Enforcement
Agencies fail to uphold orders for parent visits
Complaints take backseat to child support collection
By Kim Kozlowski and Gary Heinlein / The Detroit News
DETROIT — A few days before Mother’s Day this year, Wayne County Sheriff Robert Ficano organized an enhanced effort to crack down on deadbeat parents.
Over two days, police booted eight cars, arrested 49 people—nearly all fathers—and netted hundreds of calls on a special hotline.
Murray Davis, founder of the advocacy group Dads of Michigan, wrote to Ficano soon afterward, urging him to mark Father’s Day in a similar way by cracking down on mothers who violate parenting-time orders.
Ficano said he didn’t have the resources.
To divorced fathers, this confirmed what some call the dirty secret of divorce: Michigan Friend of the Court offices and agencies connected to them don’t hesitate to slap on penalties when enforcing child-support collection. But when it comes to parenting time, critics say, the court seems spineless.
“They drop the ball when it comes to visitation,” said Michael A. Hoffman, co-founder of the American Divorce Association for Men, a group of lawyers who work with divorcing fathers. “It is truly unfortunate that the Friend of the Court doesn’t accept its responsibility for the other side of the coin.”
Directors of Friend of the Court offices acknowledged that there are far fewer arrests or traditional enforcement measures resulting from visitation complaints than from child-support complaints. Laws are more specific and the issue more clear-cut regarding support than visitation, said Patricia Steele, director of Muskegon County’s Friend of the Court agency.
“We try to use different methods, and we try to get a compromise,” Steele said. “But that’s not to say every one of us has not seen the custodial parent carted off to jail because they weren’t following the parenting time order.”
There are a number of penalties available to help the court enforce child-support orders, including fines, jail time, seizure of property and interception of income tax refunds. The court has similar penalties available for enforcing parenting time.
In the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department, 27,983 bench warrants for Friend of the Court violations were active at the beginning of this year. Only 43 of them were for parenting-time violators; the remaining 27,940 were related to child-support violations.
Small numbers don’t mean the issue isn’t important. Studies have shown that children from divorced families are more likely to experiment with drugs and alcohol, engage in promiscuous behavior, have children out of wedlock, perform poorly in school and develop unhealthy relationships. Those risks increase when only one parent is actively involved in a child’s upbringing, leading many psychologist to conclude that children needs love and care from both parents.
“Children internalize their parent’s relationship with them,” said Michael Brock, a Wyandotte-based forensic psychologist. “If they don’t have (a relationship with one of the parents), they feel like somehow it is their fault or they are not worthy or are inherently bad.”
Those notions can lead to a poor self-image, depression and feelings of abandonment. Eventually, such ideas are likely to manifest themselves in future relationships and result in an inability to maintain a successful marriage, Brock said.
“Children can make a better adjustment if both parents are involved and both parents demonstrate they are important,” Brock said.
Ed Wacasey, a 40-year old Taylor father, said he hadn’t seen his two teenage children in two years until recently.
“It was impossible to get the court to intervene,” Wacasey said, adding that referees and mediators told him he needed to hire an attorney to get his situation resolved.
“If they’re the Friend of the Court, and they’re looking out for the best interests of my children, don’t you think it would be in their interest to see their father?”
You can reach Kim Kozlowski at (313) 222-2024 or kkozlowski@detnews.com.
