Divorced dads fight back. (seek fairness in child support payments)

Tired of being called deadbeats, divorced fathers are battling for their rights--and challenging child-support laws they say are unfair. But as the war heats up, kids will get caught in the cross fire.

Jim Pascale, 44, of Robbinsville, NJ, is actively involved in raising his 12-year-old son and 10-year-old twin daughters. There's nothing unusual about that, not to him, and he doesn't want any special credit for it. But his point, he says, is that he isn't any less involved with his kids than he was before he was divorced in 1992.

"When my ex-wife and I were together, I probably changed as many diapers as she did, and I was part of the preschool car pool," Pascale explains. "Now, I'm divorced from my ex-wife, but not from my children. She and I made it clear from the start that we both wanted to be participants in our kids' lives. I didn't want to be one of these every-other-weekend fathers." Indeed, Pascale has a custody arrangement that many divorced dads would envy: His children are with him Wednesday through Saturday, or, simply put, fifty percent of the time.

So why did he go to court to try to change New Jersey's divorce laws? It wasn't lack of time with his kids that bothered him, but what he sees as inequitable child support. Pascale makes $77,000 a year as an administrator in Princeton Township and he feeds and houses his kids when they're with him. Despite that, he has to pay his ex-wife $14,000 a year in child-support--the same amount he'd have to pay if his kids never stayed with him at all. On top of that, he owes taxes on the $14,000-even through his ex-wife doesn't. And he pays $2,000 a year for his children's Hebrew-school tuition and a few hundred more for any portion of the kids' doctor bills not covered by insurance. The result is that although his ex-wife makes only $52,000 working for a local biotechnology company, he ends up with less money than she does to spend on himself and the kids.

Even so, Pascale wants it clear that he doesn't feel strapped for cash. ills wife bought him out and lives in their former house, but he's been able to buy himself a new four-bedroom house and is engaged to be remarried. What bothers him is the principle at stake: When his kids are with him, and he takes them clothes shopping or springs for other extras, he feels he's technically paying for them twice.

Pascale took his case for adjusted child support all the way to the state supreme court. Last summer, it ruled against him. Even so, his arguments made an impact. A state commission reviewing child-support guidelines proposed new rules (based on housing costs) to reduce child- support payments for fathers whose kids stay with them more than 28 percent of the time. If approved by the courts, those recommendations could be in effect by this fall.

Pascale is pleased about the prospect of more equitable payments, but he envisions even more sweeping changes. "If I could write tire law, it would be very different," he says. "Certainly, since I make more money than my ex-wife, I understand that I should contribute more. But if parents have the same income and spend the same amount of time with the children, it should be a no-brainer. There should be no child support at all."

ABOLISHING CHILD SUPPORT MIGHT SEEM radical, but it's just one of the changes that a growing number of divorced dads across the nation are pushing for. The divorced fathers' revolt is a backlash against the widespread outcry in recent years over "deadbeat dads." They've had enough of politicians calling for nationwide crackdowns, of being stereotyped as scofflaws who won't support their kids unless they' re threatened with jail or revocation of their drivers' licenses.

Many divorced fathers say they've gotten bad press and few have bothered to hear their side. In their view, they've been reduced from parents to mere paychecks. They feel persecuted by laws they say turn over their earnings to their ex-wives, without concern for how they'll pay their bills, or whether they can afford apartments big enough to accommodate their children's overnight stays. They're outraged by courts that force them to make payments--even if their ex-wives won't let them see the kids or have any say in their upbringing--and make no attempt to check whether the ex-wives really use the money for the children's needs. They're bitter about laws burdening them with financial obligations that married fathers aren't legally required to take on, such as college tuition.

Divorced dads around the country are organizing into groups with names like Fathers for Equal Rights and the American Fathers Coalition. And in just a few years, their lobbying efforts have resulted in some startling victories:

* In 35 states--with more considering signing on--fathers can now reduce their child-support payments if their children live with them a certain number of days a year--usually it's at least 100. In Washington State, a father whose child lives with him for half the year won't pay any child support at all if the incomes of both parents are relatively equal.

* In Texas, new laws reduce fathers' support payments by basing them on income after taxes and give further discounts to men who've started second families.

* Instead of assigning a slice of a father's gross income to the mother, four states allow--and at least a dozen more states are considering- -a father to set aside a certain amount of money to support himself (based on housing costs and whatever else a state decides is relevant), with child support assessed against whatever money is left over.

* In Pennsylvania, the state supreme court overturned a law that made divorced parents pay for their children's college education. Other states, including New Jersey, may follow.

Fathers rights' activists see this as just the beginning. Some want to do away with all standardized child-support guidelines and compel moms to justify whatever amounts they seek, even submitting receipts periodically to prove that they're actually spending the money on the kids. Others want to put limits on a custodial mom's power to make decisions about major expenditures, requiring her, for example, to get her ex-husband's approval before choosing a child's school or doctor. Some want to do away with child support altogether, or make it voluntary. "A serious review of the whole child-support system is taking place," says Tacoma-based fathers' rights activist Bill Warrington, himself the divorced father of two as well as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Child and Family Welfare. "It's exciting."

Many divorced mothers use a different word: outrageous. "They're chipping away at the laws that obligate fathers to pay child support," says Sally Goldfarb, J.D., associate professor of family law at Rutgers Law School in Camden, NJ, and at just the point where progress is finally being made in terms of tougher penalties for nonpayment. Moms feel they're not getting enough support as it is--either because dads won't pay what they owe or because the amounts don't adequately cover the cost of housing, feeding, and clothing the children they take care of most of the time. Especially incensed are ex-wives who gave up careers to raise their children and wanted no part of a divorce, but whose husbands walked out because it suited them alone.

Judging by the statistics, it would look as though moms have a pretty gOod case. In 1991, almost five million fathers who paid support were ordered, on average, to pay a little more than $3,000 a year to help support their children, which is about 7 percent of their incomes. Even at that, only about half manage to make their payments in full; another quarter don't pay any of it at all. Studies show that divorced moms earn salaries that are 40 to 50 percent lower than their ex-husbands' , and that their standards of living decline after a divorce, while their exes' go up.

However, fathers' groups charge that such long-accepted statistics are flawed. For more than a decade, women cited research showing that a woman's standard of living decreased by 73 percent in the first year after divorce, while a man's went up an average of 42 percent. A new analysis of the same research asserts that a woman takes only a 27 percent hit, and a man's increase is only 10 percent. What's more, 9 percent of dads experience a standard of living drop of 73 percent.

Statistics can be misleading in other ways, too, fathers' groups say, because across the nation there are drastic differences in how much support fathers are expected to pay, how the amount is calculated, and what expenses fathers are required to cover. A divorced father in Texas, for example, turns over 20 percent of his after-tax pay to support a child from a first marriage. One in Massachusetts pays twice as much, since that state demands that a father pay at least 27 percent of his income before taxes.

IT'S MORE THAN JUST A MATTER OF CASH flow, though; it's the principle that dads are disgruntled about. "Society doesn't value fatherhood, " charges George Rosch, a Springfield, MA, psychologist and the father of a 10-year-old daughter he sees on weekends. "If you had a situation where mothers were expected to pay money and just visit their kids once in awhile, you'd have an outcry, and rightfully so."

Fathers also want more accountability over how their child-support dollars are spent. David Shelton of Fathers for Equal Rights in Dallas would go so far as to press for a system in which a mother, instead of receiving a child-support check, would use a special credit card for child-related expenses; an itemized bill would then be sent to the father. "Right now, there's no accountability," he explains. " We want to hold the parent who receives support to a higher standard."

But, critics argue, such an approach is utterly impractical. "Fathers who say that every penny of support should go to the child and that none of it should benefit the mother who has custody are just not being realistic," says American University Law Professor Nancy Polikoff, former head of custody and support law for the Women's Legal Defense Fund. "It's impossible to separate things that way. If the father is paying so that the child can live in a nice, safe neighborhood, the mother is going to live there too. And the minivan that the mother uses to take the kids to school isn't going to magically turn into an old clunker the second she drops them off. If the kids are eating steak, we shouldn't make her eat dog food." Some argue that divorced dads hide behind mathematical calculations in court to mask what is really vindictiveness. "Many fathers just don't want to see a penny of their money benefit the ex-spouses," explains Goldfarb.

But to many fathers' rights advocates, having more say in their fragmented families is the issue. They want more time with their kids--and if they get it, they figure they shouldn't have to pay as much support. In California, for example, State Senator Charles Calderon, a divorced dad, eventually hopes to get his state to go back to a presumption of joint custody in divorce cases. "Courts tend to favor the mother, " he says. "All things being equal, fathers are just as capable of raising children as mothers are. Men in the baby-boomer generation are much more committed to being fathers than our predecessors were- -you've got diaper-changing tables in men's rooms now." The ideal, he argues, would be for a child to spend an equal amount of time with both father and mother. And in such cases, "there might not be any child support."

Reducing or eliminating support because fathers get more time with the kids is a solution that many mothers vehemently oppose. For one thing, just as men complain about the expense of setting up a second household, divorced moms bear those expenses, too, whether the kids are with her for the entire week or just half of it. "Men's argument, `Just let me spend more time with my kid, and you won't need as much child support' just doesn't fly," says Polikoff. "The mother's costs aren't going to go down, except perhaps for food. She's still got to keep the whole house heated or the car maintained whether or not the child is there any particular week."

Plenty of mothers suspect their ex husbands' real motivation in arguing for more time with the kids has nothing to do with being a born-again parent and everything to do with simply wanting a better bottom line. "You have a family with an annual income of eighty-thousand dollars split into a sixty-thousand-a-year father and a twenty-thousand-a- year mother with custody," says Mary Ann Mason, professor of law and social welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. "The problem often comes when the father remarries. Suddenly, he's got two families, and he has difficulty supporting both of them on that sixty thousand. So he starts saying that having to pay child support isn't fair. Well, it was his choice to remarry and start a second family. He shouldn' t be able to take it out of the hide of the family he had first."

PERHAPS THE ONLY WAY TO QUELL THE divorced-dad revolt is for both parents to put aside the angry rhetoric and find ways to look at what is in the best interests of the kids. When Pittsburgh residents Kathryn Gibson and her husband, Roger, split up ten years ago, for example, they fought with typical ferocity over custody and money. He was a financial planner, and she, a former music teacher who'd helped put him through school and then set aside her own career for six years to care for their two young children, was concerned about making ends meet when she resumed her career. As a result, "It was the most bitter divorce you could imagine," she recalls. "I fought hard, and my lawyer pounded him in court."

But even though Kathryn won $2,000 per month in child support, the pain lingered for several years. "I had been seeing a therapist," she recalls. "One day, he told me, `Your heart is hard from all this fighting over money. Until you can let go of this stuff, you're not going to be happy.'" Her former husband was weary of the strife too. Gradually, with help from a counselor, they were able to focus on what would be best for their kids. The monthly payment was reduced, and they worked out an arrangement that gave him some economic relief, but still protected her and the children: For every two-dollar increase in her income, he was allowed to decrease his support payments by one dollar. In turn, when she was out of work for a time because of corporate downsizing, she didn't have to go to court to get him to pick up more of the children's expenses.

Today, they get along well enough that she recently welcomed him and the woman he's dating to their son's tenth birthday party, and he invited her to use his cottage in Maine for a week's vacation with the kids. While they don't have a totally stress-free relationship, child-support money is no longer an explosive issue. Kathryn, who earned a master's degree after her divorce, now works as a therapist specializing in divorce and family issues. To her clients, who often come to her at the behest of frustrated family court judges, she preaches the value of compromise. "I tell them, `If you keep fighting, you' re going to end up spending your children's college educations on attorney fees.'" When each side gives a little, she advises, both are going to hurt. But that's better than a bitter, costly war that no one--especially the children--ever really wins.

RELATED ARTICLE: A DIVORCED DAD'S MONEY PIT?

Ed Cross, 44, of Chester Gap, VA: Divorced in 1989.

Custody of four children: Awarded to his wife.

Their house: He was bought out by his wife.

Occupation/yearly salary at the time: Electrical engineer with two graduate degrees; $49,000.

Child support he was ordered to pay: $21,600 a year (including medical insurance and medical bills for the children).

Result: His taxes rose by roughly $6,000 since he could no longer claim his children as dependents or reap the tax advantage of home ownership. With $11,400 a year left to live on, he had to pay rent for a place big enough to accommodate his children on weekends and during the summer, and pay for anything else he treated them to during that time. "I was two thousand dollars in the hole every month," he says. "I borrowed from my sister and my father. There were times I was on the brink of going to a homeless shelter."

In 1990, he was laid off and took on a series of temporary, lower- paying positions. He now works as a temporary consultant, with no benefits, for $66,000 a year. In 1992, his eldest son moved in with him, and his payments were reduced to $14,400.

What he owes in back payments: $20,000.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Hearst Corporation

Kiger, Patrick, Divorced dads fight back. (seek fairness in child support payments)., Vol. 223, Good Housekeeping, 09-01-1996, pp 72(4).

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