Introduction

Abuse of Discretion Law and Legal Definition

Abuse of discretion occurs when a court does not apply the correct law or if it bases its decision on a clearly erroneous finding of a material fact. A court may also abuse its discretion when the record contains no evidence to support its decision. Abuse of discretion is one of the reasons a court of appeals may use to reverse the trial court judgment. A judge may be found to commit an abuse of discretion by not allowing an important witness to testify, making improper comments that might influence a jury, showing bias, or making rulings on evidence that deny a person a chance to tell his or her side of the matter. In criminal cases abuse of discretion can include sentences that are grossly too harsh. In a divorce action, it includes awarding alimony way beyond the established formula or the spouse's or life partner's realistic ability to pay.
x

********************
X
Yes, Fathers Are Essential
by
Carey Roberts
xxx
In the past several decades, the United States has achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the world leader in fatherless families. Currently, 34% of American children live without their biological father. When did this trend start, and what does it bode for our kids?

The rise of father-absence can be traced 50 years back. In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then working in the Johnson administration, looked into the problems of under-class America. The Moynihan Report issued this solemn warning: "From the wild Irish slums of the 19th century eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any rational expectations about the future -- that community asks for and gets chaos."

The heralded Report offered Americans a unique opportunity to alter the trajectory of history, to thwart the impending plunge into the abyss. But rather than heed the prescient warning, warm-hearted liberals denounced Moynihan's conclusion as "blaming the victim." And feminists reviled the report as promoting the "hetero-patriarchal" agenda. But it wasn't enough to just ignore Moynihan's analysis.

Architects of the Great Society program went ahead and implemented eligibility requirements that cut off welfare benefits if the father resided with the mother - the so-called "man-in-the-house" rule. Now, low-income fathers found themselves pitted against government largesse to compete for the loyalty of poor mothers. A tragic mismatch, indeed.

As a result, the number of children who lived in fatherless homes mushroomed from 5.1 million in 1960 to 16.5 million in 1995. These policies were so devastating in their impact that involved, caring fathers all but disappeared from low-income, Black neighborhoods.

So while liberals comforted themselves with the knowledge that they had avoided "blaming the victim," millions of little boys and girls had to console themselves with the elusive hope that someday, society would stop shoving daddy out the back door.

Once poor fathers had been run out of their homes, the fem-liberals broadened their focus. They launched an attack on the whole notion of fatherhood itself. In 1999, the American Psychological Association used the occasion of Father's Day to publish an article with the awful title, "Deconstructing the Essential Father." The partisan article triggered a firestorm of protest, including a rebuke from 18 members of Congress. Despite what the American Psychological Association might say, most persons agree that dads are worth keeping around.

First, a father's breadwinning instinct keeps the family out of the clutches of poverty. Indeed, while father-present households saw an increase in income from 1960 to 1990, father-absent families saw a financial decline. But fathers are more than income producers. Fathers undergird the very order and structure of the family.

xxx

Scores of research studies have documented the positive effects of involved fathers. Here's just a sampling of the benefits:

• The National Center for Educational Statistics reported that when fathers are involved in their children's education, the kids were more likely to get A's, enjoy school, and participate in extracurricular activities.
• Kyle Pruett concluded that kids with engaged fathers demonstrate "a greater ability to take initiative and evidence self-control."
• When these boys grew up, they were more likely to be good dads themselves.

But when misguided government programs disenfranchise fathers, here's the result:

• Their children have a higher rate of asthma, headaches, anxiety, depression, and behavioral problems.
• Teenagers are at greater risk of alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drug use, and suicide.
• Adolescent girls are 3 times more likely to engage in sexual relations by the time they turn 15, and 5 times more likely to become a teen mother.

-------------

In family courts, the presumption of male behavioral malefaction has yielded heartbreakingly numerous cases in which men are charged with domestic violence to which courts overwhelmingly -- often in brief hearings in which the male is not even present -- issue temporary "restraining orders." These frequently segue into permanence, and award women the dwelling they've shared, financial support and the all-important privilege of custody -- mothers gain custody in 66% of uncontested cases and 75% of contested ones. Less than a quarter of parents are awarded joint custody.

Judges issue such orders based only on the word of the alleged victim. It is small wonder the overwhelming majority of such actions are sought and achieved by women. It has been legitimately argued that there is a merciless post-marital racket of therapists, lawyers, judges and governmental advocates who prosper because it is so easy to define males as guilty.

It is solely about inequity in law, funding and productive public attention. There is scant acknowledgment of the fact that we face a generation of young men increasingly failing in a school system seemingly calibrated to female rhythms.

A consequence is that male income falls and female income rises. Nothing wrong with that, except that men inexorably withdraw from domestic life: they become out-laws rather than in-laws. Legions of women despair of finding a mate compatible in function and vibrancy. So they go it alone: a third of babies are born to unmarried women, perhaps making a sage choice given the feckless, demoralized chaps from whom they must choose. The United States leads the world in fatherless families -- 40% of children fall asleep without a resident father regularly within reach.

The clout of female voters has been transmuted into a strangely pervasive inattention to the legitimate needs of boys and men. While there remain grating sources of unfairness to women, the community is in the process of steadily creating a new legal and educational structure which generates new gender unfairness: 90% of the victims of Ritalin and similar drugs prescribed for schoolkids are boys; but even drugged they perform less well than girls. A 2005 study at Yale found nationally that even in prekindergarten boys are nearly five times more likely to be expelled than girls.

~ Lionel Tiger, Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers

A person really doesn't know what the end result of getting married will be. Divorce rates are so high, people get divorced for many reasons, some justifiable and some not. Nobody should put up with emotional or physical abuse and this is the best reason to end a marriage. When children are involved a parent should do whatever necessary to protect them physically and emotionally. If abuse does not exist in a marriage, a divorce will most likely create emotional problems for a child because their world is breaking apart.

xxx
Unfortunately many men marry women who are pathologically disturbed. My ex-spouse is a liar, a schemer and lives in a "soap opera" mentality, not the real world as normally balanced people see it. She drives a Jaguar Sedan but lives in a simple bi-level house with average amenities in a blue-collar community, dresses expensively and puts on airs as if she is of great importance, which she is not. She works at a community hospital as a surgical tech but secretly parks in the physicians parking lot or close to it, dresses up extravagantly simply to walk into the front doors of her workplace through the lobby, instead of using the employee entrance, before she puts on her "uniform" known as scrubs. Most people simply show up to work in their uniform.

xxx
Worst of all she will manipulate her children against their father, including threats, harassment and even changing their last name. She effectively uses and abuses the court system with the help of biased judges, attorney's and a system, which is anti-Dad. They can deny this but the record speaks for itself, when the laws of the United States, the State of Indiana, parenting and support guidelines are not followed. I have been denied counsel, ordered to jail, witnessed judges privately talking to opposing counsel before a hearing, complimenting opposing counsel during a hearing, all with a wink and a nod. My ex-spouse is ruthless beyond reproach, but with a biased and law breaking judiciary on her side I was always fighting a losing battle. It goes almost without saying; my ex-spouse is concerned with two things, destroying my relationship with my sons and money.

xxx
Money actually goes beyond the welfare of the children; their mother negotiated her support obligations using the boys as pawns. She manipulates by misstating facts, lying to the boys about their father and convincing them they are better off never seeing him, sharing email or talking on the phone. She has not followed one court order issued to her, has admitted interfering with parenting laws and talked against me to my boys, but the court refuses to use the word "contempt" although it is frequently used in every contempt hearing I have attended when the court is asked to find me in contempt. She ruthlessly uses threats and intimidation to keep my boys from having any form of communication. I have been punished severely over the years, have seldom won any petitions and watched my own attorneys ignore my case, fail to inform me of hearings and protect one attorney who happened to be my ex-wife's husband and attorney (now divorced) in an effort to save him from himself and his mission to destroy me and my relationship with my sons.

xxx

Money actually goes beyond the welfare of the children; their mother negotiated her support obligations using the boys as pawns. She manipulates by misstating facts, lying to the boys about their father and convincing them they are better off never seeing him, sharing email or talking on the phone. She has not followed one court order issued to her, has admitted interfering with parenting laws and talked against me to my boys, but the court refuses to use the word "contempt" although it is frequently used in every contempt hearing I have attending when the court is asked to find me in contempt. She ruthlessly uses threats and intimidation to keep my boys from having any form of communication. I have been punished severely over the years, have seldom won on my petitions and watched my own attorneys ignore my case, fail to inform me of hearings and protect one attorney who happened to be my ex-wife's husband and attorney in an effort to save him from himself and his mission to destroy me and my relationship with my sons.

xxx

In fact, the judge has intentionally failed to apply laws and have orders mailed to me in a timely fashion, therefore, I can't appeal his rulings. The current judge manipulates the system to avoid an appeal on my behalf to protect his blatant misjudgment and ignoring the law, but allows my ex-spouse and her attorney to represent settled matters well beyond an appeal date to new hearings and then rules on orders that were never in place. The end result is misrepresenting the law, denying me rights of the constitution and further diminishing my ability to increase my financial capabilities. However, his honor is only falling in step with his judicial colleagues, demeaning the value of written laws, denying parental rights, and further aiding and abetting a malicious mother.

xxx

Attorney's and judiciary in this case are no better than al-Qaeda. They are terrorists in their own right, using any means possible to destroy reputations, careers, families and using "what's best for the children" as their excuse to ruin lives. This group is the lowest form of human entity, surviving in their "legal swamp", somehow justifying their self-righteousness on the innocent public from the hallowed halls of their meek existence.

xxx

Opinions vs. Facts

xxx

When people don't want to hear you speak or dispute what they're saying it's now fashionable to say, "That's your opinion!" My sons like to use that term as an out or closure for something they don't wish to discuss. Lawyers, Judges and others do the same thing and worse. Let's examine this in my situation.

xxx

It's fact, not opinion that:

• My ex-spouse lied to Arizona police about domestic abuse, got me arrested and left the state to return to Indiana under false pretenses.
• My ex-spouse got her Arizona co-workers to lie to county police about her whereabouts.
• My ex-spouse asked for an annulment through my attorney before a court hearing was to begin although we had two children from our marriage.
• My ex-spouse voluntarily gave me custody of our two boys.
• My ex-spouse used her attorney friend/husband (now ex-husband) to manipulate the law to hurt me and by asssociation, her two sons.
• My ex-spouse never attended extra-curricular activities such as swimming, soccer, Cub Scouts, banquets, parent-teacher conferences, campouts and never helped with any of these activities.
• My ex-spouse perjured herself to the justice system in petitions and at hearings consistently for years.
• My ex-spouse filed friviolous petitions as methods of harrassment for years; her husband/attorney knowingly authored and administered these petitions with false information.