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Beaten and Drained

A father paying spousal support worries about feeding his children

By Hannah Scissons

Alaska Highway News http://www.canada.com/cityguides/fortstjohn/index.html

May 14, 2007)

The Family

The day his wife boxed his ears and fractured one of his eardrums is the day John finally realized he couldn’t overlook the abuse anymore.

His wife had slapped him before, hit him, yelled at him, given him black eyes, scratched off his skin and torn out his hair and bruised him so many times that he was running out of ways to explain the marks to his co-workers and friends – but John (whose name has been changed for this article because his story involves family court matters) had always believed his wife’s promises that she would stop and get help.

When John’s ears wouldn’t stop ringing at work the next day, in July 2005, he went to his family doctor in Fort St. John, initially falling back into the habit of lying about how it happened, even when the doctor asked, “Did someone hit you?” John denied it, but after a few more questions, he confessed. “I was hit, several times, both sides,” he told the doctor.

The next day, John finally called the police, who came and arrested his wife and removed her from the house. She was in violation of her probation order, issued after the only other time John called the police. That was less than a year earlier in Sept. 2004, when his wife repeatedly hit him even after he threatened to call 911. When the police came that time, John didn’t want to press charges but the Crown did automatically, as in all domestic abuse cases. His wife pled guilty and sought help. But things quickly deteriorated.

This time, John wasn’t going to let the abuse cycle continue. He eventually filed for full custody of the children and for a restraining order against his wife. However, his wife also filed for shared custody and for an increase in the $500 spousal support she was receiving through an interim court order – she had never worked in the course of their 14-year relationship.

They went to court in Fort St. John in late 2006, and the judge’s decision issued earlier this year floored John.

He was awarded sole custody of the two children, but ordered to pay $1,000 a month in support payments to his wife, plus back payments amounting to $13,000 – money to cover the time period since the police had removed her from the home.

The court was supposed to put the well-being of the children first, he had thought, and here he was being put in an almost unworkable situation where he could be ruined financially.

He already was paying $14,500 a year for day care. He had sole responsibility for the mortgage payments and bills for the house. And now he had to pay an additional $12,000 a year, plus the $13,000 in back payments, to his wife.

If the situation had been reversed with an abusive husband and victimized wife, would the court have issued the same judgment making the wife pay up, John wondered. And would people think it was fair?

“There seems to be a preconceived idea that regardless of the situation, the man will have every dime squeezed out of him and the woman has every opportunity to see the kids,” John said in an interview with the Alaska Highway News.

“When (the decision) came out, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It basically doomed (my children) to financial despair for as long as (my wife) chooses to not work and support herself. I was so disappointed in the system at that point. I just couldn’t believe it.”

The System

Even though he couldn’t comment on the specifics of John’s case, the judge did speak in an interview about how family courts work in general.

The judge uses the Spousal Maintenance Advisory Guidelines, developed by two professors and presented to the Canadian government in January 2005, when making spousal support decisions. Unlike the federal Child Support Guidelines – which were enacted in 1997 and must be consulted by law – it is not mandatory to consult the spousal guidelines, but they have been embraced by courts across Canada.

When a couple separates, decisions on spousal maintenance come down to four basic things: the length of the relationship, the nature of the relationship (who was the wage-earner and who cared for the children, for example), the financial needs of the party looking for maintenance, and the financial ability of the other party to pay.

“The conduct of one party towards another… is almost never a determining factor in the determination of support,” the judge said. “How a marriage ends, parliament has said quite regularly that conduct does not factor into it when (the court is) deciding such things as maintenance.”

In his written ruling on the case, the judge noted that any payments John made to his wife would reduce the resources available for the children, but found that John could afford to make the $1,000 payments he ordered. “It is (John’s) obligation and not the obligation of the community to support (his wife) if he is financially capable of doing so,” he wrote.

A family lawyer in Fort St. John contacted by the Alaska Highway News echoed the comments of the judge when asked about spousal support cases. He noted it’s not uncommon for men to complain they’ve been taken to the cleaners by their wives during a separation, but he didn’t think the system was sexist in that sense.

“It’s really based on the needs of whoever is receiving support and the ability to pay of the person giving it,” he said, asking for his name to be withheld because he was speaking without full knowledge of the specifics of the case.

If the wife does eventually get a job, the husband would be able to file to have his spousal support payments reduced – and he could also file to make the wife pay child support.

In John’s case, however, the issue of his wife and her ability to work is complicated by at least one important factor, a factor that is an integral part of the story of the abuse and separation.

The History

John and his wife lived together in a common-law relationship for 10 years before they were married in 2001. At that point, he said, it was like a switch flipped in her head and her treatment of John changed markedly.

The problems escalated when they decided to start a family and John’s wife got pregnant, and things got markedly worse after the birth of their first child in May 2003. As the judge described in his ruling on the case, John’s wife“developed what she describes as post partum depression. That illness ebbed and flowed until (the second child’s) birth in 2004 when it became much more serious and chronic.” John’s wife has been under the care of a psychiatrist since June 2004.

John still doesn’t know the specifics of her illness because his wife wouldn’t talk to him about it and her psychiatrist couldn’t talk to him about it, but it’s possible she was diagnosed with anxiety disorder and depression, he said. (When contacted by the Alaska Highway News, John’s wife declined to be interviewed.)

The judge refers to John’s wife’s “mental health issues” many times in his written ruling. They impact her ability to care for the children, her ability to understand what’s going on in court, and her ability to find a job, even though she said in court that her mental health had “improved.”

The other factor seriously affecting her ability to work is, of course, her criminal record – that, and the restraining orders against her from her husband and another person in the community whom she also allegedly assaulted, which she told the court precluded her from working in any customer service positions.

A Question of Priorities

The problem that John has with the court decision is that he interprets it as putting the well-being of his wife before the well-being of his children.

Sitting at his kitchen table with a pile of bills that he can’t pay because most of his pay cheque that month has gone to his wife, he questions the accepted wisdom that the family court’s biggest concern is the children. Even with his family helping him with the spousal support payments, John isn’t going to be able to afford RESPs, family vacations, or any of the other things he always wanted to provide for his children. His biggest concern now is keeping the house, because if he loses it, renting an apartment in Fort St. John would cost him more than his mortgage does now.

“I’m just trying to salvage some kind of financial future for my two innocent (children),” he said. “If family court is supposed to be for the children, why are they allowing this? Why can’t they look at the bigger picture? They say they’re for the children. I challenge that.”

John thinks that if his wife is indeed mentally ill, then it should be upon the public system to support her, rather than on him and his two children. He also challenged the judge’s accounting in the court decision, where the judge estimated John’s income to be $7,000 more than what John estimated.

But for the time being, John pays the $1,000 spousal support, plus $500 towards the arrears, every month, thanks to the help from his family. He’s working with a lawyer to keep the house, which he says will cost him all his retirement savings and half his pension. He’s trying to proceed with the divorce, even though he says his wife isn’t cooperating. And he’s gotten in touch with other fathers facing similar challenges.

Most of all, he wants to shed some light on a system that he thinks has managed to get its priorities in a knot.

“I’m very convinced now that there’s a major flaw in the system, where the men are automatically ruined financially.”

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