The Countess

'Tis The Season For Affairs

While most people associate the holiday season with festive cookies, gifts, decorated trees, lights, and family dinners, this is also the season to have affairs. According to PI Jack McEligot, the holidays can create more opportunities to cheat. There are "office parties, all-day shopping trips, or drinks with friends." A spouse who wants to cheat can go to a party and cut out early to see a lover without being noticed. A day of gift shopping can be made more fun with a little nooky at a hotel.

When you hire a PI to track your spouse if you suspect there's some hanky-panky going on, be prepared to take the bad news and not take it out on the PI. A PI interviewed for the article said that she was threatened by a client after she told him his wife was fooling around. She even caught them on tape. People sure can get crazy.

From The Deanna Troy School Of The Obvious

Getting fired or divorced sucks.

Like you needed a study to tell you that.

This Is Just Plain Sick

This girl was not "lost" in a poker game in Pakistan. Her father handed her over as a prize to his male relative since he viewed his own daughter as chattel to be handed over to her male relative when she matured. Plus, she's worth only $151.00. Her father paid the debt in cash last year, but her relative still wants her because of "tribal customs". So "tribal customs" permit incest? Sick, sick, sick.

Fighting Bans Against Cohabitation

Did you know that it's against the law to "live in sin" in North Dakota? Did you know that there are similar laws in Florida, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia?

Well, it's against the law in North Dakota, and a freshman Democrat is trying to get that old ban off the books. In North Dakota, "23,000 of the state's 642,000 residents are living together as opposite-sex partners." They are breaking a law that dates back to 1889. I'm interested in this because the Count and I lived together without being married for over a decade. We married a year and a half ago. There was no reason why we didn't marry. We were just lazy. Plus, his company gave health insurance to cohabiting couples, so there was no reason to marry for health insurance, which is one reason I understand some couples marry these days.

The media has covered the news that, for the first time, there are more women living without husbands than being married. One reason this is the case is that more couples are cohabiting. Marriage won't go away, and I certainly don't want to see it go away, but it's not the only family form out there these days. It's not even the most common family form out there. Cohabitation is on the rise, and laws like those in the states I've mentioned in this post are archaic, and they need to be abolished. Plus, gays and lesbians are beginning to get recognized regarding marriage in some states.

It's only a matter of time. Just think - years in the future, people won't even think twice about knowing that there are more ways to live as a family than heterosexual first marriage with children. Cohabiting couples, married gays and lesbians, and other family forms will be recognized for being just as valid as traditional marriage.

Marriage Rates For U. S. Women At All-Time Low

I knew that marriages rates for U. S. women were droping, but I have recently learned that "in 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000." More American women are living without a spouse than ever before.

White women are not the only ones affected. According to the news article, "marriage rates among black women remain low. Only about 30 percent of black women are living with a spouse, according to the Census Bureau, compared to about 49 percent of Latino women, 55 percent of non-Latino white women and more than 60 percent of Asian women."

The reasons? Women are waiting longer to marry. Women who divorce are not remarrying as quickly as their ex-husbands. Older women often end up outliving their spouses. Single and divorced women enjoy their freedom. They like the free time. They can travel. If they don't have children, they can spend more time with friends or take up other activities. Some of them are fortunate enough to be paid a sufficient wage at work so that they don't need a husband for financial support. They are choosier about the men they see, and are choosier about whom they marry. Some women are living with their partners rather than marrying them. Some jobs have partner medical benefits that don't require that couples be married to have health insurance. The Count and I had lived together for a very long time before we married. His former company was one that had partner benefits. We did not have to be married in order for me to be included on his health insurance plan.

I know that birth rates have been dropping in the U. S. for many years. The highest single-mother birth rates are for women in their twenties and thirties. It's interesting that marriage rates have also been dropping in the U. S. as well. Marriage rates for American women are now at an all-time low.

High-Quality Marriage Can Calm Women's Nerves

Look out for this new research to be purposefully misrepresented by marriage promoters in U. S. Marriage Initiatives in the U. S.

Under the header of "Tell Us Something We Don't Already Know," a researcher has found that "women under stress who hold their husbands' hands show signs of immediate relief, which can clearly be seen on their brain scans." Dr. James Coan, who authored the study, said that "This is the first study of the neurological reactions to human touch in a threatening situation, and the first study to measure how the brain facilitates the health-enhancing properties of close social relationships."

So, it isn't really the marriage that helps women. It's the quality of the relationship. If a woman holds the hand of a close and loving boyfriend or live-in partner, the researcher is likely to come up with the same effect. The couples in the study rated their marriages as highly satisfying. I can see this kind of research being misused by Marriage Initiative types who want to force marriage on the poor in lieu of public assistance.

Speaking of marriage, marriage rates for women are at an all-time low. More about that in the next post.

Long Work Hours Suck The Life Out Of Your Marriage And Destroy Your Sex Life

Under the "Tell Me Something I Don't Know" category is this new study that found that work hours in excess of seventy per week wreck havok on your sex life and your marriage. Executives tend to work those kinds of hours, so they should take heed.

Apparently, these long working hours in executive positions is called "the extreme job". I certainly would not like to work like that. What kind of life would that be?

People with extreme jobs don't hate their jobs. In fact, the opposite is the case. They love their jobs. They brag about their earnings, their long hours, their work, and all the travel they have to do. The problem is that their families are suffering. Their sexual relationship with their spouses is in the toilet.

Harvard Business Review published the study. Those who work in extreme jobs consider a ten-hour work week a part-time job. What the hell kind of nonsense is that? It's not new, though. Work hours in general are longer now than they were decades ago. The forty hour work week is getting to be a thing of the past. Plus, there is little job security. I just read that DuPont has laid off a bunch of workers - just before Christmas. What a great present. I also suspect that those who work in extreme jobs aren't pulling in the kinds of benefits that jobholders have had in decades past. They don't take vacations or days off. They even go to work on days that they normally have off. These kinds of jobs also involve travel and "evening entertainment", which was not identified. As far as I know, that could be anything from mandatory meetings at restaurants to after-work seminars. If anyone reading this post can identify what is meant by "evening entertainment", please post in comments.

The article I link to described problems men and women in extreme jobs have, saying that "nearly half of men and women who took part in the international research project said their jobs "interfere with having a strong relationship with my spouse/partner." So much time is spent on the job that relationships with spouses and children suffer. This includes the sexual relationship. These extreme job workers are too tired for sex. That's not a good thing.

I'd rather see people scale back their working hours and enjoy their lives, but many jobs these days require longer hours and less time with families. I've always known that the workplace had never been family-friendly, but it seems to be getting worse.

Anyone reading in an extreme job, or just have ridiculous working hours? Do you enjoy your job? How is your family life faring? Care to discuss the issue in comments?

Media Distortions By Father's Rights Activists

I received a lot of e-mail from people telling me about Glenn Sacks's reaction to my Grand Forks Herald column Don't Force "Shared Parenting" On Children. My column was a response to misrepresentations Sacks and co-writer Mike McCormick had written about shared parenting.

As expected, Sacks responded with more misrepresentations. It's rather telling if you can't support your position with the truth. If you can only support your position with more misrepresentations, that doesn't say much for the validity of your position.

The National Network On Family Law Policy responded to Sacks's complaints about criticism of his and McCormick's column. Here it is, below.

Media Distortions by Fathers' Rights Advocates

Glenn Sacks has complained about recent responses to his and other fathers' rights advocates' comments about joint custody. In one of his columns of August 1, 2006, " Feminist Columnist Slams Glenn, ACFC Over North Dakota Shared Parenting Initiative," he attacks Trish Wilson's recent commentary with distortions and misrepresentations.

One has to wonder: if the facts have to be distorted to make your case, isn't that a clue that perhaps your conclusions are incorrect?

The joint custody advocates' primary claim is that men are not being treated equally as parents by the courts. But let's look at what that word "equality" actually means in the law, and not the propaganda and rhetoric.

"Equality before the law" means that persons who are in similar positions will be treated similarly. Thus, for example, if a father is a child's primary caregiver, that fact will be given the same weight as it would if a mother is a child's primary caregiver. And, for example, if a husband is a dependent homemaker spouse, he would be as entitled to alimony as a wife in the same position.

However, a contrived equality of outcome when persons come before the law in dissimilar positions would be tantamount to disparate treatment. It would require taking persons who were not equally situated and treating them differently in order to effect "equality." That's not what "equality under the law" means; in fact it's the anti-thesis of it.

Leaning on his erroneous premise of "equality," Sacks criticizes Wilson's point that "ninety percent of parents settle without the need for court intervention in deciding what form of custody is best for them and for their children." Sacks claims that her "statement is misleading because it implies genuine agreement between parents." Sacks writes that "such accords aren't made in a vacuum -- they're bargained in the shadow of the law. What happens in most cases is that fathers must agree to having a very limited role in their children's lives because they don't have the tens of thousands of dollars (or more) necessary to fight for shared parenting in family law proceedings which are heavily stacked against them."

But Sacks's position is specious. Not only are the fathers coming into court without a marital track record of having been equal carers of the children and household, but when it comes to litigation, it is the men who generally have greater access to funds to litigate, more time to litigate, and more sophistication and ability to network, hire lawyers, and make a case. And be this as it may, the reality is that most men simply don't want joint custody. They don't want it for the very same reasons they were not doing half or more of the housework and childcare when they were married. Their careers and habits don't suddenly alter merely because they are getting divorced. And that's why the vast majority leave "custody" where it de facto was during the marriage, changing as little as possible in their and their children's lives.

Sacks also criticizes Wilson's statement that "when dads make an issue of custody, they get some form of it more than half the time." This was the finding of every single state gender bias commission who looked at the issue (there were 40 of them.) Sacks pretends that Wilson's statement is based on one small study of 60 women, and purports to debunk that as nonrepresentative. But it wasn't. The reality simply is not debatable. Sacks also claims that the Massachusetts gender bias task force findings by lawyers and scholars have been discredited, based on speculations made by libertarian men's rights journalist Cathy Young in an opinion piece. But she did not get her facts right or conclusions correct then. Repeatedly citing to secondary opinion sources that were wrong to begin with is not tantamount to documentation. It doesn't matter how many times a claim is made, such distortions just do not gain veracity with repetition, any more than the children's game of telephone.

The reasons mothers more often end up with custody after divorce encompass all of the same reasons that mothers end up being the majority of child caregivers and homemakers while marriages are intact.

To the extent the factors moving this include bias, it's bias that's occurred long before anything that ever happens in connection with a divorce. In fact, that more men post divorce end up with far more custody time than they ever spent caregiving, homemaking, or with their children during their marriages attests to a divorce court bias that far and away favors fathers.

An Op-Ed On Domestic Violence And The Mack Case

FROM OUR READERS: A LOSS OF CONTROL: The warning signs for violence

Mack case can provide us clues

By SOL GOTHARD, JAY SILVERMAN and TASHA AMADOR

SPECIAL TO THE REVIEW-JOURNAL

The Darren Mack case shocked Nevada and the nation. Could anyone have predicted that this millionaire "Father of the Year" might allegedly attempt to murder Judge Charles Weller and brutally stab his wife, Charla, to death? (Mack is awaiting trial on the charges.) The answer is yes. Both of these tragedies were predictable and preventable.

Though many have stated there was no forewarning that Mack might be a "ticking time bomb" who could allegedly commit murder, the reality is there were many warning signs that were ignored. What huge red flag was missed in the Mack case? Domestic violence. This case has made national headlines, but it has been largely overlooked in the media that this is a domestic violence case. Failure to identify domestic violence in divorce cases is a critical nationwide problem in family courts that can endanger judges, the public's safety, and the abuser's partner and children. The shooting of Judge Weller shows this failure can be deadly. In order to prevent future tragedies, including attacks on the judiciary and others, policymakers should mandate the screening and identification of the well-known warning signs of abusers who pose a high risk for homicide.

The Mack case included many common warning signs of an abuser who poses a high risk to commit murder: access to guns; controlling behavior; his wife's expressed fear that he would kill her; and separation -- all of which are significant predictors of intimate partner murder, according to a 2003 study funded by the National Institute of Justice. Domestic violence murders are not typically crimes of sudden, unanticipated violence where an abuser "just snaps," but instead are often the culmination of a predictable pattern of escalating abuse and violence.

Darren Mack was accused of domestic violence by his wife. These charges shouldn't be surprising, as Mack's controlling behavior and abusive tactics during his divorce clearly indicate his actions followed a pattern common to domestic violence perpetrators. This escalating abuse, particularly after separation, can lead to homicide.

The most dangerous period for the families of violent abusers (and others) is the time following separation. Research shows that separation is a powerful trigger for homicide among abusers, who become enraged at losing control over their partners and children. Domestic violence perpetrators can be extremely dangerous after separation/divorce, as they often increase their violence to re-establish their control and dominance. The majority of domestic violence murders occur after separation.

We are not suggesting that all separated abusers will commit murder. However, a careful assessment should be conducted to determine which individuals pose a higher risk for lethality. The Mack case clearly illustrates that a thorough investigation by trained family violence experts should be mandated whenever domestic violence allegations are raised during a divorce. These investigations must include emphatically validated protocols to assess homicide risk, specifically designed for use with domestic violence perpetrators. A legal strategist Mack hired stated that Mack displayed "no propensity" for domestic violence, because he passed psychological testing with "flying colors." However, psychological tests are ineffective in screening for domestic violence or partner homicide risk because domestic violence is not rooted in mental illness -- most abusers are not mentally ill, so they often do well on such tests, and appear normal. Identification of a pattern of controlling and coercive behavior is the most effective method of assessment for domestic violence (a profile Mack fit exactly).

As seen in the Mack case, domestic violence perpetrators can also pose a danger to judges. Abusers accustomed to firm control of their partners can become enraged that a judge is now in charge, and their loss of control of the situation can lead to attacking third parties, including judges. (Judge Weller, now recovering from multiple gunshot wounds, presided over Mack's divorce case). In June 2006, in another domestic violence/divorce case, Jeffrey Phillips was accused of making a death threat to "put a bullet" through the head of Judge Peter Hurd, who had issued a domestic violence order against Phillips.

Innocent bystanders, including children, are also at risk of homicide and can get caught in the cross-fire when the predictable warning signs of lethality in domestic violence perpetrators are ignored. John Allen Muhammad, charged in the 2002 Washington, D.C., sniper shooting case (a murder spree that left 10 people dead), had a history of domestic violence and divorce. The sniper boasted, "Your children are not safe, anywhere, anytime." Reports state that after threatening to kill his estranged wife, Muhammad traveled to Washington, D.C., to hunt her down, and unable to find her, began shooting people.

In a 2003 domestic violence case, after his wife filed for divorce, Tacoma Police Chief David Brame fulfilled numerous death threats by shooting and killing his wife in a shopping center parking lot, then killing himself. In another 2003 domestic violence murder/suicide case, William Hoffine, refusing to accept his divorce, ambushed, shot and killed his 14-year-old son in front of a grocery store as the boy jogged with his cross-country teammates.

Nevada U.S. Sen. Henry Reid has shown leadership in response to the Mack case by spearheading a federal bill to increase court security. However, much more needs to be done. To prevent future domestic violence-related tragedies, legislators should mandate the thorough investigation of domestic violence allegations in divorce cases as well as the identification of the common warning signs of violent abusers who present a higher homicide risk.

While many question how anyone could have predicted that Darren Mack might have committed murder, the answer lies in the words of Charla Mack: "He is out to get me and someday he will probably kill me." We need to start listening.

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Sol Gothard, a retired federal appeals court judge in Louisiana, is president of the Council for Family Court Reform. Tasha Amador is the group's vice president. Jay Silverman, an assistant professor at Harvard, is a psychologist and domestic violence researcher.

I Am Published In The Grand Forks Herald!

It's in the Grand Forks Herald, North Dakota, in response to a column that Glenn Sacks and Mike McCormick had written.

Posted on Sun, Jul. 30, 2006

VIEWPOINT: Don't force 'shared parenting' on children
By Trish Wilson

BOSTON - Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks have written a lot of misconceptions about shared parenting in their viewpoint, "Initiative helps children of divorce".

"Shared parenting" is a feel-good euphemism for joint physical custody. Shared parenting has been rejected in Maryland, Colorado, Tennessee, New York, Illinois, Nevada, California, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. A shared parenting bill has been shelved in Massachusetts; it is dead for the time being.

Custody should be determined on a case-by-case basis. One particular form of custody (such as shared parenting) should not be forced on parents when other forms of custody would be more appropriate for them and especially for their children.

Shared parenting already is an option for parents who choose to try it on their own. There does not need to be a presumption for it. Ninety percent of parents settle without the need for court intervention in deciding what form of custody is best for them and for their children.

Most parents do not choose shared parenting because they recognize how hard it would be on them and especially on their children. They also recognize that in most cases, the mother had been the primary caregiver of the children, and they believe she should continue in that capacity. That is why mothers most often get sole custody. It is not because of bias against dads in court.

When dads make an issue of custody, they get some form of it more than half the time.

Courts are not biased against fathers. Lynn Hecht Schafran found in "Gender Bias in Family Courts," published by the American Bar Association Family Advocate, that "despite the powerful stereotypes working against fathers, they are significantly more successful than is commonly believed. The Massachusetts (gender bias) task force, for example, reported that fathers get primary or joint custody in more than 70 percent of contested cases.

"The various gender bias commissions found that at the trial court level in contested custody cases, fathers won more than half the time." While shared parenting may work for parents who freely choose to try it, shared parenting has been shown to be detrimental to children who are exposed to conflict between their parents. When one parent wants shared parenting and the other doesn't, there will be conflict between those parents that shared parenting will not alleviate.

Shared parenting asks a lot of children. It is harmful to children who cannot handle the restrictive schedule. Many of them cannot handle the shunting back and forth between homes very well. They also must keep track of which home they are to be in on a given day, which is stressful for them.

They can lose track of their friends, and their extracurricular activities can suffer. They can miss birthday parties, sleepovers and evening school activities.

In the cases where shared parenting has worked, the families had these qualities in common: The parents had an amicable relationship, their divorce was amicable with little or no conflict, they had higher-than-average incomes, they had only one child, neither parent (especially the father) had remarried, they lived within close proximity of each other, they had flexible job schedules, the child could handle the shared parenting arrangement, the parents chose freely between themselves to try shared parenting - and they chose to make it work.

There should not be a presumption for shared parenting in North Dakota. It ignores the desires of most parents, who don't want shared parenting. It also ignores the contributions of the primary caregiving parent, most often the mother, and it ignores the needs of children. It ignores the child's development as the child ages.

Hopefully, North Dakota will reject a presumption for joint custody, as many states and countries have already done.

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Wilson is a member of the National Network On Family Law Policy and the Family Court Reform Coalition.