The Juvenile Criminal Court has some significant differences from the adult Criminal Court. In juvenile cases there is an emphasis placed on protecting the privacy of a child. We don't publicize cases that involve juveniles. We are committed to keeping juvenile defendants anonymous by not releasing their cases and closing the doors to the public. The doors to the courtroom are closed to the public and few other than officers of the court and witnesses attend any portion of a juvenile trial. This privacy is understandable and serves the purpose of protecting the child. However, sometimes this emphasis on privacy works against the child. when the child is not afforded a public trial they are not afforded the protection of public scrutiny of the process to which they are subjected. This prevents them from having a jury. The right to a jury is a significant protection granted by the 7th Amendment and the Constitution of Alabama.

Juvenile defendants are also subjected to different procedures with regard to the bedrock principle of being viewed as "innocent until proven guilty." If a juvenile is taken into custody they are entitled to have a hearing within 72 hours to determine whether or not they pose a threat to themselves or others. However, bond is not set. They cannot bond out at any cost. They can be held indefinitely even though they have not been proven guilty. 

Juveniles are also denied other rights granted to adults under the Constitution. The purpose of this narrative is not to list every defect in the law but to acquaint the public with the risks that are present due to a hyper sensitivity to privacy even to the detriment of fundamental rights. Feel free to comment below. All comments will be reviewed for spam. Differing viewpoints are welcome, but only relevant posts will be allowed.

Child support in Alabama is based on income factored in with the needs of the child. The state has a table that you can input the amount of income each parent has, the number of children involved, along with how much is spent on health insurance and daycare the numbers are then plugged into a formula that spits out a number. That number is presumed to be the correct amount of child support to be ordered unless the court finds a reason to justify deviating from the guidelines. What is interesting about this approach is that it fails to focus on the needs of the child while at the same time promoting divorce.

The idea behind child support is that parents have an obligation to care for their children and the state has an interest in seeing that children are properly cared for so that the burden does not fall on the tax payer. If the central focus is making sure that a child's needs are met, then why is child support based on income? All kids need food, shelter, and clothing regardless of how much money their parents make. These expenses can be quantified into static terms. A cheese burger costs the same regardless of income. However, one parent may pay $300.00 per month for a single child while another pays $1500.00 for a single child, though both children are happy and normal. The only difference is the income of the parents. These orders don't serve the government interest of making sure that children don't go hungry. While it is true that parents should provide for their children and should be generous, should the government force parents to do more than meet their children's needs? Should the government decide what extras in excess of the child's needs should be bestowed on a child?

When I was 16 years old my parents refused to buy me a car. They told me that I was going to have to work, save money and purchase the vehicle on my own. They believed that if I worked for it I would appreciate it more. This was a parenting decision, not a money decision. How parents care for their children is a parenting decision. When orders are put in place that do more than provide for the maintenance of a child a parent's rights are being infringed upon. 

You may argue that the parents should provide all that they have to their children, and you may be right; but should the government force them to do so? If a parent fails to pay child support they are subject to the court's contempt powers - in other words they may go to jail. Should parents be sent to jail for failing to pay for extras for their children? This is a fundamental violation of rights in my opinion.

The child support guidelines mentioned above are also flawed in that in some instances they are not only unfair, they are impossible. The US Department of Health and Human Services recently released some interesting statistics. They have found that parents that are ordered to pay more than 15% to 20% of their income in child support usually fail to pay at all. The burden becomes so great that it engenders despondency and guarantees failure. In some circumstances under the current guidelines parents are expected to pay more than 30% of their income in child support. The guidelines fail to account for the living expenses of the paying parent, a fact also lamented by the Dept. of Health and Human Services.

Child support is not paid to children. It is paid to custodial parents, usually mothers. This coupled with the ease of obtaining a no fault divorce has resulted in 75% of all divorces being filed by women not men. Children are not better cared for under these circumstances as set forth in the blog below. There is now an incentive to filing a divorce. You can terminate your marriage and have your ex-spouse supplement your lifestyle through child support payments.

The desire to see that children are well provided for is a worthy desire, but child support has gotten out of hand. It has invited the state into our homes to make parenting decisions and has discourage two parent involvement in children's lives. The system should be reformed to meet the needs of children (its original intent) not to empower government or supplement lifestyles.

Our federal government has opened the door to make historically positive impacts on the lives of nearly half of our nation’s children – those whose parents are separated, divorced or never married.

 

The U.S. Office of Child Support Enforcement is to be commended for setting out to update 35-year-old rules with the expressed interest in better serving our children. That said, as they stand, the proposals fall short of making real positive impact for families locally in Alabama as well as families nationwide. I urge the office to revise the proposal in a way that focuses on encouraging parental involvement.Keep in mind that this issue is particularly pressing in Alabama, where we have the fourth-highest divorce rate in the country.

The office states that the proposals aim to improve child well-being, but the changes focus solely on improving child support collections – an effort that both hard data and commonsense agree is not the answer to positively affecting the well-being of children. Instead, the primary purpose of the changes should be to promote parent involvement in instances when parents are divorced, separated or never married. When both parents play an active role in a children’s life, the child’s likelihood of success drastically improves. Consider the facts:

 

·         Fathers who have little or no contact with their children following a divorce pay about one-third of their child support, while fathers who regularly spend time with their children pay at least 85 percent of their child support, according to “Child-Custody Adjudication: Judicial Functions in the Face of Indeterminacy” by Harvard Law School Professor Robert H. Mnookin.

 

·         About 30 percent of parents with sole custody report a one-year absence of child support payments, yet when shared parenting exists, a year without payments is non-existent, according to “Supporting children after divorce: The influence of custody on support levels and payments” by Center for Policy Research’s Jessica Pearson and Nancy Thoennes.

 

·         American Psychological Association published a University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center paper last year by Richard Warshak, titled “Social Science and Parenting Plans for Young Children: A Consensus Report,” that concluded “a broad consensus of accomplished researchers and practitioners agree that, in normal circumstances, the evidence supports shared residential arrangements for children under 4 years of age whose parents live apart from each other.” The paper was endorsed by an international group of 110 top experts in early child development.

 

·         At a time when a growing number of U.S. children live in single-parent homes, the Center for Disease Control, the Department of Justice and the Bureau of the Census report that these same children account for a majority of teen suicides, high school dropouts, children with substance abuse problems, youths in prison, teen pregnancies, and homeless and runaway children.


The Alabama Department of Human Resources website reports that: 

"Children from father-absent homes are five times more likely to live in poverty, 3 times more likely to fail in school, two to three times more likely to develop emotional and behavioral problems, and three times more likely to commit suicide.
...

The chief predictor of crime in a neighborhood is the percentage of homes without fathers. Up to 70 percent of adolescents charged with murder are from fatherless homes. Up to 70 percent of long-term prison inmates grew up in fatherless homes."

http://dhr.alabama.gov/services/Family_Assistance/Fatherhood_Facts.aspx

Rather than simply focus its efforts on child support enforcement, our federal government should take steps to protect shared parenting, where both parents are fully engaged in their children’s lives, which serves not only the child’s best interest in terms of what they most want and need, but it also is the most effective way to bolster child support collections.

 

What’s particularly alarming is that despite the overwhelming amount of research that shows shared parenting post-divorce is best, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, just 17 percent of children whose parents are not together have a shared parenting arrangement. What’s more, in many instances, sole custody is ordered over shared parenting even though both parents are fit and desire to play significant roles in their children’s lives.

 

The absence of shared parenting shows just how out of touch our family courts are with the best interests of children as well as the needs of modern families. And now, our nation’s child support enforcement authority is considering a proposal that overlooks the importance of allowing children the opportunity to experience a childhood filled with the constant presence of both parents.

 

Please join me in urging the Office of Child Support Enforcement to go beyond addressing child support as a symptom of the problem by taking on policy changes that protect a child’s right to the love and care of both parents.