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Repeal
the Bradley Amendment |
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By
Phyllis Schlafly |
Feb 27,
2006 |
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When our supposedly
compassionate federal government pokes
its nose into areas that, under our
principle of federalism, should be
none of its business, the result is
often unintended consequences, gross
injustices, and of course massive
costs. |
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A prime example
is the 1986 federal Bradley Amendment,
which mandates that a child-support
debt cannot be retroactively reduced
or forgiven even if the debtor is
unemployed, hospitalized, in prison,
sent to war, dead, proved to not be
the father, never allowed to see his
children, or loses his job or suffers
a pay cut. |
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The result of
this incredibly rigid law is to impose
a punishment that makes it impossible
for any but the very rich to get out
from under a Bradley debt. Thousands
of fathers are sentenced to debtors'
prison (a medieval practice we thought
abolished in the United States centuries
ago), and thousands more have their
drivers license confiscated (making
it extraordinarily difficult to get
a job). |
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There is no requirement
that, if and when the Bradley debt
is paid, the money be spent on the
children, or that the debt be based
on an estimate of the child's needs,
or even that the so-called children
actually be children (some states
require the father to pay for college
tuition). The Bradley debt is misnamed
"child support"; it is a
court-imposed judgment to punish men
and extract money from them to support
some mothers and a $3 billion federal
and state bureaucracy. |
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Take the case
of Larry Souter as reported recently
in the Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press.
He was released after spending 13
years in prison after being wrongly
convicted of second-degree murder. |
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He was then summoned
to court to explain why he should
not be convicted of contempt for nonpayment
of his Bradley debt that kept rising
during his years in prison: $23,000
in back support plus interest and
penalties that raised the total to
$38,082.25. The ex-wife's attorney
argues that Souter should pay because
she "has endured the substantial
burden of raising her two children
without defendant's contribution of
child support." |
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Because the children
are now adults, this case proves that
the Bradley debt has nothing to do
with child support. It has to do with
court-ordered transfer payments from
which the state gets a cut. |
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This case is
not an anomaly. Clarence Brandley
spent 10 years in prison before he
was exonerated and released in 1990,
whereupon the state hit him with a
bill for nearly $50,000 in child support
debt that accumulated while in prison. |
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Many other cases prove that men cannot
escape the Bradley debt even if DNA
proves that they are not the father.
The law even forbids bankruptcy to alleviate
the Bradley debt. |
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Three years ago,
a Maine court ruled that Geoffrey
Fisher no longer had to pay child
support for a child that wasn't his.
But Maine nevertheless demands that
Fisher pay $11,450 in back child support
and Maine took away his drivers license
for failure to pay. |
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The Bradley debt
makes no allowance for the growing
problem of paternity fraud committed
by mothers, estimated by some to be
up to 30 percent of DNA-tested cases.
Our compassionate government demands
that a mother seeking welfare identify
the father of her child and, like
greedy lawyers, greedy women often
target the man with the deepest pockets. |
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A few states
have passed a recent law to end so-called
child support if DNA proves a man
is not the father, but that doesn't
get rid of the Bradley debt accrued
before DNA results came in. We haven't
heard of any women being prosecuted
for paternity fraud, and of course
the man who was cheated doesn't get
any refund. |
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There is no excuse
for Congress and state legislatures
allowing these injustices to continue.
Court-ordered child support should
not be final until DNA proves paternity. |
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Feminist defenders
of the Bradley Amendment claim that
the Bradley debtor could have reduced
his debt by going into court and challenging
the amount of support when his income
decreased. That argument is legalistic
cynicism taken to the extreme. |
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Most Bradley
debtors cannot afford a lawyer to
advise them about and to defend their
rights, yet they are up against government
or government-paid lawyers; the system
has built-in incentives to set the
support as high as possible because
collections bring bonuses to the state
bureaucracy; and, according to the
Los Angeles Times, roughly 70 percent
of fathers in Los Angeles County are
not present when the court (not biology)
rules on paternity and irreducible
monthly obligations are set in concrete. |
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President George
W. Bush's initiative to promote marriage
is a non-starter so long as the Bradley
Amendment exists. Who would marry
a man with a Bradley debt hanging
over his future? |
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Shakespeare famously
wrote, "The evil that men do
lives after them; the good is oft
interred with their bones." Since
the author of the Bradley Amendment,
former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J.,
is still alive, he should tell his
pals in the Senate to terminate his
evil law before any more injustices
take place. |
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Phyllis Schlafly is the President
and Founder of the Eagle Forum. |
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Copyright © 2006
Copley News Service |
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