Nov 10
12
Daddy Dalton’s thugs bludgeon Ontario fathers
National Post – November 9, 2010
Courts get a new way to discriminate against fathers
By Barbara Kay
“They throw guys in jail for non-support all the time, and when they do, the guys serve the whole 30, 60 or 90-day sentence (the term keeps lengthening), even though cocaine dealers routinely get out of jail after serving half their time.”
Ontario’s Family Responsibility Office, which is responsible for ensuring that custodial parents don’t get stiffed for child support payments by the non-custodial parent, has a lot of power.
Starting Dec. 1, someone (read “father”) in arrears on their support payments can have their car impounded. That’s about the stupidest punishment for non-payment one can imagine, since most people need their cars in order to work. As Lloyd Gorling, a father’s rights activist put it, “How are you going to make support payments if you can’t get to work? If you can’t make support payments, does the government really think you’re going to be taking a taxi every day to work?”
If you’re going for irrational responses to non-payment, why not just throw the guy in jail – but oh wait, they already do that. They throw guys in jail for non-support all the time, and when they do, the guys serve the whole 30, 60 or 90-day sentence (the term keeps lengthening), even though cocaine dealers routinely get out of jail after serving half their time.
In 2004 an FRO staff member didn’t bother waiting for a court date to review the financial status of an out-of-work truck driver. He just suspended his license because – hey, because he could, you see. But the guy couldn’t pay, because he had no job, you FRO idiot. He had no money to pay with, you FRO moron. He was looking for work, and the FRO decided that the best way to deal with a non-paying parent was to make it impossible to find a job so he could pay the support. Nice going, FRO. His suicide note lamented that he didn’t see any way out of his situation and had lost hope. And did anyone pay for that? Of course not. The FRO is accountable to no one.
Let’s look at the bigger picture, though. What is the guy paying child support for? Yeah yeah, to support his children. But that means they are, you know, sort of his children, right? Not necessarily. The custodial parent, almost always the ex-wife, although supposed to grant agreed-upon access rights to the children’s father, can arbitrarily decide she doesn’t want to allow access, and for any old reason — oh sorry, little Jimmy has a play date, oh sorry little Emma has too much homework, oh sorry, I just don’t want to — can deny the father access. And does she pay for that? No.