NEW CAMPAIGN: Pass SB 1082 to Help Military Noncustodial Parents!

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From Glenn Sacks
 NEW CAMPAIGN: Pass SB 1082 to Help Military Noncustodial Parents!

April 11, 2005

As many of you know, this evening we declared a new His Side listener campaign in support of SB 1082, a bill protecting the rights of military noncustodial parents. The bill soon goes to the California Senate Judiciary Committee and our goal is to give it a strong push. As I've written in various newspaper columns, because of the bureaucratic callousness of the child support system, called up military reservists can return from service overseas to find themselves hopelessly in arrears on child support or even facing jail. Others are taken advantage of in custody matters while they are deployed.

For example, many of you recall the story of Gary S., a San Diego-based US Navy SEAL, whose son was permanently moved out of the U.S. with the complicity of a California family court while he was deployed in Afghanistan after 9/11. Or of Bobby Sherrill, a divorced father of two who was held hostage in Iraq for five months during the first Gulf War, and was arrested the night he came back for falling behind on his child support while held captive.

The reservists/child support issue and the military parents/custody issue are a problem in practically every state and need to be addressed both at the state and federal levels.  Our hope is that a big win in California will help efforts in other states and in Washington DC. SB 1082 is a good start, and we strongly encourage people from all states to join our campaign.

SB 1082 requires family courts to take special measures to accommodate reservists who have suffered income drops upon being activated and who need downward modifications. Moreover, in cases where the child support is owed to the state for reimbursement of welfare or foster care costs, the bill provides a procedure which allows and encourages the state to offer a compromise which reflects the change in income during the period of active military service. This is important because the state is the obligee in a large percentage of California child support cases. SB 1082 will also help prevent deployed personnel from being taken advantage of in custody matters.  The Military Parents Alliance, in conjunction with many veterans' groups, is spearheading the bill.

To join our campaign, click here.

I want all of you to act. Our listeners and supporters--which one feminist critic dubbed "The Sackson Horde"--have worked miracles in the past. We drove "Boys are Stupid" products out of 3,500 stores worldwide--95% of their total distribution--last winter, and we made newspapers around the world doing it.

Last summer over 2,000 of our supporters bombarded Sacramento with calls and letters and helped kill SB 730, a bill which would have given custodial mothers the unlimited right to move our children whenever and wherever they want to. All the Sacramento experts said we would lose that campaign, and all the experts were wrong. In October we helped Michigan fatherhood activists defeat an anti-father billboard campaign in that state.

In November, over 2,000 of our supporters called or wrote Verizon to protest its father-mocking "Homework" commercial. Our efforts made newspapers all over North America and the Verizon ad stopped running shortly afterwards.

Join the campaign: http://militaryparents.org/take_action.php