Lawrence KilliumIn today’s courts system, divorce courts are clearly stacked against men. One only has to look at the historical data to see that women are unfairly granted child custody about 85% of the time, and receive over 94% of all child support dollars paid. These battles can be vicious, full of conflict, and can rage for years.
In Canada, such a struggle has unfortunately ended in tragedy. Jeramey A. (the media isn’t using his full name since some of his children share it) was involved in a legal battle with between an ex-wife with two daughters, a former fiancée who has a young son, and his present wife.
According to Canadian news outlet, The National Post:
[Jeramey] unsuccessfully had applied for an order varying the amount of child and spousal support he had to pay his former wife, a total of $6,500 a month. She in turn was seeking he be found in contempt of another order and fined an additional $10,000; the judge adjourned those issues.
Another woman, with whom he’d been briefly engaged and fathered a son after his divorce, was seeking retroactive and ongoing child support for their son.
Both those applications were successful, bringing his total child and spousal debt to about $8,000 a month, but then, in fairness, that woman is herself a family court lawyer.
Early on the morning of March 9, Jeramey apparently rigged his truck so that when he drove down an embankment at the end of Page Road in Abbotsford, B.C., his neck would break.
In a scrawled and bloody suicide note found in the truck, he wrote: “FAMILY LAW NEEDS REFORM. I recommend mandated lower costs and less reward for false claims of abuse. Parental Alienation is devastating. I loved my children as much as a husband and father could. I see no light. Recommend; an authority consistent during high conflict separations: It is exploited in family law.
“Sorry Dad and Angie. I’m very sorry.”
This is devastating. This is a man that, because of how the law is structured, felt like he had nowhere else to go. He ended up declaring bankruptcy, and paid more than $330,000 in legal fees, according to his wife.
He was chased by family management agencies, and even had agencies moving to take away his driver’s licence and passport. His es was even supposed to get his pension.
On top of that, he hadn’t been able to see his daughters for almost a year, they had been completely separated from him.
Angela knew he was in despair, but weeps that she didn’t realize the depths of it. “I just didn’t know,” she sobbed on the phone. “If he could have seen those girls, he could have handled all this, the National Post reported.
“His bank accounts were locked, he lost his homes, his vehicle, his business. You emasculate a man and take away his ability to provide … he’s a human being. He has limits,” Angie said.
Hopefully we can learn from this tragedy, and bring the change we need into the court systems that push people to these lengths.
H/T: The National Post
