Divorce, Visitation Rights, Support Payments, and recent history

[bitznbitez]

Current secular thought says that in a divorce a parent cannot and should not bar the other parent from visitation with the children even if the other parent is not paying support payments. The reasoning is that the children have the right to a parent and they are not pawns they should not suffer for the failure of another. This makes sense and would be, I believe, correct.

Was this always this way in the USA after the start of the divorce boom ? Particularly in the mid 1980s was it ever promoted, even if only by a significant minority, of law and psychology and such, that a parent who did not pay support lost the right to see the children until they paid support ?

I’m pondering things I observed many years ago and wonder where such ideas may have come from as I clearly saw the idea of using kids as bargaining chips put into practice.

 

[1ke]

I think that there were many social and cultural ideas about child custody, particularly that the child belonged with the mother (quote Rhett in GWTW, I guess a bad mother is better than no mother).

I believe the movie Kramer vs Kramer began to change that. It was very powerful.

 

[St_Francis]

I know that further back, maybe the 40s and 50s, there seemed to be the idea that the father (or non-custodial parent?) maintaining a relationship with his children would only confuse them, and so dads tended to stay away.

 

[styrgwillidar]

Current secular thought says that in a divorce a parent cannot and should not bar the other parent from visitation with the children even if the other parent is not paying support payments. The reasoning is that the children have the right to a parent and they are not pawns they should not suffer for the failure of another. This makes sense and would be, I believe, correct.

Was this always this way in the USA after the start of the divorce boom ? Particularly in the mid 1980s was it ever promoted, even if only by a significant minority, of law and psychology and such, that a parent who did not pay support lost the right to see the children until they paid support ?

I’m pondering things I observed many years ago and wonder where such ideas may have come from as I clearly saw the idea of using kids as bargaining chips put into practice.

Not sure what the law said because there were huge problems with enforcement. Men who paid child support being denied access anyway and the courts doing nothing to enforce it. Then men in that situation who stopped paying being denied access with a he said/she said about why he didn’t have access. Her saying it was because he didn’t pay, him saying he didn’t pay because access was denied. Or her moving out of state in defiance of court orders- so he stops paying, which is still illegal and making his situation worse. Or insisting he stopped because she ‘obviously’ wasn’t using it on the kids, her insisting she was. There were a couple of cases where men actually set up escrow accounts and paid all their child support to the account vice the mother- insisting she hadn’t been using the money an the kids and at least this way the kids would eventually get it. Really not the point of support-- day to day food/clothing/shelter/health care, so were they just being vindictive and hurting the kids? Or were they right that none would have been spent on the kids anyway? I think in the majority of cases parents did try to work together, but in the emotion/devastation of divorce some of the more egregious are cited as being prevalent- perhaps far more than they actually were. A lot of penalties were put in place for dead beat dads- inability to get licenses, business permits, seizing of government payments like tax refunds. I don’t remember any similar drive to insist on honoring custody agreements.

 

[styrgwillidar]

I know that further back, maybe the 40s and 50s, there seemed to be the idea that the father (or non-custodial parent?) maintaining a relationship with his children would only confuse them, and so dads tended to stay away.

Then as time evolved after divorce became far more prevalent with many more single/remarried mothers the data started to come in on how children are affected by not having their biological father involved in their lives. That led to a greater push for shared custody. As a side note, the data shows the following preference in descending order (statistically, individual cases will differ…)

Married mother and father living together
Shared joint custody
Father as primary custodian
Mother as primary custodian

 

[casslean]

Current secular thought says that in a divorce a parent cannot and should not bar the other parent from visitation with the children even if the other parent is not paying support payments. The reasoning is that the children have the right to a parent and they are not pawns they should not suffer for the failure of another. This makes sense and would be, I believe, correct.

Was this always this way in the USA after the start of the divorce boom ? Particularly in the mid 1980s was it ever promoted, even if only by a significant minority, of law and psychology and such, that a parent who did not pay support lost the right to see the children until they paid support ?

I’m pondering things I observed many years ago and wonder where such ideas may have come from as I clearly saw the idea of using kids as bargaining chips put into practice.

Certainly it was never promoted by the law, and to my knowledge, the case law repeatedly shows judges taking a hard line when a parent refuses to provide access because support is in arrears.

The current law is based on the over-riding principle of “best interests of the child”. It is presumed not be in the best interests of children to be cut off from one parent. It is presumed not to be in the best interests of the children to involve them in adult matters - and support is an adult matter.

That being said, people in conflicts will tend to interpret the law to say whatever they want it to say. Even today, I routinely run into people who confidently tell me that the law says they do not have to provide access to a non-paying parent - then insist I’m wrong when I correct them and demand I show them where it says that (because my law degree isn’t proof enough). I’ve had people tell me that a child of X age gets to make their own decision about access (they don’t). I’ve had people tell me they don’t have to pay anything after the child turns 18 (only if your child is remarkably self-sufficient and doesn’t go to university).

Historically, people acted on these assumptions, but access parents were less aware of their own legal rights. As awareness has increased, so too has the incidence of access parents going to court to assert their legal rights.

 

[bitznbitez]

Certainly it was never promoted by the law, and to my knowledge, the case law repeatedly shows judges taking a hard line when a parent refuses to provide access because support is in arrears.

The current law is based on the over-riding principle of “best interests of the child”.

Thanks.