Fathers and Families Supports Appeal of Half-Million-Dollar Child Support Order

[Alison J Stevens]

Fathers and Families Supports Appeal of Half-Million-Dollar Child S...

Fathers and Families has agreed to be a signatory to an amicus brief in an appeal of a half-million-dollar child support order to the Indiana Court of Appeals.

Ned Holstein, MD, MS, Founder and Chair of the Board of Fathers and Families, reviewed the brief at the request of the Indianapolis law firm of Bose, McKinney & Evans, LLP, who incorporated some of his suggestions. The Fathers and Families Legal Defense Fund gets involved in legal challenges which can advance the cause of shared parenting and equality in family court. To learn more about some of the cases the F & F LDF has been involved in, click here.

Below is Dr. Holstein’s write-up of the case, Bir v. Bir:

Allan and Cynthia Bir were married in 1990. A petition for divorce was filed in early 2008. Allan was ordered to pay $4,300 per month for support of the two children.

New Indiana Child Support Guidelines went into effect January 1, 2010. Cynthia filed for modified child support based on the new Guidelines. Because the new Guidelines contain no leveling off of the child support obligation at high incomes, they called for child support of about $1,965,000 per year in this case! (Both children are said to be healthy and to have no special needs.)

Allan submitted evidence to the court showing that the children’s needs are approximately $8,600 per month, or $103,200 per year total for the two children. The court rejected the $1,965,000 called for by the Guidelines. However, it did not adopt Allan’s reasonable proposal of over $100,000 in child support per year. Instead, it ordered $8,600 per week.

In other words, Allan submitted evidence supporting an amount of $8,600 per month, and the court ordered $8,600 per week, or $447,200 per year.

Family court judges are given so much discretion they can make mystifying orders without ever having to explain themselves. As Allan’s lawyer wrote in a brief, “There are no findings which support or even explain why the Father’s budget is inadequate or unreasonable, or why the provisional child support awarded is 4.3 times the amount of Father’s budget.”

Allan has now appealed his case to the Indiana Court of Appeals, and Fathers and Families has signed on to an amicus brief in support of his appeal. Fathers and Families is considering filing legislation in several states that would place a reasonable ceiling on child support orders. It is hard to see why any child needs more than perhaps $50,000 of tax-free child support per year if the child has no special medical, educational, or psychological needs.

Parents are free to support a child as lavishly as they like from the love in their hearts, but why should the state be involved in ordering and enforcing such transfers of wealth if parents do not want to do it? Where is the harm to children from receiving “only” $50,000 per year that rises to the level requiring state intervention, if in fact there is any harm whatsoever?…read more (as well as the full amicus brief) by clicking here.

Ned Holstein, MD, MS
Founder and Chair of the Board

Mother Hits Father with Car on Video; Prosecutor Refuses to Bring ...

An Iowa father is knocked off his feet by his ex-wife after she drives straight into him.

Events caught on a school surveillance camera in Oelwein, Iowa on January 28 hold many lessons for the family court reform movement. The entire event can be seen here, and it makes fascinating viewing.

According to the dad, whom I will call “Josh”, he enjoys 50/50 shared parenting of his five children under Iowa’s fairly enlightened shared parenting laws. He claims mom had interfered with his designated parenting time the day before, so on the day of the videotaped incident, Josh was determined to avoid a repeat. He notified the school that he would be picking his daughter up an hour early. But the school notified mom, who came to the school six minutes before Josh.

At the 2:00 point in the video, you can see mom arriving and entering the school. At 7:30 in the tape, mom and daughter exit the school and get into mom’s car, parked in clear view of the camera. At 8:01, just as they are about to drive off, dad runs in from the left and stands directly in front of the car. The footage is grainy, but there does not appear to be anything that might be interpreted as a threat.

Josh claims that mom nudges him with the car, but it is not readily apparent on the video. Then, at 9:35 in the tape, the car lunges forward, pushing dad back about 20 feet, at which point he loses his footing and falls to his knees.

Mom stops the car, and he gets up again. He leans over the hood and holds the windshield wipers at their bases, so he can lie on the hood and avoid being run over if she drives forward again. Another period of inactivity follows.

At 12:47 of the tape, a police car drives up, an officer emerges, Josh raises his hands in the surrender position, and the officer cuffs him. According to Josh, the officer approached him with a drawn Taser, screaming, “Get off the car, get off the car, get off the car!” But within a minute or two, after listening to his story, the officer is prepared to release him.

Then, at 14:20 of the tape, another police vehicle pulls up within view of the camera. According to Josh, the Chief of Police emerges, refuses to listen to him tell his side of the story, and insists that Josh be arrested for disorderly conduct. Shortly thereafter, the available tape ends. According to Josh, he was cuffed again and spent the next six hours in jail.

Subsequently, mom filed for a no-contact restraining order, which was granted–even though the judge viewed the videotape and, according to Josh, mom testified that no physical or emotional abuse had ever occurred between the parties. The Oelwein Police Department has not filed charges against the mother, who is apparently guilty of assault with a deadly weapon. The district attorney likewise has refused to prosecute the mother.

According to Josh, he is limited to supervised visitation with ALL his children until April 1…Read more here.

Ned Holstein, MD, MS
Founder and Chair of the Board

 

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