What Razorsharp refuses to recognize (because it would destroy his conspiracy theory) is that, under Gomez, the state of Texas has every right to pass a law ending all forms of child support. Gomez simply requires that, if Texas is going to have laws concerning child support, those laws must apply to all parents of children, without regard to whether a child is legitimate or illegitimate.
Sua
Okay, you wrote:
Now, you wrote it, back it up. How would “Gomez” bolster Wade’s position?
As I have said, if your theory was correct, the attorneys for Wade could have cited the precedent set in Gomez and won.
Razorsharp, I have made my position very clear: Roe and Gomez do not conflict, and the fact that neither the Wade attorneys nor anyone else in the past 30 years has raised the issue of an alleged conflict demonstrates that there is no conflict between the two decisions.
I will continue this debate if you wish, but not if your debating tactics are going to consist of misrepresenting what I have said. Your choice.
Sua
I don’t think anyone has even mentioned the most infuriating part of all this to me…
There have been several documented cases of a woman lying to a man about him being the father, and him agreeing to support the child, only to find out at a later date that he is indeed not the father. The courts have ruled that it does not matter and he must continue paying support anyway.
Why does this not apply to a woman when she gives a baby up for adoption?
Why is it okay for a woman to commit fraud and the court support her in it by not releasing the man from support obligations?
The family court system in America is VERY pro-mother and VERY anti-father in my opinion.
For a father to get custody of his children after a divorce, he pretty much has to prove that the mother is the antichrist and have satanistic orgies while her kids are in the house. For a mother to get custody after a divorce, all she has to do is simply exist.
Lots of things going on in this, and a lot of it is squarely the fault of men.
Lots of men seem to think that women have these “maternal instincts” which make all women happy and successful mothers. This leads to all sorts of inequity, from women getting stuck with more childcare duties while married, to more societal pressure on women to have children and not abort or give them up for adoption, etc. There are definitely some women who add to this extremely annoying stereotype, but it seems (very anecdotal, in my experience) that it’s usually men who are shocked when women turn out to be bad or indifferent mothers.
How many men abandon their families versus women who do so? I have no idea what the statistics are, so this isn’t a scientific argument, but I’d guess that the perception is that men are more likely to abandon their children, and the statistics might show that they do so more often. If so, that adds to the prejudice against men as responsible care-givers of children.
I know from my brother’s experience that what you say is very true. The mother of his child is a convicted felon with multitudinous drug and assault convictions as well as theft and fraud and was in jail awaiting another trial, but the judge was unwilling to give my brother custody.
Not quite the antichrist, but close.
Julie
Bother bother bother. I didn’t finish.
Anyway, with men (as a group, not as individuals) so willing to claim that there is a field of work (childrearing, etc.) that belonged to women, and that they were not liable for, it doesn’t surprise me that when some men turn around and want recognition in those fields, other men tend not to give it to them. Fair? No. Expected? Yes. A result of an unfair system? Absolutely.
Julie
No, what you fail to recognize is that the term “child-support”, is somewhat akin to Orwellian “newspeak”.
First, as I have had to rehash time and time again, what is referred to as “child-support” is NOT a “right” of the child, but rather, the extension of support that existed within the contract of marriage, upon dissolution of that marriage. This support mechanism existed without legislation Upon divorce, it would not be proper for the custodial parent to be assigned all costs of supporting a child that resulted from the marriage of two people. What is termed “child-support” was, in actuality, a sharing of liabilities that two people incurred through a mutual contract (marriage), upon dissolution of that contract (divorce).
The evolution of child-support into a “right” is a fairly recent phenomenon. In years past, if a woman gave birth to a child outside of the institution of matrimony, that child was considered hers. (It was considered a “private” concern as echoed in Roe v Wade.) If she was independently wealthy, she may have made the “choice” to raise her child by herself. If she was indigent, she would likely resort to putting her child up for adoption so as to not to be burdened with raising a child alone. If she was a teenager, she would probably make the “choice” to put her child up for adoption so as to continue her life’s goal unencumbered with the burden of raising her child. No, the child did not have a “right” to support from it’s biological parents.
This was how society recognized illegitimacy for the first one-hundred seventy-five years of America’s history. Prior to the mid-1960’s, illegitimacy was relatively rare. Private charities, in conjunction with society’s “safety-net” programs, lent support where it was needed. Then society was delt a liberal “one-two punch” with the “sexual revolution”, which was to put women on equal footing with men with regards to sex, and President Johnson’s “Great Society” programs that had the effect of rewarding illegitimacy.
This “one-two punch” caused an explosion of illegitimate births. As state treasuries were becoming drained as a result of the sky-rocketing welfare costs, state legislators began to scramble for solutions.
Not wishing to stir-up the hornet’s nest of feminism and alienate the “women’s vote”, state legislatures concocted the “Deadbead Dad” villian and, through a legislative sleight-of-hand, came up with the concept of a child’s “right” to support.
As for “Gomez vs. Perez”, the Supreme Court had to make a stretch for an “equal protection” issue, for the simple reason that the misnamed concept of “child-support” was, in reality, a sharing of liabilities incurred by two people within the marriage contract. Furthermore, the Court was in error in hearing “Gomez” under an “equal protection” pretext for the simple reason that no legislation existed that enacted the provisions of support that had previously existed within the bonds of matrimony. Again, “child-support” was the extension of a provision that previously existed.
Now that I have proven beyond any doubt that what is termed as “child-support” is NOT a “right” of the child, the Supreme Court was in error in hearing “Gomez” under an “equal protection” issue.
A liberal’s worst nightmare; A redneck with both a library card and a concealed-carry permit.
Oh, and another thing, that would be like throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Gomez didn’t hold that illegitimate children had a right to child support. There’s no such thing as a constitutional right to child support; Gomez didn’t hold that there was. It held that illegitimate children couldn’t be treated differently from legitimate children unless the government could demonstrate an important state interest, and show that the law was substantially related to achieving that interest. In other words, they have a right to equal protection of the laws. The fact that it had to do with child support is tangiental; the same law applies if Texas wants to make illegitimate children attend segregated schools, use different water fountains, etc.
Could I get a cite for your assertions? It was my understanding that modern child support laws were enacted mainly to allow the government to recoup funds it expended supporting women and children at or below the poverty line. It wasn’t Gomez, but the Family Support Act, which was passed by Congress in 1974 that was the basis for child support laws as they currently are. As I and others have pointed out repeatedly, Gomez did not “create” a right to child support, but merely held that if the legislature created such a right to child support, it must do so for all children regardless of illegitimacy.
I am having the strangest sense of deja vu with this absurd misrepresentation of Texas law and the unsupported notion that the obligation of child support flows from and is dependent upon the marital relation. Yet the search engine is letting me down in all efforts to locate where I’ve read this before. So help me out here, Razorsharp, have we met before? Would this have anything to do with Henson v. Sorrell, where the Tennessee Court of Appeals rejected a position rather similar to the one you’ve adopted here? And more to the point, what organization are you getting your material from? This has the appearance of an organized position you’re advocating, not simply something you’ve worked out on your own.
Chumpsky is that you? In GD, “because I say it is” is not proof.
Ironically, you are correct: child support is not a “right” of the child; the Constitution does not require a child to receive child support.
However, child support is also not “the extension of support that existed within the contract of marriage, upon dissolution of that marriage.”
Instead, it is a benefit conferred on the child and imposed on the parents to serve the social good of avoiding the destitution of children and the concomitant additional burden such destitute children will impose on the coffers of the state.
“equal protection” actually has nothing to do with “rights.” The only constitutional right involved is equal protection itself.
Equal protection simply means that, when a state chooses to confer a benefit or impose a burden on certain of its citizens, it must confer that benefit or impose that burden on all similarly situated persons, unless there is (in the instance of illegitimate children) a “compelling state interest” that would militate against conferring that benefit equally amongst its similarly situated citizens.
Sua
My memory is slowly returning. It was a thread also primarily about elective paternity, with a subsidiary discussion about occasions where the father did not consent to intercourse. One of the cases discussed was S.F. v. State ex rel. T.M, 695 So. 2d 1186 (Ala. Ct. Civ. App. 1996). But damn if it ain’t missing from the archives. Must have been one of the threads lost during the Winter of Missed Content, and it’s not available on Boardreader either.
Taking a look at that case, and comparing it to the cases Razor was bandying about earlier, it looks like the court is just finding the only solution to a bad situation. The kid is staying with the mom because thats how the game works- but should the state just sit by and allow him to be raised below the poverty line? Is it fair to allow the child to be punished for the acts of the mom?
Certainly if the mom had been convicted of a crime, the child would be “punished” by her incarceration. And THIS is where I think S.F. v. State ex rel. T.M. deviates alot from the case I distinguished awhile ago. In this case, the mom was never brought up on sexual assult charges because there was no law for it. The problem, in my mind, is exactly that. She should have been prosecuted for rape immediately; given the facts of the record, I dont see how she could get out of it.
Given the findings of law that a rape trial would have produced, I bet this case would have turned out differently.
-C
Are you saying that all rights are derived from the Constitution? It doesn’t say anything about the “right to an abortion” either.
Sure it is.
Would you cite the legislative act where that “benefit” is “conferred” specifically for children within the bonds of matrimony?
Let me clarify a little bit…
Pertend for a moment there is no such thing as divorce and all children are “legitimate”.
Now, cite the legislative act that confers the benefit.
Is this the cite I requested? If so, the link must not be working.
By the way, I think Razorsharp should next tell us why it is that we don’t have to pay the federal income tax. The quality of his legal argument in this thread is highly reminiscent of tax protestors’ claims.
I believe that “child-support” dates back considerably from 1995.
My contention still stands, child-support’s origin stems from the dissolution of the marriage contract.