Men and Fathers: Get Your Justice
It’s no secret that men and fathers battling for equal rights face an uphill battle in a family court setting.
Lary Holland recognized this, but also saw more of a problem with family courts as a whole within the country.
So he started Get Your Justice Live, which originally was a podcast about the local laws and policies that he distributed to government employees.
“I was using the podcast as a form of psychological warfare, basically reminding these employees that their jobs were at risk for as long as they kept using policies that were harming families,” Holland said.
His podcast has evolved into an online interactive talk show that discusses the judiciary and government gone wrong.
“I don’t solely focus on family court anymore because one of the things I have noticed is that the politicians that are out there don’t want to listen to divorce reform that much because there is always a winning and losing party in a divorce so they don’t stand to benefit from supporting one side,” Holland said. “Now, the real purpose of the program is to educate citizens so they know what it is that they need to do to take action. We need to educate our voter base before we can expect to see real solid reforms.”
While the primary focus of Get Your Justice Live has changed, Holland still advocates for change in the family law arena.
The largest reform that would help the family court system would be to remove the majority of cases off the adversarial docket, according to Holland. That could be achieved in a couple different ways by using mediation or any of the other alternative dispute resolutions that are available.
“It has become a duel to the death in family courts, literally. People are killing each other over these family court cases,” he said. “So we need to implement a form of conflict resolution that doesn’t drive people crazy to the point of wanting to kill each other.”
The way child support is handled needs to be modified as well, according to Holland.
He would like to see family courts stop being so obsessed with money. Nearly all divorce cases involving children include a child support order.
“It seems to me that this is a system that doesn’t focus on the kids at all, but instead focuses on administrative processes to arrive parties at some type of monetary exchange that the courts benefit from,” Holland said.
For example, when a child support order is placed on someone (almost always the father) in the middle of a case (such as temporary support orders) then there is a situation where the father hasn’t been found guilty of anything or deemed to be an unfit parent, yet suddenly this man has to produce income for another household even before a case is settled.
This also encourages the recipient party to keep the case adversarial since that party is already being financially rewarded before the dispute is even settled.
Holland views child support as being similar to a conservatorship placed over a party without the party being found mentally incompetent to manage their own affairs.
So even before any determination has been made you are now being penalized as being a parent and having to basically pay money in order to have visitation,” Holland said. “This is similar to indentured servitude. I think a lot of fathers could identify with that.”
Even though family courts say these two issues (child support and visitation) are independent of each other, “when you don’t pay your child support you find yourself confined to a jail cell, which in my opinion truncates your parenting time,” he said.
The divorce lawyers for men at Cordell & Cordell handle many domestic litigation issues. Contact the Cordell and Cordell office nearest you or learn more information about divorce in general by visiting DadsDivorce.com.
