them happy. The best we can do is make everyone free to choose their flavor of happiness which, contrary to the belief of the ladies around here, necessitates justice and accountability.
If what you're complaining about here is trying to fine-tune equality of OUTCOME, then "I agree with you 100%" on that one. ;-) We don't need welfare or special perks and privileges for women to have true equality. All we need is for them to have the same choices we have and to require them to be responsible for whatever follows.
I don't know exactly what all you're wanting to change in order to get rid of "false equality." All we've discussed so far is education. But playing favorites between my kids, again, isn't going to accomplish much.
Some parents can't offer education to their kids but we can. If we can offer education to our son, we'll offer it to our daughter too. It will subsequently be up to her what she does with that tool. If she wants to go to college or not, marry or not, reproduce or not, perform or underperform, all up to her but if her choices turn out badly she'll need to own the responsibility.
That's life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
R.
Richard, there's an old Russian saying that women are only happy when they're miserable. OK, I think that's a Russian saying about Russian IN GENERAL!
OK, seriously, the very concept of feminism and women's equality is that it is possible to "have it all" and, consequently, this is the source of their misery. Men are generally more humble, out of necessity, and consequently happier. There was even a study that found that women are more miserable today while men's happiness is a constant.
It seems you're going for the libertarian route that we should just get out of people's way which is really a way of saying you just want to wash your hands of the matter. While that sentiment sounds both noble and evasive (depending upon how it's phrased), it's also unrealistic since a "free" society winds up creating it's own set of rules and expectations. Why do you think that socialists distrust free markets so much?
Without hundreds of billions in spending on the welfare state and family court "child" support redistributions, the notion of women's equality would be about as credible in society as Brittany Spears' music career. Women seeking to escape poverty or to just have a better life would not bash men as "oppressors" while simultaneously seeking them out. Society overall would recognize, correctly, that on average a working man would be more committed than a working woman.
And that would be that.
However... for women willing to deal with some societal prejudices (and even discrimination), overall they could probably earn more money, after taxes and not paying the social costs for "equality", than they are now. In other words, like men, they'd have to EARN their status in life and not consider it oppression when it's not handed to them on a silver platter.
Regarding your kids. Apologies in advance for using them as a thought experiment but I will be respectful: I don't think it's "playing favorites" to simply look at practicalities in deciding what resources to expend upon them and life paths to recommend to them. It's similar to the discussion we had before about parents who unilaterally decide that the kids need parents who "volunteer" at school and go to PTA meetings. Some of these things are nice, but often unnecessary and even at times counter productive. For example, alimony SAH mother maybe should be putting effort into being a good WIFE for her current or former husband as a role model rather than a lavishly paid servant.
Perhaps your children would benefit from longer vacations throughout their childhood, spent with you, as compared to both parents working long hours to put money towards 2 Ivy League educations, for example. Or hell, maybe even just "play favorites", calculated of course, to cut YOURSELF some slack. But like I said, I don't think like the usual hormone driven human being...
Overall, I think most daughters would benefit more from going to nursing school and getting out in 3 years and getting a decent (not "equal") paying job and getting married to a pleasant man when they're young rather than going to med school and getting into debt and then fighting for the few professional men who would qualify for them. Hey, life is a gamble but why pay a lot for costly gambles? The drinks at the Golden Nugget are just as good as the ones at the Luxor (vegas joke.)
I didn't want to make too long a post above, but the concept you just stated, "pursuit of happiness" has been waaay overblown especially recently. As you can see above, the misery index is highest among people who think that the "pursuit of happiness" is an entitlement to maximum support as such.
If you send your daughter to a fine public college, does that mean you don't love her because you don't send her to Ivy League? If you send her to Ivy League but can't afford to visit every month, does that mean you don't think she's worth visiting? Etc. etc.
One of the things that annoyed me most about American women was their notion of life being a goodie grab. Most of them have the scruples of the film "Other People's Money"'s Larry Garfield. (Except Garfield had a big heart). Modern western women (in general) are out to grab whatever they can get their hands on and my wife observed that Americans in general, but particular American women, are rude and self centered. This contrasts to the times when I was growing up when Americans had a reputation for being personally friendly and generous.
I was chuckling when Betty Friedan in an interview lamented that America had become "selfish" but especially in the context that corporations weren't lavishing career women with benefits at men's expense. This is the classical modern feminine projection of "greed": OTEHR people not giving you stuff because you want it.
Actually we want them BOTH to go to fine public colleges. We don't believe the return on an Ivy League education justifies the outlay.
I'd be all for my daughter being a nurse. My sister is one and she has a comfortable house, a new car, a Carribean vacation every year and more job security than almost anybody else.
As for the pursuit of happiness, I take it to mean only what Jefferson meant by it and no more. The right to freely choose, without state interference, any path open to you insofar as it does not unjustifiably impact someone else's fundamental rights.
It doesn't mean that the state must make every path open in a practical sense and deprive others of property in order to do it.
What Betty Friedan and the other fems don't get is that as far as the state has anything to do with it everyone is entitled to be selfish.
R.
NYMOM, here's a kidnapping that happened during the Savoie kidnapping, but it was pretty much ignored. Here Jean Paul Lacombe is kidnapped by his dad for THE SECOND TIME:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDIxjHg65a4&feature=related
But, hey, it was a father, so no one gives a crap. Compared to this, Sean Goldman had it good!
"...self-sufficiency is a long process which begins at a young age and means a lot less focus on the boys and more on your studies"
"NY, girls aren't any less focused on their studies than boys are. So schoolgirls like to attract boys. Schoolboys like to blow a lot of time on video games. Neither means that they can't achieve self-sufficiency after they GROW UP."
I disagree completely. Playing with video games, cell phones, any sort of electronic gadgetry can and often does lead to real jobs. This is the origins of many geeks going on to get good paying jobs, starting their own businesses, etc.,
As opposed to focusing all of your energies on how you look and act in order to impress men, which leads to nothing substantial really. Maybe a few years as a Miss America contestant, then slowly aging and losing male attention over the years...probably leads to more nuttiness as these women frantically try to recapture the male attention they had as a younger woman...
There are few long-time, good-paying careers out of it...
"Do I think she "requested" the arrangement they found themselves in? Damn right! Why wouldn't she want to spend the extra time with her kids after she had supposedly quit work for this purpose?"
Of course she did it deliberately. Her children were court ordered to live somewhere else every other week. AND sometimes these a@@holes even get stipulated the phone calls and contact you are allowed to have with the children on their so-called week.
So I would have done the exact same thing. Manipulated to spend as much time on that 'other' week with my children as possible. I would have become the class parent, gone to as many soccer games, girl scout meeting, after-school events as I could manage...
It's like I was reading on another blog some female step-person complaining about a child's mother doing something. She was so scornful and made the comment "she just wanted to spend that extra day with the children"...Well of course a mother would do that. Obviously she wanted to spend as much time as possible with her own childrn.
That's normal.
Actually I'm very suspicious of the kind of mother who just goes along with these living on and off arrangements quietly...especially with babies.
What the hell, I wouldn't have.
I would not have wanted my children spending every other week somewhere else where I didn't know what was going on with them...
I understand this Dr. Chen completely.
"Actually we want them BOTH to go to fine public colleges. We don't believe the return on an Ivy League education justifies the outlay."
Actually I do agree with you Richard. The Ivy League has priced themselves out of the market for people who want ordinary careers like school teachers, nurses, social workers, etc.,
It only pays if you are going to become a lawyer or a doctor in some high paying field. AND even lawyers now are having trouble finding jobs in their field. Not to mention when health insurance becomes nationalized that will kill the high income of most doctors.
They'll have to work for salaries like everyone else.
Surprisingly enough however, since the Iraq War, I've seen a lot of military veterans returning to college. George Bush made a lot of changes in veterans' benefits and Barack Obama improved on them; so veterans wind up with most of their tuition paid for, plus a stipend for living expenses while they go to school.
So we have been seeing veterans return to the Ivies...
NY said: "AND even lawyers now are having trouble finding jobs in their field. Not to mention when health insurance becomes nationalized that will kill the high income of most doctors."
That's true, a law degree doesn't guarantee a high income. And when doctors' incomes go down so will the pickings for many trial lawyers.
It's OK, though. We already have too many lawyers.
"Obviously she wanted to spend as much time as possible with her own childrn. That's normal."
Agreed. And on her own dime it's perfectly fine. But she wasn't entitled to draft someone else to pay for it. Like PK said, other people don't have to, or shouldn't have to, give you stuff because you want it.
R.
Let's put in context that welfare mothers probably spend more time with their kids than anyone else and look at how they turn out.
Growing up, I recall that the mother usually stayed at home while the children were very young simply due to the unavailability of affordable daycare but even so they did things like split childcare with neighbors and friends to go shopping and just get out of the house for a sanity check.
After the age of 5 or so, and the kids were in school, most of the mothers in my working class neighborhood went to work, usually part-time. They often didn't make a lot of money, but they felt a need to contribute. This was BEFORE the days of feminism! Kids were expected when they came home to do chores or play at their friend's homes.
I know it's just TV, but I notice in The Real Housewives series that the children in these households are often lazy and spoiled precisely because the mother dotes on them.
NY said: "AND sometimes these a@@holes even get stipulated the phone calls and contact you are allowed to have with the children on their so-called week."
PK, am I in the twilight zone here or is this not what V (who agrees with NY 100%!) was arguing that Dr. Warner SHOULD have done during his week? You know, in order to avoid taking advantage of Dr. Princess and all?
And did I not also say that NY would call him a controlling "a$$hole" if he did?
LMAO!
PK said: "Let's put in context that welfare mothers probably spend more time with their kids than anyone else and look at how they turn out."
Did you ever read Jason de Parle's "American Dream," about welfare reform and the whole "welfare to work" effort? He examined studies of whether the children of welfare mothers benefitted at all from the moms going to work, and overall there was no benefit except in one group. That was preschool children, whose outcomes were improved by being removed from their moms' all-day care into structured daycare.
Not saying that would be true of all moms in all socioeconomic groups, but it was an interesting finding.
It's really not relevant to this case, though. We'd all love to spend lots of time with our kids but it's something you have to be able to afford. Dr. Princess ostensibly couldn't (can anyone say "cash in your assets?"), and shouldn't have been able to bill it to someone else.
V said: "Compared to this, Sean Goldman had it good!"
How would YOU know? A kid's worst nightmare is the loss of a parent. Bruna Bianchi made him live that nightmare and grieve the loss all for her own convenience. There's not even an ounce of difference between her and Steve Fagan.
God, these woman-firsters! No heart for ANYONE except each other.
R.
Richard, pity you're going. Here's an update on my divorced friend with shared custody with his irresponsible ex.
He lost his job a year ago and recently found new work out of state. She now effectively has sole custody even though legally they are still shared custody (including the minimal CS ($50 a month.) This is a classic case of NYMOM and V saying that "shared custody" is really just men having the mother raise the kids and him not pay CS. Or is it...?
I asked him if she was going to get sole custody and he said he didn't think she'd be dumb enough (now) to pull that trigger: He is still maintaining the family home (that he bought out from her) and visits twice a month and also helps out financially with daycare voluntarily. If she goes nuclear on him, he said he will stop being so generous AND sell off the family home AND visit only once per month (or have the kids visit him). He'll also have a great excuse to make his own life easier: "I didn't want to do this, but your mother felt otherwise..."
In other words, men are getting smarter.
Anyways, take care.
"Richard, pity you're going. Here's an update on my divorced friend with shared custody with his irresponsible ex.
He lost his job a year ago and recently found new work out of state. She now effectively has sole custody even though legally they are still shared custody (including the minimal CS ($50 a month.) This is a classic case of NYMOM and V saying that "shared custody" is really just men having the mother raise the kids and him not pay CS. Or is it...?
I asked him if she was going to get sole custody and he said he didn't think she'd be dumb enough (now) to pull that trigger: He is still maintaining the family home (that he bought out from her) and visits twice a month and also helps out financially with daycare voluntarily. If she goes nuclear on him, he said he will stop being so generous AND sell off the family home AND visit only once per month (or have the kids visit him). He'll also have a great excuse to make his own life easier: "I didn't want to do this, but your mother felt otherwise..."
In other words, men are getting smarter.
Anyways, take care."
Polish Knight, I am somewhat surprised that you consider this 'smart'. Actually it's exactly what Virago and I were talking about with these joint or shared custody arrangements as you call them being a fraud.
Basically your friend's ex is raising their kids alone with twice a month visitation from the father. That's the visitation he would have received with her having sole custody and him paying her proper child support.
Also if he paid her the correct amount of child support, she could pay her own mortgage...the equity would build up and they could both share it when they sell the family house at some point in the future...instead the way he's fixed it is that he is only paying $50.00 monthly for child support, while paying the equity in the house himself (which will benefit only him when he sells it) and seeing his kids on the schedule of a non-custodial parent when he's supposed to be sharing custody.
Additionally most states do make both parents pay a 50% or prorata share of childcare ANYWAY on top of child support. So that's no gift to her or the children as you make it out to be...it's called what he's supposed to be doing, nothing more.
So once again we see a man getting away with murder (financially) while his wife and kids do with less due to his stinginess (meanwhile he builds up a nice little amount of equity in the family home for himself) instead of paying the proper amount of child support to his ex who is really the one raising the kids.
Of course his ex is not going to return to court since she's probably just grateful to have her kids living with her most of the time...so she'll do with less (as will the children) so as not to rock the boat...
Sad really that you consider this guy to be a hero or role model of some sort.
Regarding Richard, he's gone...and I'm not letting him back. He was getting more and more disrespectful over time and I just got fed up with him...
I know you and Virago don't get along but at least the two of you are respectful to me when I intervene.
This guy on the other hand was always a smart aleck even when he first came. I let him remain initially because in spite of the smart alecky attitude I actually thought he would prove to be more of a contributor of objective facts then he proved to be since he came here during a discussion about the census data and grandparent custody and appeared to have a fairly good grasp of the data (which I am weak in that area).
But instead of contributing fact-based research to any discussions, he continued with these snide shots at me every chance he got. Even when he answered questions that I honestly asked, he would preface them with another snide remark or two.
It was like I was being verbally abused on my own blog.
WTF!!!
Regarding this bit about Virago's true identity, I truly don't give a crap if you could prove to me she was really a talking dog. The important thing about her is the ideas, which she does back up with references to timely articles and news items.
She very often gets the points that I'm making which you and Richard appear to miss (either deliberately or you're just playing stupid, I'm not sure which).
Anyway my offer to her still stands if she wishes to do some posts on this blog about issues impacting mothers. I mentioned one topic to her which I would like to see regarding the family leave act and how that could eventually impact maternity leave...
I have been looking for a partner for quite a while to help me with this blog since I would like to see posts updated weekly...
NYMOM says: "Polish Knight, I am somewhat surprised that you consider this 'smart'. Actually it's exactly what Virago and I were talking about with these joint or shared custody arrangements as you call them being a fraud.
Basically your friend's ex is raising their kids alone with twice a month visitation from the father. That's the visitation he would have received with her having sole custody and him paying her proper child support."
I know. On the other hand, he never received "proper" child-support for his shared custody (where he did really put in his equal time) when he was unemployed either. Yes?
In theory, then, he could have become a "SAH dad" and gone for full custody and gotten her to pay alimony and, of course, 1/2 of daycare if he decided to work part-time. Yes, you may criticize this as mercenary rather than smart but hasn't that the point I had been making? That women have done this all along and men learned from the masters (or is that mistresses?)
In addition, why are you griping? Didn't you say that the goal was for mothers to retain custody and child-support didn't matter? We now see that when it's women's time to walk the walk, you are less than enthusiastic about that compromise.
Finally, I would like to note that he's not my role model. I happen to think his situation is tragic even under these best of circumstances. As I said, he didn't go for "child" support when he lost his job (as he could have done) nor did he skimp out on helping with daycare voluntarily. She only goes along with his because it suits HER. He's doing his best to earn a living and help out. He's not taking away her kids from her.
What you want, really, is for men to pay "proper" "child" support to mommy including her daycare and lots of other expenses and for her to do as she likes and kick him out if he gets uppity. Well, gee, sorry if we don't think that's such a great deal.
"The important thing about her is the ideas, which she does back up with references to timely articles and news items.
She very often gets the points that I'm making which you and Richard appear to miss (either deliberately or you're just playing stupid, I'm not sure which)."
NYMOM, as I have always told you, it's your blog. Do what you like.
It's not the issue that she's a talking dog but rather she's not a MOTHER and that was something you always reminded Richard and I as the reason for why you cut her more slack than us two.
Instead of her representing mothers, she instead represents delusional spinsters and selfish women. At least Richard is a father and I may also be a parent in the future. We interact with mothers and potential mothers and that gives our opinions value. It takes two to tango.
Regarding V "getting" your opinion. I have misunderstood you at times and I have even acknowledged being mistaken at times. I've even given you dirt, like with my friend, to add a fresh perspective to an issue. That is different than simply disagreeing, or agreeing with you (as V does) simply because she's on your side.
Just food for thought.
"The important thing about her is the ideas, which she does back up with references to timely articles and news items.
She very often gets the points that I'm making which you and Richard appear to miss (either deliberately or you're just playing stupid, I'm not sure which).
NYMOM, as I have always told you, it's your blog. Do what you like.
It's not the issue that she's a talking dog but rather she's not a MOTHER and that was something you always reminded Richard and I as the reason for why you cut her more slack than us two.
Instead of her representing mothers, she instead represents delusional spinsters and selfish women.
At least Richard is a father and I may also be a parent in the future. We interact with mothers and potential mothers and that gives our opinions value. It takes two to tango."
Of course according to you, she's a delusional spinster and selfish because she hasn't had any children as yet...but you, on the other hand, are a potential parent and you talk with potential mothers so you should be given preference here.
AND you think she's delusional.
"Regarding V "getting" your opinion. I have misunderstood you at times and I have even acknowledged being mistaken at times. I've even given you dirt, like with my friend, to add a fresh perspective to an issue. That is different than simply disagreeing, or agreeing with you (as V does) simply because she's on your side.
Just food for thought."
Well first of all, it's not about her just agreeing with me. It was bigger then that. She often completed the puzzle/question that was just touched on by my post.
For instance, she connected the dots with that point I was making about police officers in the field supporting men who abduct young children and why this support is so critical to men later getting permanent custody...
In fact, this early support allows men to file for temporary custody while the child's mother is just collecting her wits about her and trying to contact relatives for advice and financial support in hiring an attorney...
She noted the statistic that men generally abduct young children BEFORE a custody decision is made...that goes with the other statistic of men who abduct not keeping the children as long as mothers who abduct. They don't keep them as long since as soon as they get assigned temporary custody, the abduction is wiped off the map...suddenly they've become the legal guardian...
Poof, no more abduction...
Anyway, without her pulling all of these insights together the posts I put up are just separate random stories of things happening with no logical connection being made.
She helped connect the dots, so she will be missed.
But whatever, let's move on...
I never said I should be given preference as a potential parent. I merely claimed that my remarks were relevent to this blog in that context and somewhat more useful than a delusional spinster's.
Regarding the abduction "statistics". I don't think she made her case as well as you claim but even where she did contribute statistics and information, Richard and also posted URL's and statistics. Once again, it comes across as you applying a double standard because she's a woman, and not necessarily a mother. That's your perogative, of course, but it flies in the face of claims you and V had made about men "not sharing" with women and implying that women are victims of unfairness at the hands of men.
I wouldn't miss her too much. She's commonly said on threads that she was "leaving" only to reappear a few days or weak later.
"I never said I should be given preference as a potential parent. I merely claimed that my remarks were relevent to this blog in that context and somewhat more useful than a delusional spinster's.
Regarding the abduction "statistics". I don't think she made her case as well as you claim but even where she did contribute statistics and information, Richard and also posted URL's and statistics. Once again, it comes across as you applying a double standard because she's a woman, and not necessarily a mother. That's your perogative, of course, but it flies in the face of claims you and V had made about men "not sharing" with women and implying that women are victims of unfairness at the hands of men."
The bottom line is this is a blog about women and their role as mothers...
Look at the top of the page:
"I have created this website in an attempt to post articles regarding this issue and discuss with like-minded people some strategies to amend the current situation."
"Like-minded people"
It doesn't get much clearer then that...I am trying to create a community of people, who feel as I do and wish to do something about it.
Regarding Richard, he NEVER posted or discussed statistics unless they favored his point of view, which to be honest I wasn't that interested in. BUT it's my blog, so I don't have to be interested in his point of view.
Even when I tried to discuss the point about Joint Custody often morphing into no custodial rights for mothers he immediately shot it down...many of these grandparents I was referring to probably were paternal grandparents whose sons had Joint Custody but the mothers had no resources to fight for visitation...
It's not as cut and dried as he would like it to be...
These are the sorts of issues I'm created this blog to discuss...
My point being that even if Virago was a talking dog it wouldn't have mattered, I would still have supported her over you two as she got what this blog was about and participated in it accordingly...
Actually the only other person I ever banned from here was a woman and a mother, Anne. I think you remember her and she was banned for the same reason as Richard, this constant arguing over every single post or comment that she disagreed with.
I'm looking for a community of like-minded people to have discussions with, not people who disagree with the basis premise of this blog and wish to spend all of their time trying to prove their opinion is right...
"I wouldn't miss her too much. She's commonly said on threads that she was "leaving" only to reappear a few days or weak later."
We'll see.
Hi i would like share this i just it would get spread out hope tell you would get spread out.Japanese Friends of mine Mayumi.Mayumi met Michael Elias when he was stationed in okinawa,after founding out May was pregnant the couples moved to the u.s.May thought that it would be better start new life in u.s as well but it turn out to be nightmare.Micheal cheat on her but they end marring and she was so happy even though she was still anxious about his "girl friend" issue. . she believed in him and herself but he never stopped what he was doing...!After May coming back u.s from visit japan Micheal divorce her they had joint custody,but still didn't get no support after couple month May have enough she flew with the kids back to japan.What upset me is micheal and his mom lie to the media acting like they were victims.
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