Broken family court system is a real problem
Violence, crime, abuse, poverty and more all stem from this issue
I wrote an Op-Ed last week that wasn’t published by the Albuquerque Journal or other papers. In it, I discussed a personal example of an issue that has been raised by others before me, a very real issue that is impacting our country’s children. The Journal did run a story about how I was making this a campaign issue, and it did include my article online, along with a shady quote from my Democrat opponent that it was not proper to use the AG’s position to address personal matters. Of course, this is days after he used his position to whine about the spat between President Trump and LeBron James.
Importantly, the Journal missed the real story. I tried to raise a very real issue impacting our country’s children using my own experience. The Journal ran a story but missed that this wasn’t about me, my family or a campaign. If you haven’t experienced it, or someone close to you hasn’t experienced it, you wouldn’t know anything about how our family court system works or, rather, how it doesn’t. But, after the outpouring of response from other families whose lives have been touched by this, who read something they are living, it’s important to get the real topics back out on the table.
However, the news media has not reported on this important issue, an unfortunate reality that many that have had their civil rights trampled by a broken Family Court system know to be the common rule for news media. The news media has not reported on the disproportionate impact on veterans in Family Court disputes. The news media has not reported on the rate of suicide of divorced fathers — 10 divorced men a day, a rate at least three times higher than that of divorced women. The news media has not reported that over $30 billion is spent annually on divorce and custody in the United States. The news media has not reported on the millions of dollars of federal money — Title I-V D of the Social Security Act — the states receive that incentivizes trapping more parents and more children in the system by treating one parent as second rate in order to force child support instead of giving each parent an equal opportunity to parent and to provide for the child. The news media has not reported on the disproportionate deprivation of fathers’ civil rights by the broken Family Court system.
But most concerning is that the news media has not reported about how this broken system is hurting our kids. There has yet to be any real reporting in New Mexico about how this broken system is affecting those things that make New Mexico last in child welfare. Issues that we all know are affected by broken families, such as: graduation rates, teen pregnancy, low reading scores, poverty, gun violence, gang crime, teen suicide and child abuse. One common data point with these issues, want to guess? Single-parent homes, absence of fathers. No, that’s not the only reason, but shouldn’t we question why it’s such a consistent one? We are systematically trampling our own citizens’ civil rights. It’s an issue that affects not just fathers or parents from heterosexual relationships, but all parents in the system.
The issue we need to talk about for the sake of our children is: Why should anyone have to ask to be treated equally in our justice system? Forget whether this candidate says this or that about protecting children and helping families or talks about a personal example. Let’s talk about the issue, let’s figure out a solution, because each of us has either had this negatively impact our own family or we know someone who has suffered in this broken system.