Laws:

By Sara Pitcher

Cordell & Cordell Noblesville, Indiana Divorce Lawyer

Incarceration may be grounds for modifying your child support obligation. Your modified child support obligation would likely be based on your actual income while you are incarcerated, including any funds available to you for paying support.

The Indiana Supreme Court case of Lambert v. Lambert stated that the father's pre-incarceration income could not be imputed to him for the purposes of calculating his child support obligation for the period of time during which he was to be incarcerated.

With men representing 97% of alimony payors, alimony reform has become a key mens rights issue.

States such as Massachusetts have already enacted sweeping alimony reform, while others, including New Jersey, are in the preliminary stages of updated archaic alimony laws.

Republican Assemblyman Sean Kean is one of the driving forces behind alimony reform in New Jersey. His resolution calling for the creation of a similar commission to study the state's alimony laws has gained momentum, according to the New York Times.

Assemblyman Kean talked to MensRights.com editor Matt Allen about New Jersey alimony reform and why protecting mens rights is so desperately needed.

All children need two parents in their lives even if their parents are divorced. This concept of the importance of shared parenting is not lost on Washington State Sen. Jim Kastama, who is known as the Washington Legislature’s leading advocate for shared parenting and recently announced he is running for Washington's Secretary of State.

He also was invited on stage at a Blue October concert in Seattle (watch the YouTube clip) drumming up support within the crowd to allow divorced dads more access to their children. You can learn more about Jim and his efforts for shared parenting by visiting the website JimKastama.com.

A bill in Utah would amend the state's child custody laws by adding an anti-discrimination clause to the custody statute.

Utah legislators have apparently realized the discrimination faced by men and fathers every day in family law courtrooms must stop and will now to need to make a law over something that should seem so obvious: you can't discriminate against someone based on gender.

One of the more visible issues challenging father's rights is that most men who are behind on child support are not unwilling to pay; they are unable to pay. And yet courts across the country continue to jail fathers for their inability to pay.

The article "Child Support: The 'Deadbeat Dad' Predicament" examined the issue of jailing "deadbeat dads," but this article looks at a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that addressed a landmark child support case.

In Turner v. Rogers, the South Carolina family court ordered petitioner Michael Turner to pay $51.73 a week to respondent Rogers. Mr. Turner, unemployed and financially strapped, was held in contempt of court five times for failure to pay. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail for the first four failures to pay. He ultimately paid what he owed.

For the fifth offense, Mr. Turner was sentenced to 6 months in the County Jail. He completed this, but was brought back to court again for support arrearages in the amount of $5,728.76. Neither party was afforded an attorney. The judge found Turner to be in willful contempt and sentenced him to 12 months in State Prison, but made no finding on Mr. Turner's ability to pay.

Marriage does not define a father's rights. Unwed fathers have rights, too; they just need to exercise those rights.

Recent news about Utah fathers rights indicated the state has made the process easier for fathers to exercise their rights. This has brought to light the fact that unwed fathers in other states still experience difficulty in protecting their rights. Other steps are required in addition to fathers filing with the state's putative father registry.

After establishing, enforcing, and collecting child support orders for several years before joining Cordell & Cordell, I have gotten to know the ins and outs of the child support system very well.

I have also heard probably every excuse under the sun for not paying or not wanting to pay child support, and the stark reality is the vast majority of men do not receive much sympathy from the court.

While there may be room for discretion or leeway in certain cases, it is a pretty narrow issue involving statutory guidelines, percentages, and a handful of formulas.

In my experience, the family court commissioners and judges will stay very close to those guidelines unless there is a very compelling reason to deviate. Each state has a strong interest in ensuring that the needs of all children born and living here are met. As a matter of law and public policy, the court upholds those principles.

The Florida alimony reform movement is gaining national attention. News anchor Anderson Cooper's daytime talk show "Anderson" will highlight alimony problems facing men in Florida and across the country in an upcoming episode.

Florida's leading reform group, Florida Alimony Reform, says with no guidelines in the current Florida alimony laws, awards often last until death, and payments can be more than 70 percent of a payer's income. Permanent alimony is often awarded to alcoholics, criminals, and to women who commit adultery and leave their husbands.

Alan Frisher, a divorce financial analyst and co-director of Florida Alimony Reform, told a Florida TV station that the state's antiquated alimony laws are "causing people to go into bankruptcy, to fight a system where the only solution is to either pay or be incarcerated."

A previous men's rights article discussed a lawsuit filed on behalf of fathers rights after a welfare agency placed children in foster care rather than let them live with their fathers.

Both dads were active, involved fathers who shared child custody with the children's mother. They argued their children should have immediately been sent to live with them after they were removed from their mothers' care because of neglect.

Judith Sandalow, executive director of the Children's Law Center, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the dads whose rights were ignored.

Sandalow (pictured) discussed the lawsuit and the work being done at Children's Law Center with MensRights.com editor Matt Allen.

With the recent filing of two proposed bills, Florida politicians are spearheading efforts to move alimony reform forward within a state widely believed to be among the worst toward men when it comes to awarding spousal support.

Rep. Ritch Workman and Sen. Diaz de la Portilla have filed identical bills in the House and Senate, respectively, and will work to convince legislators that the state’s alimony laws are badly broken and need to be brought into the 21st century.

According to Florida Alimony Reform, the bills include provisions that will: