Toronto Star (Canada)
2 October 2009

BREAKING UP, Part 1

Divorced dads can't catch a break
By Susan Pigg, Living Reporter

More than a decade after a landmark study recommended an overhaul of
Canadian divorce law, courts still haven't caught up to the new
reality of Canadian family life. A generation of dads who can't stand
being apart from their children is pushing for change

A decade after a recommended overhaul of Canada's divorce system – and
more equitable child-custody arrangements – fathers still face an
uphill battle.

Picture: Danny Guspie runs Fathers’ Resources International, a support
group that meets in Toronto’s east end. Ontario Attorney General Chris
Bentley is quietly pursuing family law reform.

When Walter Mueller first walked into the support group, he was asked
to draw a picture of his life for the dozen or so men in the room.

Mueller drew three. In each one he was hanging out with his 9-year-old
daughter and 8-year-old son – splashing at the family's cottage,
riding bikes, trekking through a theme park. The picture isn't nearly
so pretty for many divorced Dads.

Mueller has seen some pushed to the brink of suicide and financial
ruin in their quest to remain a significant part of their children's
lives. He's heard others complain they've been relegated to the role
of visitors and virtual ATM machines.

"I was fearful of losing my children – how my life would go on. I
didn't see a light in any tunnel," says the 45-year-old Whitby dad,
whose wife agreed through mediation to let him see his children almost
half the time. "I would have spent every nickel, every dime, every
penny I own to get to see my children. Money doesn't matter when it
comes to love."

A decade after Ottawa's Special Joint Committee on Child Custody and
Access recommended an overhaul of Canada's divorce system – and more
equitable child-custody arrangements – fathers still face an uphill
battle.

"It's as bad or perhaps worse now," says retired MP Roger Gallaway,
who co-chaired the committee and its landmark 1998 report, "For the
Sake of the Children," and still gets calls from fathers shocked at
their treatment in the family court system.

"Men are still being deprived of their children. The courts have not
changed their attitudes all that much."

Family courts around the world have seen a "dramatic increase" in
court disputes launched by divorcing dads determined to see their
children more than every second weekend and Wednesday evenings,
observes Australian law professor Patrick Parkinson.

"There has been a significant change in fathers' attitudes towards
parenting after separation," says Parkinson, one of the architects of
drastic divorce reforms in Australia that are aimed at boosting shared
custody.

"They're more likely to be there in the birth room than smoking a
cigar in the waiting room. They're still not doing nearly as much as
women, but they're more involved, and when the relationship breaks up
they're saying they're not going to be second-class citizens – they're
not going to be cut out of their kids' lives." Despite mounting
research that says the healthy development of children depends on
having a strong bond with both parents, Canadian judges still award
sole custody to Mom 45 per cent of the time. While joint custody
awards have more than doubled – up from about 20 per cent to 46.5 per
cent between 1994 and 2005 – the term is really a misnomer. The kids
still live with their mother most of the time, although Dad is
supposed to have a say in major decisions.

"Fundamentally, men get screwed in family court," says one veteran
divorce lawyer on condition her name not be used. "Judges make sure
that assets are split equally, but they don't do that on custody and
child-related issues."

Many of the fathers going to family court seeking more time with their
kids don't fit the stereotypes of "dead-beat" or "disappearing" dads
commonly portrayed in the media. They're men who've changed diapers
and helped with homework but feel largely cut out of their kids' lives
post-separation.

They include the airline pilot who was so stressed from his custody
battle, he called a fathers' hotline for help, saying he couldn't
remember landing his plane. Or the dad who had to be talked down from
a bridge on Christmas Eve.

They are the men who sign up for DADS (Dads Aiming for Direction and
Support), one of the few support groups for fathers struggling in the
family courts.

"I can't tell you how many men I've met who have spent $50,000 and
$60,000 trying to see their kids, who come in here so broken, you're
just worried they're not going to make it through to the next week,"
says Jan Langlois, clinical advisor for the John Howard Society of
Durham Region, an agency that usually focuses on ex-convicts but has
helped everyone from police officers to bankers since starting DADS in
1995.

She's seen fathers forbidden from their child's graduation because
it's not their visitation day, ex-wives who refuse to hand over the
kids when Dad is five minutes late for pickup. The free 10-week
program, one of the few for men across the GTA, is in such demand,
it's now being expanded.

"I don't see men who don't want to pay child support. I see men who
end up sleeping on their parents' couches because they're broke (from
legal bills) and don't want to see their children go without."

Some have become cut off from their kids altogether by ex-wives who
move across the country or defy access orders with virtual impunity,
says Langlois.

She's seeing more left devastated by Ontario's 30-year-old "zero
tolerance" directive, an initiative from the Ministry of the Attorney
General aimed at forcing police and Crown attorneys to crack down on
the scourge of domestic abuse against women. By alleging assault, a
woman can pretty much assure that an ex-spouse will be removed from
the house and tied up in a costly criminal trial during which she'll
have interim custody of the kids, setting the stage for how the case
proceeds.

"It's been a death sentence to me as a father in the eyes of my
children," says a Toronto dad who agreed to a plea bargain, resulting
in a conditional discharge on what he says were false allegations,
rather than risk a long and costly trial. He's since spent $100,000
trying to convince a court that the sole custody awarded to his wife
isn't in the best interests of his three sons.

The fact that so many decisions around custody and access are made
orally in Ontario's family courts makes it virtually impossible to
know how many fathers are like an Owen Sound man who says false
allegations of child abuse 15 years ago still haunt his support
payment case and cost him custody of his 16-year-old daughter, even
though he was never charged or tried.

But one thing is quite clear. Stepping into Ontario's overburdened
family courts can be like stepping into quicksand: Toronto father
Vitaly Levin has spent $84,000 so far convincing the court to let him
see his girls, 9 and 2 1/2 , half the time.

"Judges call it sole custody," says the technology worker. "I call it
stolen custody."

That's why so many men opt to represent themselves, or spend Wednesday
nights in the nursery of Danforth Ave.'s Eastminster United Church,
where Danny Guspie, founder of Fathers' Resources International,
offers two-hour divorce strategy sessions.

"One thing that seems to be very much in common with the men I see is
that they just want the bleeding to stop," says Guspie. "They take the
view, `Can we not just stop fighting over the failure of our
relationship? We screwed up, must we perpetuate that in our children?
Just tell me what I have to pay, but don't make me sleep in my car.
And when I come to get the kids, don't give me a hard time.'"

Of course, not everyone believes that men get the short end of the
stick in family court. "Mothers feel equally angry with the system and
also feel they don't get a fair shake," says Ontario family court
judge Harvey Brownstone, who has written a best-selling book, Tug of
War, as a warning to warring couples to try to avoid court at all
costs.

He's heard men complain that they risk going to jail if they don't pay
support, yet their ex-wives are seldom penalized for lying on the
stand or defying court-ordered access to the kids.

But Brownstone adds that in his experience, jailing mothers "has made
things worse, not better," noting that the kids often end up in foster
care while the court sorts out where they should live.

"They (men jailed for not paying support) have the keys in their own
pocket. They can pay and get out."

Pamela Cross, a family lawyer and director of the National Association
of Women and the Law, contends too many women still suffer abuse at
the hands of men who refuse to pay court-ordered child support. They
also have to deal with the fallout when fathers don't show up for
their access time, leaving devastated kids waiting at the door.

Men who push relentlessly for more time with the kids tend to be
driven more by control issues and cash than quality time, argues
Cross. Since child support payments are based on the so-called
"40-per-cent rule," if a father has the children more than 40 per cent
of the time, he can seek a reduction in payments (whereas if the
mother has them more than 40 per cent of the time, she gets full
support).

Many parents and lawyers blame 1999 Divorce Act reform for turning
kids into "economic hostages" and driving up custody disputes.

Ontario Attorney General Chris Bentley, a former criminal lawyer, has
been praised by some family law lawyers for recognizing the unique
problems plaguing the family courts. He's been quietly meeting with
family law experts across the province the past few months and
recently announced a $150 million increase in legal aid funding, much
of it for family law cases, and said he's determined to streamline and
speed up the court system while providing more upfront services such
as mediation to keep cases out of the courts.

Judges are getting tougher with obstreperous parents – be they fathers
or mothers – and sensitive to the importance of dads in their
children's lives, says family law lawyer Steven Benmor. As a handful
of recent cases have shown, they're also more willing to switch
custody if one parent is habitually denying access or turning the kids
against the other parent.

Australia's Parkinson studies family law issues around the world and
says father's groups that have been pushing for more equal access to
their children have been unfairly labelled as fanatics, especially in
Canada where the fight between feminists and so-called father's rights
groups have been, in his view, "extremely adversarial."

"There are some way-out and wacky men's groups, but the closer you get
to some of these groups, the more you see decent, down-to-earth men
who are distressed, who are upset, some of them are angry, and they're
human beings. All they're saying is, `I love my kids and I want to do
the best for them.'"We need to get away from this warfare and think
about the children."

Sunday: Equal shared parenting