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Fathers Battling Injustice
Harris's proposed Parental Responsibility Law
Posted By: Rennie Marshall
Date: Monday, 27 March 2000, at 10:16 a.m.
I am a mediator operating in the Peterborough - Toronto area. I am not currently doing family work but am considering branching out into that area and may contact you regarding that at some time in the future. I am not a lawyer. I have a background in both individual and systemic advocacy in a variety of areas. As I'm sure you have discovered, once you are involved in advocacy it never completely leaves your system. As a custodial parent with an excellent relationship with my ex where our daughter is concerned and as a spouse of a non-custodial parent who gets no infomation on his children until situations reach crisis proportions....I am writing to you in reference to Mike making "parents" financially responsible for damage etc. that their children cause.
I believe that this law presents serious potential ramifications for non-custodial dads who although they may be unaware of goings on the custodial home and in fact may be unable to obtain any information on their children, are often realistically the parent most finacially able to pay. Second spouses of ex-wives will likely argue that it should be the "father" not them who is held responsible under this law, even though they have more information and control of the day to day supervision of the children. The non-custodial parent has no control of whether there are weapons, supervision etc. in the custodial home yet under this law could find himself in court to determine his level of financial responsility.
Conversely, these issues (and the numerous potential court cases) create a window of opportunity for groups such as yours to act quickly (it is supposed to be passed by September) to advocate for fast and drastic changes to the divorce acts both federally and provincially in order to allow non-custodial dads access to information and involvement in the day to day lives of their children. No matter what is put in place in this act, someone , somewhere will eventually test the liability of non-custodial dads in court whether it is the injured party (or their representative) , the second husband or live-in, the ex-wife, or in the case of an ex-wife on welfare, the government (the list of potential plaintiffs is endless).
If there was ever a time for all groups advocating for increased rights for non-custodial dads to unite and mount a massive loby, this is it. There is such a short time-frame in this window of opportunity that a collective effort has great potential to be successful. Politcally, in Ontario the Harris Government will not want this bill derailed if they can save it by making reasonable changes to another. You have the ability to present a very good case that if this bill passes, there is a good chance that a non-custodial dad will eventually find himself in the court system and that this would be extremely unfair given the lack of access to information and a greater lack of control over what occurs in the custodial home.
Even if a collective effort is unsuccessful in achieving changes to the divorce act, groups like yours should certainly bring these issues to the forefront, in order to prevent non-custodial dads being held liable for situations beyond their control.
I hope that this information helps you to further your cause and if you have any questions you can contact me at (905)436-2211 or by email sally1@idirect.com.
I wish you well in all your efforts and hope that my bringing this to your attention is helpful to your cause.
Sincerely, Rennie Marshall
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