October 8, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

The science reported on here isn’t exactly news, but it does add depth and some nuance to our ever-expanding information on the biochemistry of fathers and fatherhood (Medical Xpress, 9/24/20).  Led by Notre Dame anthropologist Lee Gettler, it’s about the role testosterone plays in paternal behavior.  The study looks at men in two Congolese tribes who customarily approach fathering differently.  The men of the BaYaka tribe tend to be very hands-on fathers, while those of the Bondongo emphasize resource provision and mostly leave direct parenting to their wives.

"The BaYaka people are very egalitarian and hyper-cooperative within their communities, and fathers are valued for generously sharing resources across the group. Among the Bondongo people, who rely on fishing and farming for sustenance, society is patriarchal and status driven, and fathers are valued as providers," said Gettler.

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October 6, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

Who is a child?  At what age do we become adults?  Don’t ask the law because the law doesn’t know.  The whole adult/child distinction is too vexing for the law to sort out.  What, you say, the law knows perfectly well who is a child.  Depending on the jurisdiction, a child is someone under a particular age, say, 18.  And that’s all there is to it, right?  Wrong.

Particularly when it comes to “child” support the law is, shall we say, fluid.  Stated another way, a parent may be required by the state to pay “child” support for his/her offspring pretty much regardless of age.  Of course in some cases that makes sense.  As between the state and the parents, who should support a severely disabled individual, one who is clearly unable to support themselves?  If you answered “the parents,” we agree.  After all, with the duty of financial support usually comes the right and duty of care.  So if the state supports the disabled individual, the state will be tasked with caring for him/her.  And, as we know, if the person has parents who are at all capable and loving, they’re far preferable to anything the government has to offer.

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October 2, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

This looks to me like tilting at windmills, but, even so, it’s a sign of the times, and not a bad one (PRWeb.com, 9/29/20).  The link is to a press release from the Family Preservation Foundation and its Executive Director, Dwight Mitchell.  The press release urges readers to sign the foundation’s petition that in turn urges Congress to adopt Resolution H.J. Res. 36 that would create a constitutional amendment establishing parental rights.

Here’s the text of the resolution put forward by Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana and that has 15 co-sponsors.

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September 29, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

On September 7, the Nebraska Supreme Court issued a very good decision in the case of Nebraska ex rel. Tina K. vs. Adam B. and Jo K.  It’s not as perfect as I’d like, but it clearly sets out the conditions under which a court may deprive a parent of the care, love and companionship of his/her child.  The court adopted the reasoning of a New Jersey Supreme Court case that held that the preference accorded biological parents can only be overridden in rare circumstances, defined as “serious physical or psychological harm or a substantial likelihood of such harm.”

Tina K. is the more important because of the nature of the parents involved.  They weren’t good.  Given that, the court’s stringent requirements placed on the state clearly apply to protect almost any parent.

Tina K. and Adam B. lived together for a few months and had a child, Destiny B., in 2003.  It appears that Tina was a heavy user of methamphetamine and did so during her pregnancy with Destiny.  The Supreme Court’s recitation of the facts of the case is sometimes vague, but, over the years, Tina seems to have been more of a drug addict than anything else.  While Destiny was growing up, Tina went to prison twice for selling controlled substances.  When out, she seems to rarely have had a fixed residence or a functioning car. 

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September 25, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

As all now know, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is no longer with us.  She had long been seriously ill and finally succumbed to the cancer that had dogged the end of her life.  In this election year, it goes without saying that her death and the resulting vacancy on the nation’s highest court have caused paroxysms of opinion mongering across the political spectrum.

I offer no deep thoughts on her as a person or as a jurist.  Certainly, she was a hard worker and, if those with whom she worked are any guide, a person with a strong sense of fairness.  She was a feminist who, at least in some instances understood that men sometimes hold the short end of the equality stick.  So, for example, as a practicing attorney, she successfully represented a man against the Social Security Administration.  At the time, if a husband died, his wife was entitled to “widow’s benefits,” but if a wife died, her surviving husband was entitled to zip.  Ginsburg, through her representation of a man whose wife had died and was denied benefits, changed what were plainly gender-biased regulations.

So what did she think about fathers?  There the coast is not so clear.  Here’s what she said in 1993 during a panel discussion for the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia.

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September 18, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

In Ontario, it’s officially open season on anyone earning a good income (National Post, 9/10/20).  Beware all those who do.  If you have a girl/boyfriend and endeavor to treat them well, you may find yourself married.  No, you didn’t walk down the aisle and no, you never lived together for any significant period of time.  No rings were exchanged nor vows taken, nor marriage license issued.  That’s all so passé, so totally yesterday.  In Ontario, it’s a whole new, brave new world, whose whole point is money, or, to be precise, alimony.

Michael Latner is apparently very well-off financially, so, when he met and fell in love with Lisa Climans back in 2000, he was lavish in his support of her.  She quit her job and he supported her and her three children in a style to which they’d theretofore never been accustomed.  They ate well, lived well, traveled extensively and all on his nickel.  What they didn’t do was marry, live together or have a joint bank account.

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September 14,2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

No effort to convince readers that, against all the evidence, family courts are biased against mothers would be complete without eliding the differences between Parental Alienation Syndrome and parental alienation.  And Natalie Pattillo’s piece in the New York Review of Books doesn’t disappoint. 

The reason for doing so is to tar the concept of PA with the name Richard Gardner.  He’s long dead and therefore presents no risk of a libel or defamation suit and so is fair game.  Pattillo introduces the term “parental alienation” and, just one sentence later pretends that it’s the same as PAS.

And no such article would be complete without misrepresenting what PA and PAS actually are.  Again, following the script closely, Pattillo does the same.

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September 10, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

Nothing quite condemns any publication quite like citing Barry Goldstein as a reputable source.  But that’s exactly what Natalie Pattillo did in her article in the New York Review of Books about which I wrote last time.  Who is Barry Goldstein?  To begin with, he’s yet another of the true believers, like Pattillo herself, who never get around to admitting female violence against men or that many allegations of DV, when made during a divorce action are made to gain the upper hand therein.

But if that were all that Barry Goldstein is, he’d just be one of many.  In fact, he’s unique.  Barry Goldstein at one time was an attorney in New Jersey.  (The state’s bar association now lists him as “retired.”)  Back in 2008, Goldstein won the dubious distinction of being suspended by the bar grievance committee for a whopping five years due to an equally whopping 26 violations of the canons of legal ethics.  About half of those were for playing fast and loose with client funds, but the rest originated from his representation of Yevgenia Shockome whose case was a textbook example of the abuse of the legal system by those who want us to believe that only men abuse and only women and children are abused.

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September 9, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

Sigh.  Another month, another article that claims that, as a general rule, family courts favor fathers over mothers, and particularly so in matters of domestic violence (New York Review of Books, 9/2/20).  We see these with some frequency.  Law professor Joan Meier has made a career out of exactly that, done her best to prove her point and failed.  But the latest yellow journalism appears in what was once a respectable publication, the New York Review of Books.

The NYRB article runs to type, i.e. pure agitprop.  The writer, Natalie Pattillo, has written pretty extensively and always in the same vein.  She’s a true believer in the Church of Men are Abusers and Women Aren’t.  Predictably, her article, when it locates facts at all, cites only dodgy ones, artfully leads readers to believe that which isn’t true, quotes only those who belong to the same Church regardless of how factually compromised they are and of course manages no balance whatsoever.  The piece is about 3,500 words long and in all those words, Pattillo offers not a single quotation from anyone with an opinion different from her own.  Needless to say, as in all such articles, many pertinent facts go unmentioned

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September 4, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

The article dealing with the changes to adoption law in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) that was the subject of my previous piece treads oh so lightly on the topic of the business of adoption.  As I said last time, the writer, Jasper Lindell, didn’t manage to pick up the phone and talk to a single person who questions adoption.  Not one person and not one parent’s organization.  After all, to do so might have interfered with his sunny, anodyne view of the matter. 

Consider:

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