Post by RS Davis on Jun 16, 2004 18:53:30 GMT -5
Jailing Fathers Who Can't Afford Braces
(or why Charlottesville, Virginia is NOT the “Best Place to Live in America” for Divorced Fathers)
[glow=red,2,300]by Larry White[/glow]
On March 30, 2004, Frommer's Cities Ranked and Rated gave Charlottesville, Virginia the rating of “Best Place to Live in America.” But, as a divorced father who's gone through Charlottesville's “family court” system I know that Frommer's rating is a long way from the real truth.
By way of introduction, I am a fifty-one-year-old divorced father of five children and computer analyst living in Charlottesville, Virginia. My second oldest son, Daniel, is a former student at Tandem Friends School, a nationally acclaimed private Quaker school in Charlottesville. He was sentenced to eight years in prison August 2003 for his tragic involvement in drug-related crimes that occurred, sadly, less than six months after his graduation from high school.
This story is about my attempts to come to the aid of my troubled son, Daniel, in the months before his arrest. This is also the story of my experiences of being a father with a son in prison, interwoven with my own legal encounters with our “family court” system. More generally, this article is about the enormous legal obstacles facing hundreds of thousands of divorced fathers in our society today. These fathers who try to maintain close ties with their children post-divorce often face a legal system that routinely discriminates against them and damages their relationships with their children.[1]
I dedicate this article to my son Daniel, the thousands of divorced fathers who've already lost contact with their children through no fault of their own, and all the children of divorce.
On a personal note: it is impossible to convey the deep pain I continue to feel as a parent, knowing of my son's involvement in violent criminal acts, actions which run counter to every moral value I've ever tried to instill in my children.
Before Daniel's Arrest
My son Daniel was foremost in my mind as I was packing up my belongings and preparing to leave my job as a senior programmer analyst at the University of California, San Diego in April of 2002. It was during one of my earlier Sunday evening telephone conversations with Daniel that he told me of his plans to run away from his mother's home and drop out of high school his senior year to move into an abandoned house. [2]
I felt so powerless being almost twenty-six hundred miles away from my son. I remember saying to him over the phone: “Hold on just a few more weeks and I'll be back in Virginia with a place for you to live.” I thought at the time it was a blessing that I worked in the computer field as I figured I would quickly find a new job upon my arrival in Virginia.
Two years prior, I had moved away from Charlottesville and taken a computer job in San Diego, California in order to maintain the high child support payments that I have been ordered to make ever since my separation and divorce from my ex-spouse in October of 1992. The same Charlottesville court that ordered my high child support payments also refused to enforce its own visitation orders while I was living in California – leaving me with a sense of uncertainty and doubt as to my ability to see my kids whenever I came to Charlottesville for “visitation.”
The term “visitation” is legalese for the time the non-custodial parent spends with his/her children. It's a word that devalues and even debases the “other parent” and the time children spend living with that parent.
Back in Virginia
After I moved back to Virginia things calmed down for Daniel. He graduated from Tandem School in June of 2002 and forgot his idea about moving into an abandoned house. Eventually, he and his older brother moved into their own apartment in town and seemed to be doing very well.
The computer analyst job market in Charlottesville was unusually tight and difficult in the spring of 2002. And after much job hunting the only position I could find was a temporary job as a file clerk working for the UVA Health System.
However, the poor job market failed to dampen the joy I felt at the time. I was back in Virginia again with my kids and seeing them on a weekly basis. And my two oldest sons had jobs and were thriving in their new apartment. I remember how the three of us would go bowling together at Kegler's on Monday nights; Daniel would always beat us with his “three strikes in a row” maneuver. It couldn't get much better than this for a father who loves his kids.
Then the first dark cloud came across the sky.
Fictitious Imputed Income
I had earlier petitioned the Albemarle County Circuit Court, in Charlottesville, for a child support recalculation and reduction because I was still being forced to pay support payments to my ex-spouse for my twenty-year old son; payments that were supposed to end when he reached age eighteen.
But instead of reducing my payments, on September 24, 2002, Judge Paul M. Peatross increased them ordering me to pay support payments to my ex-spouse totaling roughly 81% of my monthly take-home pay! I was acting as my own lawyer at the time because I couldn't afford competent legal counsel. And I'm pretty sure this did not help my case.
When Peatross recalculated my support payments, he did not base his calculations upon my actual earnings from the job I held in Charlottesville at the time. Instead, he relied completely upon a fictitious “imputed” income, a figure derived from the earnings at my last job in San Diego, where the wages and the cost of living are much higher than Charlottesville. This fictitious income figure was 352% of the total gross income I earned for the 2003 tax year! [3]
A couple of months after the devastating Peatross support ruling, I traveled to San Diego to help my fiancée move her things out to Virginia so that we could be finally be together again and get married. It took us several days to pack everything…moving is always such a chore… and then finally it was all over and we were in the car together driving north up to LA, on our way back east to begin our new life in Virginia.
(or why Charlottesville, Virginia is NOT the “Best Place to Live in America” for Divorced Fathers)
[glow=red,2,300]by Larry White[/glow]
On March 30, 2004, Frommer's Cities Ranked and Rated gave Charlottesville, Virginia the rating of “Best Place to Live in America.” But, as a divorced father who's gone through Charlottesville's “family court” system I know that Frommer's rating is a long way from the real truth.
By way of introduction, I am a fifty-one-year-old divorced father of five children and computer analyst living in Charlottesville, Virginia. My second oldest son, Daniel, is a former student at Tandem Friends School, a nationally acclaimed private Quaker school in Charlottesville. He was sentenced to eight years in prison August 2003 for his tragic involvement in drug-related crimes that occurred, sadly, less than six months after his graduation from high school.
This story is about my attempts to come to the aid of my troubled son, Daniel, in the months before his arrest. This is also the story of my experiences of being a father with a son in prison, interwoven with my own legal encounters with our “family court” system. More generally, this article is about the enormous legal obstacles facing hundreds of thousands of divorced fathers in our society today. These fathers who try to maintain close ties with their children post-divorce often face a legal system that routinely discriminates against them and damages their relationships with their children.[1]
I dedicate this article to my son Daniel, the thousands of divorced fathers who've already lost contact with their children through no fault of their own, and all the children of divorce.
On a personal note: it is impossible to convey the deep pain I continue to feel as a parent, knowing of my son's involvement in violent criminal acts, actions which run counter to every moral value I've ever tried to instill in my children.
Before Daniel's Arrest
My son Daniel was foremost in my mind as I was packing up my belongings and preparing to leave my job as a senior programmer analyst at the University of California, San Diego in April of 2002. It was during one of my earlier Sunday evening telephone conversations with Daniel that he told me of his plans to run away from his mother's home and drop out of high school his senior year to move into an abandoned house. [2]
I felt so powerless being almost twenty-six hundred miles away from my son. I remember saying to him over the phone: “Hold on just a few more weeks and I'll be back in Virginia with a place for you to live.” I thought at the time it was a blessing that I worked in the computer field as I figured I would quickly find a new job upon my arrival in Virginia.
Two years prior, I had moved away from Charlottesville and taken a computer job in San Diego, California in order to maintain the high child support payments that I have been ordered to make ever since my separation and divorce from my ex-spouse in October of 1992. The same Charlottesville court that ordered my high child support payments also refused to enforce its own visitation orders while I was living in California – leaving me with a sense of uncertainty and doubt as to my ability to see my kids whenever I came to Charlottesville for “visitation.”
The term “visitation” is legalese for the time the non-custodial parent spends with his/her children. It's a word that devalues and even debases the “other parent” and the time children spend living with that parent.
Back in Virginia
After I moved back to Virginia things calmed down for Daniel. He graduated from Tandem School in June of 2002 and forgot his idea about moving into an abandoned house. Eventually, he and his older brother moved into their own apartment in town and seemed to be doing very well.
The computer analyst job market in Charlottesville was unusually tight and difficult in the spring of 2002. And after much job hunting the only position I could find was a temporary job as a file clerk working for the UVA Health System.
However, the poor job market failed to dampen the joy I felt at the time. I was back in Virginia again with my kids and seeing them on a weekly basis. And my two oldest sons had jobs and were thriving in their new apartment. I remember how the three of us would go bowling together at Kegler's on Monday nights; Daniel would always beat us with his “three strikes in a row” maneuver. It couldn't get much better than this for a father who loves his kids.
Then the first dark cloud came across the sky.
Fictitious Imputed Income
I had earlier petitioned the Albemarle County Circuit Court, in Charlottesville, for a child support recalculation and reduction because I was still being forced to pay support payments to my ex-spouse for my twenty-year old son; payments that were supposed to end when he reached age eighteen.
But instead of reducing my payments, on September 24, 2002, Judge Paul M. Peatross increased them ordering me to pay support payments to my ex-spouse totaling roughly 81% of my monthly take-home pay! I was acting as my own lawyer at the time because I couldn't afford competent legal counsel. And I'm pretty sure this did not help my case.
When Peatross recalculated my support payments, he did not base his calculations upon my actual earnings from the job I held in Charlottesville at the time. Instead, he relied completely upon a fictitious “imputed” income, a figure derived from the earnings at my last job in San Diego, where the wages and the cost of living are much higher than Charlottesville. This fictitious income figure was 352% of the total gross income I earned for the 2003 tax year! [3]
A couple of months after the devastating Peatross support ruling, I traveled to San Diego to help my fiancée move her things out to Virginia so that we could be finally be together again and get married. It took us several days to pack everything…moving is always such a chore… and then finally it was all over and we were in the car together driving north up to LA, on our way back east to begin our new life in Virginia.
