In an old movie called "Divorce American Style," Dick Van Dyke was telling a friend of his that, in his divorce, his wife got the car and he got the payments, his wife got the house and he got the payments, his wife got the children and he got the payments, and his wife got the gold mine and he got the shaft.

 

Men have, for a long time, believed that divorce court is unfairly tilted towards the wife and away from the husband, especially in the areas of property distribution, child custody and child support. The biggest complaint of divorced men is that the money they are required to send to support their children is too often used by the ex-wife for her own personal reasons rather than it being spent on the children.

 

Women, on the other hand, claim that getting their ex-husbands to pay their child support payments is often times harder than getting blood out of a turnip and that the court should punish the men who refuse to pay.

 

The ultimate question, of course, is why they refuse to pay. If they truly are deadbeat dads who care little or nothing about their children's welfare, then obviously the court should take action against them. But what if they're not paying because they're tired of seeing their child support payments go to their ex-wives instead of their children? Alimony is money paid to the wife. Child support is money that is supposed to be used to buy whatever their children need.

In most states, there are no arbiters to settle these differences. The wives insist the money is being spent on the children, the husbands insist the money is being spent on the wives.

 

There seems to be a fairly simple solution to this problem that would insure that any money the husband is required to pay his ex is used for what it was intended for. Obviously an alimony check goes directly to the wife and it's her decision as to how to spend that money. There have been few if any restrictions placed on how she spends it and that's probably the way it should be.

 

Child support is different. If child support is meant for the children, then that's where it should go. I believe all child support payments should go into a fund, administered by an objective and neutral arbiter, rather than going directly to the ex-spouse. Whenever the ex purchases things for the children, she would submit her sales receipt to the arbiter and the arbiter would decide which purchases would be covered by child support payments. The arbiter would then issue a check to the spouse only for the items deemed directly or indirectly related to child care and child support. This system may already be in place in some jurisdictions and, if it is, that's certainly a step in the right direction. But a few jurisdictions is not enough, it should be applied nationwide.

 

This would insure the money was being spent as it was designed to be spent. The spouse would no longer be able to use child support payments to add to their wardrobe, take trips or vacations, or do anything else with the money that didn't specifically aid the children for whom the money was intended in the first place.

 

This would obviously involve adding people to the payroll as child-support payment arbiters but I believe the cost of doing that would be more than offset by the costs incurred in tracking down, arresting, and incarcerating dads who aren't making their payments.

 

I also believe we would see a sharp decrease in the number of dads defined as "deadbeat dads" because they would be much more likely to make their payments if they categorically knew that the money was being spent on their children rather than their exes.

 

I've long believed the old adage that says the classic definition of insanity is to continue to do the same thing you've always done while expecting a different result. Our society has been mired in these child support payment wars for decades and nothing ever changes.

 

By developing a child support fund monitored by a neutral arbiter, neither the wife or the husband could object to the money being spent the way it was designed to be spent.

 

Then we could spend our time and resources  tracking down and apprehending the REAL deadbeat dads who deserve to be held accountable.