In this episode of the Just Pearly Things YouTube channel, I have a guest on the show today, who is a former child support worker. He talks about his career in the child support office and how he got into the business.
00:00:00.000what up guys welcome to the just pearly things youtube channel and welcome to the sit down today
00:00:05.120i have a special guest welcome to the show shaw so i invited shaw on the show today because um
00:00:12.940you were in my comments or maybe i saw your video i think you reacted to something of mine or
00:00:17.960whatever i uh i made a video where it was reacting to kind of whatever podcast and fresh and fit
00:00:24.160having a kind of beef and you commented on that video so that's how we kind of first got introduced
00:00:29.420I don't I don't remember exactly. But I just remember you said you worked at a child support
00:00:35.500office. Yeah, yeah, I worked at the Department of Child Support Services for five years. And that
00:00:41.640was here in Sacramento, California. And I was a child support officer. So I started off as a level
00:00:47.160one. And then I became a level two. And then after a little bit more, I got promoted to a level three
00:00:52.540and I became a trainer. So you know, at the agency, we're the guys who are starting, you know,
00:00:58.060lawsuits basically on the state's behalf in order to get child support to establish paternity i would
00:01:03.660do the cotton swabs and people's cheeks for the dna tests all that kind of fun stuff really so
00:01:09.980wait just uh so you would be the person that the the guy would go to the state and say this isn't
00:01:15.740my kid yes absolutely he would sue the state uh well usually when that happened we were suing him
00:01:21.660first right because usually you have a let's say you have a mom and you have a child and the child's
00:01:27.020born out of wedlock and nobody was at the hospital during this kid's birth. So we have no, I'll tell
00:01:32.560you later about declaration of paternity, voluntary declaration of paternity or no birth certificate
00:01:37.760signed by dad. And typically a lot of our cases were welfare cases. So mom and this kid, you know,
00:01:42.960go on welfare. Our agency gets a task from the welfare office and, you know, we do what we do
00:01:47.960and we send out a lawsuit. This guy gets served and we're like, hey, we're suing you to establish
00:01:52.320paternity and also a child support amount so we can send money home to this kid, basically.
00:01:57.020So they'd come in after they were served and say, hey, wait a minute, I'm not the dad.
00:02:01.380And, you know, I'd run them through the process then.
00:02:03.540And would you only would you take mostly cases like that or would it be a mix?
00:02:08.240You know, I think when I was last there, it was close to about 50 to 60 percent were welfare cases.
00:02:15.560So you got to one thing that people have to understand is the entire federal child support program is kind of inextricably linked with the welfare program.
00:02:23.260And it was really because of the rise in welfare cases that the entire child support program was created in the first place in 1975.
00:02:32.540So, you know, what you had basically after World War II, you know, a lot of guys died on the battlefield and they left widows and orphans, well, widows and their children.
00:02:40.480And somebody needed to take care of them.
00:02:43.120So at that time, the welfare program was created as an expansion of the Social Security program.
00:02:49.180So it became a Title IVA that gave us welfare.
00:02:52.440And it was mainly for these widows and their children.
00:02:55.000By the time the 70s were all around, they looked at the welfare caseload and the majority of them were not widows.
00:03:00.300The fathers were, in fact, still alive.
00:03:02.760And it was a problem because it was costing a lot of money.
00:03:05.380So Congress is like, what are we going to do about this?
00:03:07.600Kids are being born out of wedlock like never before.
00:03:14.380So they created child support as a kind of enforcement arm to go out there and recoup the tax dollars that were being expended as welfare.
00:03:23.000So in 1975, the child support program was born and states adopted that.
00:03:28.460Basically, if a state wants to have a welfare program, if they want to get federal welfare funds, they have to have a child support program at the same time.
00:03:36.060And those two kind of interplay with each other.
00:03:39.640So there's a carrot and stick approach there.
00:03:41.180So basically, the child support office and the welfare office are linked, is what you're saying?
00:03:47.240Yes, yes. I mean, child support policy is completely born out of welfare policy, basically.
00:03:53.420Because they figured out that all of these women on welfare had a dad that was still alive and that they could charge him, basically.
00:04:00.620Exactly, exactly. Around that time, there was a lot of debate over this.
00:04:04.040They were trying to figure out what to do because the data had come back and they're like, okay, these aren't widows with women who lost their husband.
00:04:10.960They're women having children out of wedlock.
00:04:13.040That's where you got the term welfare queen.
00:04:14.500So welfare queen and deadbeat dad started to become popular terms around this time.
00:04:19.140And there were some different ideas thrown about that time.
00:04:22.500There was one called the Sugarman proposal.
00:04:27.320I can't remember Sugarman's first name, but it was Sugarman and then I think Erwin Garfinkel.
00:04:30.860And they basically proposed, let's expand social security.
00:04:33.320And what we'll do is we'll basically charge everybody through their wages as an insurance
00:04:37.880if they become a non-custodial parent later.
00:04:39.980So they would expand social security. Everybody gets taxed a little bit more. And if someday in the future, somebody has a kid out of wedlock and that kid needs help, they would be able to tap into the social security fund. The government really didn't like that. Both sides were like, screw you. Let's go after the deadbeat dad. Okay. So they decided to then create the child support enforcement program. And when it started out, it was just for 4D. 4D is the social security. 4D is the child support federal program. It started out only working cases from the 4A program.
00:05:09.320So if the mom was on, well, if the child was on welfare, then the child, the public child support agency would only focus on those welfare cases. But I think it was in 84, if I remember correctly, that it started to expand, basically. And what the child support system started doing was advertising its services to non-welfare families, non-welfare moms. And the reasoning behind that, they were receiving more funding from the federal government.
00:05:34.220it was to say, you know, there are families right on the line here and they might be on welfare
00:05:38.200sooner. So if you can get them child support faster, it should hopefully keep them off of it.
00:05:42.520And I'm assuming it was a business, too, so they would make more money in some way the more women
00:05:47.460were on welfare or no? Well, that's an interesting question. I mean, you know, the way the funding
00:05:52.360works ultimately is based off of performance measures. So, you know, at that time, you had
00:05:57.160a lot of kids being born out of wedlock and paternity was was mostly established through
00:06:01.940marriage. So I think even California in like the late 1800s, part of the code was any issue of your
00:06:07.920wife, you are presumed to be the father. So there's something called presumption of paternity
00:06:12.840when it comes to marriage. That's a very specific legal term. And keep in mind, this has nothing to
00:06:17.480do with biological paternity. One thing that I want people to know is like genetic tests weren't
00:06:21.300a thing till the mid 90s. So you have years and years and years. It was that late. I didn't realize
00:06:26.680that was such a new invention. That's the thing. And genetic testing was like a nuclear bomb in
00:06:31.600this game you know what i mean because before that what you had you had blood tests i think in
00:06:35.960the 70s and 80s but blood tests were were better for excluding someone as the father so mom would
00:06:40.580say you know it might be this guy might be this guy might be this guy they would do blood tests
00:06:43.720it wouldn't exactly point who the dad was but it would say it's definitely not this person it's
00:06:47.240definitely not this person this guy's left it's probably him but we have years and years and years
00:06:51.680and years of case law that established paternity based off of a functional relationship with the
00:06:56.400child which is very different than a biological relationship with the child so when it comes to
00:07:01.080things like custody, this starts to be a problem because the functional relationship matters more
00:07:05.500in getting custody, where when it comes to child support, which is very specifically about getting
00:07:09.780welfare money back, biological paternity starts to be used. And it's more about saying, you're
00:07:14.140the dad, pay us. It's not about you're the dad, here, have a relationship with your child. So
00:07:18.920what I'm trying to explain to you is that there's this overall theme of private family law and
00:07:24.100public family law. And for the longest time in human history, private family law and public
00:07:29.320family law were were separated there was a barrier there you know most kids were born within a
00:07:34.400marriage it was i think in the 50s only five percent of children were born outside of marriage
00:07:38.460and you know if you guys were going to get divorced which honestly was also relatively
00:07:42.460rare back then especially with at-fault divorce you would go to you know a judge and a judge is
00:07:47.560going to make these decisions um paternity wasn't an issue first of all because genetic tests weren't
00:07:52.340really there to give definitive proof one way or another they did have paternity trials and those
00:07:56.560were very tough, but you were going to be seen by a judge and they were going to make those
00:08:00.960decisions. And the judges had the dexterity to make very specific decisions for your specific
00:08:05.640case. As the child support system began to expand, especially in the mid 90s, it got so powerful
00:08:11.900that it basically bullied its way into the private family law system. And that's why nowadays you have
00:08:17.680a lot of issues where men are struggling with this system because the public family law system
00:08:22.260will come in and it'll cause problems on the private side. And I know that's a lot I just
00:08:26.420threw at you. Could you explain more of the private versus public? So sure. Do you mean
00:08:31.780okay. Family child support separate from family court, like family court will decide how much
00:08:38.640child. I don't know if they decide at least in the UK from what I understand, like the people
00:08:42.860I've talked to here, the child, like you go to family court and then they, I don't know if the
00:08:48.000judge says how much you make but they'll decide if the guy is on child support or not and then they
00:08:53.260go to i can't remember the name of it but it's like a third party office is that sure um well i
00:08:58.560could tell you and how it works in the u.s specifically is you have your family law courts
00:09:02.780right and the family law courts basically envelope everything a family law court can decide on
00:09:08.120marriage divorce they can decide on paternity they can decide on child and spousal support
00:09:12.680division of assets all of these things okay and that's in california that's very specifically
00:09:17.300called family law. Then you have family support court. Family support court is the public child
00:09:22.980support system court, which is limited to only deciding on child support, child care and health
00:09:29.240insurance for the kid. And it's very specifically for that. Custody is firmly lodged in the private
00:09:34.160family law court where child support court has no bearing on that. Now, what's important to
00:09:40.740understand is that private family law court can determine child support amounts. But what will
00:09:47.600end up happening is, you know, a long time ago, that was more up to the judge. There was more
00:09:52.480dexterity. As the public family law system grew, he started to get these things called guidelines
00:09:57.260or guideline calculators. You know what I mean? So if dad thinks maybe this amount's appropriate,
00:10:02.560mom can appeal to the public family law guideline calculator and say, I want guidelines. So her
00:10:07.360attorney is going to be like, no, we want guidelines. Okay. Which is what the public
00:10:10.680family law calculator says that everybody is entitled to as a fair state sanctioned amount
00:10:15.660of a child support income based off of mom and dad's incomes in the custody parenting timeshare.
00:10:20.720So just to give a little bit more background on that, stop me if it's too much, but basically,
00:10:25.020you know, public family law is something that was essential to society, but it goes all the
00:10:29.540way back to like English common law and poor laws very specifically, you know, because you always
00:10:33.520had kids who maybe were born out of wedlock we didn't know who the dad was and you had people
00:10:38.080who were in poverty and basically needed help from society at large now typically when you had that
00:10:43.920happening society had laws that kind of infringe on a private citizen's rights because you are kind
00:10:49.680of you know being a burden to society so now government either has to come in there maybe
00:10:53.680they have to take the child put them in protective services maybe they have to give welfare all these
00:10:58.160kinds of things so there are very specific laws that that govern that you know and for the most
00:11:02.560part, that wasn't that big of a part of society until you started seeing more and more and more
00:11:07.820and more of these kids being born out of wedlock, you know, so that starts in the 60s. And by the
00:11:12.820time we get to, you know, I think 75, it was at about 25%, if I have my memory, right, and around
00:11:18.880now, it's at about 45%, you know, so a lot of these kids were availing, you know, these mothers
00:11:23.860with these children are availing themselves of the welfare, you know, public system, it's becoming a
00:11:28.680cost to the public. So they needed to expand the enforcement of the public family law system to
00:11:33.740get the men to pay for it in a way. It's kind of like getting men to pay for welfare. That's
00:11:38.160exactly what it is, because, I mean, you're trying to get the money to recoup the government
00:11:43.180treasury because they're they're expending that out to to the welfare. And, you know, there was a
00:11:48.560there was a big change in the mid 90s. Basically, what happened in the in the mid 90s was the
00:11:53.760program that was created, you know, way before was called AFDC, Aid to Families with Dependent
00:11:58.540Children. And in the mid-90s, that changed to TANF. That's Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
00:12:03.400And, you know, from 1975, the Child Support Office was created. And from the mid-90s,
00:12:08.220in this same bill that changed welfare, child support got beefed up. Okay. And I'm going to
00:12:12.800try to explain this as quickly as I can without going into a huge college lecture here. But
00:12:17.640basically what happened was, you know, people were getting mad, politicians were angry,
00:12:21.660and they were just like hey you know we're these people are living off of welfare their whole
00:12:26.520lives they're having more kids who then also live off welfare the problem is getting worse
00:12:31.120child support you know when it's created is still kind of in its infancy and it's not that efficient
00:12:37.020there's all these problems you know a guy might be in Tennessee one day and all of a sudden he's
00:12:41.540in California and it was just not very efficient and there was all that kind of grumbling in the
00:12:47.420air. And then in the mid 90s, during the Clinton administration, and even a little bit before that,
00:12:53.020I think they were they were debating how do we about welfare reform, basically, you know,
00:12:58.180people on both sides are trying to figure out what to do. And after a lot of debating,
00:13:02.540they finally create this bill, which is the the welfare reform of the mid 90s, also called
00:13:07.820Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act. So we call that Perora for
00:13:12.860short that was 96 but and are these prior just in california are these federal that's federal
00:13:18.060that's from congress okay yeah and what that law did is that it put time limits for welfare
00:13:23.900recipients who are adults so instead of a mom getting part of a grant for the entire you know
00:13:28.78018 years of her child's life she times out at two years but the child all the way up until they're
00:13:33.260they're 18 still gets that would put more of an incentive for women to get child support because
00:14:06.340So that's how you start getting this strong and independent woman propaganda coming at you, because you had these people kind of sandbagging society. Right. And how do we how do we get them off of this program? How do we make them useful and economically useful? And at the time it was, OK, we're going to beef up child support. And then we're also going to, you know, obviously women can do whatever, you know, anything a man can. Let's get these single moms working and get them off the child support so we could limit the tax dollars.
00:14:32.720But at the same time, there was a woman named Marilyn Ray Smith, and I think she was out of Delaware. She was a director of a child support agency. She was working closely with Congress and she went to speak with them a few times. And her whole thing was, was that, hey, we're having trouble enforcing child support against these guys. And she believed that the child support system should be as strong as the IRS tax system.
00:14:55.740so she went in there and she's like we want child support to be beefed up we want child support to
00:15:00.060be given teeth and power as much as the irs you know everybody knows the irs is not who you mess
00:15:05.580with you know so a big part of this welfare reform bill in the mid 90s perora was also child support
00:15:12.460reform and that's when child support really got its teeth and that's around the same time genetic
00:15:16.620testing started coming in so you had huge changes to this space legally have you ever heard of like
00:15:21.820gynocentrism.com you ever been on that site i think i've heard of the site i've heard of
00:15:26.140gynocentrism i don't know if i've been to the website personally but yeah go on this really
00:15:31.500smart guy's name is peter wright and he's like a historian and he studies gynocentrism he was
00:15:37.260telling me that the courts have been stacked against men from way before the 1900s like this
00:15:42.780isn't new because society will always have a more gynocentric leaning and there's like writings from
00:15:47.900the 1800s of a guy being in i don't know if it was family court back then or whatever it was
00:15:53.580but he was saying like the girl was an opera singer and he was mad because he still had to
00:15:57.660take care of her and so it was really it was rare but i've heard it was actually not as different as
00:16:04.940they everyone says it was so different back then and uh you know i i guess that's a great question
00:16:10.220that people are people i don't know i i know who peter wright is only from twitter i actually
00:16:14.540really like his his twitter posts and i see that uh really smart guy that he follows you yeah he's
00:16:19.660very smart guy i i like the stuff he posts because he'll go and dig up stuff from a long time ago and
00:16:24.700it and it really shows the grounding of all this stuff and i you know i if i remember correctly i
00:16:29.500think i i think he's he kind of goes deep into chivalry's impact and romantic love's impact on
00:16:35.580on the culture we have uh very specifically and you know i think there's a lot of merit to what
00:16:39.740he has to say but when i look at the legal landscape you know and i think he also talks
00:16:43.740about coventry laws and all these kinds of things a husband's always responsible for a woman even
00:16:47.820in her business dealings or whatever debts yeah all these kinds of things but you know we had at
00:16:53.180fault divorce and vastly different divorce laws going all the way up until 69 1969 when that
00:16:59.340started to be changed in the us at least and it's true i think it was always that way but men had
00:17:04.540more to gain from the deal than they do now you know right now it's more so you know just all of
00:17:09.820the financial responsibility with not a lot of the authority, basically none of the authority.
00:17:15.140And so, you know, he's right to go go back that far and and focus on that. But but at the same
00:17:22.060time, the laws were nowhere near as it's worse. I don't want to use the word oppressive, but you
00:17:27.440know, to what they are now, you know what I mean? So but basically, this girl came in and wanted it
00:17:32.880to be as strong as the IRS system. And so that Marilyn Ray Smith. And that was when because I
00:17:38.460think you can i have to look through my notes but i know you can lose they can take the money
00:17:43.340straight from your bank account i'm fairly sure yeah that's called the bank levy we had a whole
00:17:47.900team over here that focused on bank levies at the agency i worked at i'll basically tell you you
00:17:53.260know so and this was done in perora so she was you know lobbying congress all this stuff when the
00:17:58.700final bill came out it expanded um child support's reach so you can do a lot of things i mean first
00:18:05.500of all they created a national directory of new hires so that means you know a guy would be working
00:18:10.140here they'd send a wage assignment then he jumps dates now he's somewhere else we don't know when
00:18:14.540he if he's working somewhere else we don't know what to do we don't know how to get the money
00:18:17.820they would just leave so what they did is they created a national directory of new hires and
00:18:21.100every employer in the nation has to report as soon as they they hire somebody and it gets into this
00:18:25.980database me over at child support if i see a case that owes money and i don't have to look for this
00:18:31.660The system is going to blip this in. I'm going to get a task and it's going to say, you know, there's a new employment record. I'm going to look at that. I'm going to see this guy just started employment at this company. I'm going to call that company and I'm going to say, hey, I have a wage assignment. Start docking this guy's wages. And we also get the bank account information that the banks basically report to us. Also, they're required by law. It was the 1996 Perora Act that required financial institutions to provide information to us.
00:18:56.580So if we see that, what we do is if we have an arrears amount, we will send them a levy, you know, notice, and they will take the money from the account, basically. And it got the power of the child support system got so big that it's like, if you pop up anywhere on the grid, you know, we're going to see you. And a lot of people don't really understand how much access to data the child support system really has, you know, locating parents was a big thing, you know, and that's one of the things that Congress took into account.
00:19:23.180So it's like they created a federal parent locator service. This is something a child support officer would reference and they would whatever information they have on someone, they'll give it to us. I could take just somebody's phone number. You know, if the woman had a, you know, maybe a one night stand with the guy or something like that, she has his phone number. She doesn't know the guy's name. I can take that phone number and work backwards to get the guy's name, get his social security number, find out his addresses.
00:19:46.500And when I plug the social security number in, the whole system starts ramping up and I get all of this income information from, you know, however many years it's in there for past addresses, relatives, all these kinds of things, any licenses that they might have.
00:20:00.320And, you know, you can see all this stuff and you can use it, you know, as leverage to get these payments in there.
00:20:05.600Let me see. I can give you a list of stuff.
00:20:07.760So we have access to state and local tax and revenue records.
00:20:11.040We can see public utilities and television companies.
00:20:14.440that's since changed to internet service providers so they have to provide information to us if we
00:20:18.600ask them to we can see uh what financial institutions that are doing business in the
00:20:23.000state if you got an account with them any occupational and professional licenses so that's
00:20:27.000a big one um if someone's not paying child support like we'll go after their bar license we'll go
00:20:31.320after their general contractor's license we'll go after their fishing license their driver's license
00:20:35.720and we'll suspend all that can't even fish a man i know that one always kind of made me laugh i was
00:20:40.440was like a fishing license all right you know he's like let me just go off to the woods so i
00:20:47.460don't have to deal with any of these people yeah i mean yeah the the tentacles of the state are
00:20:53.420are very powerful and they they go everywhere so you know big data was a thing here so once all
00:20:59.860this stuff happened in the 90s then you know child support took off basically because now you had
00:21:05.260genetic tests so you didn't have to go through these lengthy paternity trials where you needed
00:21:09.520people to come out and be like, yeah, I saw them at the Christmas party. They were together. He
00:21:13.840bought the kid a gift on the birthday. Here's a birthday card that he did. It was just like,
00:21:18.220here's the genetic test, simple, fast, easy. You're the dad. Let's start charging. Now that's
00:21:23.020one thing, but the real problems come in when guys that aren't the biological dad get charged
00:21:28.240basically. And a lot of that has to do with the interplay between this new radical revolution of
00:21:36.240genetic testing in the mid 90s and all the case law and legal framework that we have for what
00:21:41.020constitutes paternity prior, which mostly has to do with a functional relationship. And what the
00:21:46.200state is most concerned about is, you know, you'll see this thing about like the best interest of
00:21:52.060the child. And it used, you know, prior to like at fault, when it was at fault divorce, they're
00:21:58.380looking for who committed faults in the breach of the marriage contract and whoever the injured
00:22:01.980party was that could be the wife that could be the husband the way the court was going to determine
00:22:06.720who gets what and how this how this ends more more would be given to the injured party see so
00:22:12.020after you got no fault a lot of these laws and stuff like that they look at it as what's in the
00:22:16.700best interest of the child you know what i mean and if you've been holding out to be the dad like
00:22:21.280let's say you're married you did everything right a presumption of paternity is there because that's
00:22:25.240how we established paternity before your wife issues of child the state sees you as the father
00:22:29.580The marriage ends, let's say the kid's five now, the marriage ended after seven years or something.
00:22:35.300There's pretty much nothing you can do to undo that.
00:22:38.660If you find out she's like, screw you, the divorce is contentious, I cheated on you with my old high school boyfriend, I never loved you, all the great stuff.
00:22:45.320You take a private genetic test and you're like, this isn't my kid.
00:22:48.120You want to undo that, you're not going to be able to.
00:22:50.660If you look at California Family Code, it specifically limits it to an inaction needing to be filed and served by the time the child's age two.
00:22:58.580So if the kids, you know, five at this time. Wait, wait. So if he doesn't get the paternity test before age two, he's on child support for life.
00:23:05.420Yeah. So the kid's emancipated. So if he does not file and serve her for a to contest paternity prior to the kid's second birthday, this is California specifically.
00:23:14.860Then then, yeah, that's that's that's the case. And that's the problem with the married guys, you know, and then you have the unmarried guys, which is a different thing.
00:23:21.680But, you know, these these trad cons and people like that are like, get married, get married, get married.
00:23:25.920but that's what comes in with that you know wait so okay so they they divorce at seven and he goes
00:23:32.760he he can't claim the kid is not his now or like the kid's seven so if he was married and that
00:23:38.660child was was um born within the marriage there's a presumption of paternity there it's a very
00:23:43.180specific legal term but it means you're legally you're legally the father right and no no he can't
00:23:48.720that's very specifically in the code for california and the states do vary right but for the most part
00:23:54.400you know, there's a federal act called the Uniform Parentage Act. And, you know, its suggestions are
00:24:00.000basically two years after the establishment of paternity. California is a little different
00:24:03.860because it says age two specifically for marriage. And it does vary from state to state. But the
00:24:09.040most important thing is about the relationship with the child. So even, you know, even if you
00:24:12.560weren't exactly established, you can challenge it. It'll go to court. Like, let's say it's before
00:24:17.080the age of two, right? You find out that's not the case. It doesn't mean you can automatically
00:24:21.300undue paternity, it means you just have the right to challenge that. So it goes to court and let's
00:24:26.240say, okay, the genetic test comes back. You guys are all sitting there and you're not biologically
00:24:31.480the father. The court is still going to look at what does life look at for this child? So
00:24:36.020who is the father? Oh, because it's the best interest of the child.
00:24:39.340It's going to be the best. So it doesn't mean, oh, because I've heard that. I've heard that
00:24:43.740with, um, they'll punish the guys for being traditional too, because if they, if they're
00:24:48.480with the kid less then they don't get cut right they don't get custody because yes if you guys
00:24:54.520like working to provide for the family then he doesn't get custody because technically the mom
00:24:59.500was with the kid more but that's like what trad cons will tell you to do you know that's what yeah
00:25:04.820well custody if you read about the history of custody it's largely based off of uh based off
00:25:09.640of functional uh parentage basically so you know genetic testing caused caused a problem for custody
00:25:14.980also because when genetic testing became a thing you started getting guys you you would maybe get
00:25:19.860the affair partner of some woman who's in another who's in her marriage and this child comes out it's
00:25:25.700really the affair partner so the affair partner says hey i want a custody of my child it's mine
00:25:29.960biologically and then they would then sue to try to get that and this created a new phenomena so
00:25:35.200it really needed to be spelled out like what's more important as far as custody goes is it
00:25:39.120functional parentage or is it biological parentage and as it stands now biological parentage takes a
00:25:44.160backseat and is only really important for who do we charge child support to all right where custody
00:25:48.560has more to do with functional parentage there's an interesting case also i mean where it went to
00:25:54.220the supreme court i think it was carol d the child's name was victoria d i can't remember i
00:25:59.340can't remember the other guy's name but this was in the 80s and i think it was out of california
00:26:04.200and this one was really wiry because usually the court can be like okay who really has the the
00:26:08.960relationship with the child who does the child know his dad that that's who we give custody to
00:26:12.200but what happened in this case is that the mom was with was with the husband they lived together
00:26:15.960for a couple years then they had a split up or whatever they never i don't think they got formally
00:26:20.200divorced or not but the dad went to new york for a bit mom and the affair partner were living
00:26:24.920together so the child was also living around the affair partner for a couple years then mom
00:26:29.000broke it off with the affair partner and got back with the husband and they're like okay we're just
00:26:33.640gonna have our happy family live and married even though this kid's not biologically you know of the
00:26:37.800of the of the husbands and um what happened is the affair partner was suing for custody because now
00:26:43.320he has you know he wants to see his child as an emotional relationship and it went back and forth
00:26:47.320and went back and forth all through the you know appeals process all the way up to the supreme
00:26:51.640court and it was i believe justice antonin scalia at the time i read his his readings on this but
00:26:57.560but very specifically they voted there to to uphold the um the rights of the husband in this case
00:27:04.040because they wanted to protect marriage and it's just like you know in this case where it's very
00:27:08.040close where both of these guys have a 50 50 kind of like they've had parenting time with this kid
00:27:12.280we're gonna uphold marriage here instead of you know the the sexual immorality part of it that
00:27:17.080was back then but you know these laws are are ever evolving and uh california for instance you can
00:27:22.520have multiple parents of a child i don't know if you know you knew that like you can have three
00:27:26.280legal parents of a kid over here and that's that's been relatively new um before i left it that that
00:27:33.160was kind of becoming a thing 2024 they just updated that a bit to to adjust some of the family codes
00:27:39.960so if you go in there you can see judges now have the power to decide custody between multiple
00:27:43.960parents and uh same thing for the the child support calculator you can see the language in
00:27:48.280there but that's all kind of the groundwork for if polyamory really becomes a thing then you know
00:27:52.920the courts can go in there and be like hey this is how we're splitting it up you have custody you get
00:27:57.080custody you don't it seems like it's going that way i mean yeah you know not that i'm happy about
00:28:04.000it i just i'm just like looking at what's we're kind of in soft polyamory now when you think
00:28:08.720about it it's kind of de facto but but yeah not not over like no people probably don't want to
00:28:13.780admit that so much you know there might situationships almost the term almost kind of begs
00:28:18.800to say it's it's polyamory which is one thing but um the laws are are changing to accommodate that
00:28:24.920You know what I mean? So it's like, you know, you have all this law going up till now. And it's it's yet to be seen. The multi parent cases we have now aren't aren't really that they're relatively rare. And they have more to do with things like technicalities like I can give you a case construct. There was a case and I mean, you know, this happened where there was two guys and the guys were like in and out of prison. But what was funny, it was like they kept missing each other. So like one guy would be in prison and the other guy wouldn't be he'd be living with mom like one of these two guys was the dad and then that guy would go to prison and the other guy would get out and he'd be living with mom.
00:28:54.920mom wow she sounds like a great gal yeah well and it I mean you know that's the kind of stuff you
00:29:02.040I mean you got two prison guys and you got you know it's all kind of a but what ended up happening
00:29:06.100is that somehow as a fluke the child support agency ended up getting judgments about against
00:29:10.460both of these guys and that wasn't supposed to happen it should have only been one but that case
00:29:14.860went to court one person was the father the other guy wasn't and eventually what happened was is
00:29:20.140they even had to bring the kid in for this one they usually don't have to do that but the the
00:29:23.820the commissioner had to take this kid into the back chambers and you know the kid asked the kid
00:29:27.560about the relationship with the parents you know and and both of these guys and you know the kid
00:29:31.800was like yeah this one's uncle whoever and this one's dad and you know whatever so they just made
00:29:36.220both of those dads legal parents and have to both pay child support so you have three legal parents
00:29:40.780you can also here's one for the passport bros there there is an update coming down the pipeline
00:29:45.940to the to those laws and it's specifically for like the k1 k2 visas where you bring over a fiance
00:29:51.560say or a spouse basically and usually like let's say you have a woman in the philippines and she
00:29:56.880has a kid there from a prior marriage maybe two kids whatever some guy you know goes out there
00:30:01.480meets her whatever he wants to bring her back to the united states and he brings her over and what
00:30:06.920happens is is you know okay she wants to bring her kid over so he sponsors the kid too prior to that
00:30:12.160if those two get divorced or split up and she goes on welfare with the kid you know who do you go
00:30:16.900after? Can you go after this, whoever the bio data is in the Philippines? No, not really. So they go
00:30:21.780after the sponsor. They're going to be going after the sponsor. This is going to be the new update in
00:30:25.580the law. And if you, so then you will, in order to get child support from somebody, you have to be
00:30:31.440a legal parent to those kids. So that's how you'll get three parents that way. But for the most part,
00:30:36.860these kinds of cases are, it's kind of as an example of how these laws kind of evolve. And
00:30:41.960then as we get into it later on to like where polyamory maybe becomes more popular if that
00:30:46.420happens. They can look back at these case laws and be like, okay, there's precedent for this.
00:30:50.020You can't have multiple parents with custody. You can't have multiple parents paying child
00:30:53.120support if it's in the child's best interest. So why don't they just go to biological? Wouldn't
00:30:57.220that make it more simple? Well, you know, again, this goes back to not having, what was the norms
00:31:02.520of, of how the legal, the laws operated back then by biology was, you know, we didn't have
00:31:08.800the genetic testing, right? So we, we had to create our legal systems for, you know, the thousands of
00:31:13.780years that we've been around based off of the the functional parentage but you know what you can't
00:31:19.120just because there's a lot of guys that are like you know if it's if I'm biologically the dad I
00:31:23.220should be given 50 50 custody and you know I would hear that at the child support office you know I
00:31:28.600had guys come in that that we got a judgment against from child support and they're paying
00:31:32.220now and I'm like hey you know okay there's a five-year-old out here you're you're the dad you
00:31:36.180owe us you know give us 800 a month this is how you can pay blah blah blah they'd be like how are
00:31:39.840guys taking money from me uh and i can't even see my kids she won't let me see my kid and child
00:31:44.560support's answer to that was hey there's nothing we can do about it because you want to go across
00:31:48.640the street to private family law and you know you might want to look at the self-help center over
00:31:52.480there and see if you can figure it out see that's private family law because versus the public so
00:31:57.120they're separate because they they do a judgment there and then you guys calculate it basically
00:32:02.080well no we do our own judgments just for child support so we can do that but we can only do it
00:32:07.760in a limited scope of just child support or health insurance for the just the financial stuff right
00:32:11.840just the providing and the provisioning for the kids when it comes to custody custody never became
00:32:16.240part of of public family law because you got to remember our office is about recouping these
00:32:20.480welfare dollars that's what we're concerned with our performance measures are concerned with how
00:32:24.720many kids can we establish paternity for how much money can we come to recoup for the welfare system
00:32:29.920and when it comes to paternity it's like do we don't have the biggest incentive to care about
00:32:34.080who the actual biological father is right we need a father for the kid now if we don't know of course
00:32:39.920we're going to go through the rigmarole of who the dad is but that has to do more with who mom
00:32:43.920tells us we have cases where mom tries to protect the real dad we had a case where um this mom gave
00:32:50.320us a man's information that she got from somewhere i mean she had social security number she had
00:32:54.880everything so we're like okay great that's who she's saying she's signing the paperwork saying
00:32:58.640i'm saying this is the dad of this child because she was on welfare and we started a case against
00:33:03.920this guy and we we sued him we we put him through the whole rigmarole and he's just like why are you
00:33:08.480guys suing me i never met this woman in my life i don't know who this is had a certain part of it
00:33:12.560he was like listen i'm gay i've never had sexual intercourse the woman in my life there's no way
00:33:17.040i'm the father and uh the genetic test came back he wasn't the dad and finally like when we had to
00:33:25.040put some pressure on the mom the mom came clean and she was just like okay you know the dad the
00:33:29.760real dad actually lives with me and uh i i gave you guys this fake identity to try to protect the
00:33:36.080dad so there's all kinds of weird but can a woman couldn't she just not put him on child support
00:33:41.200if she is receiving welfare funds for the child it's not her choice whether or not child support
00:33:45.760takes action so there's a thing called from the state she has to put someone on child support
00:33:51.840when you sign up for welfare one of the things is it's a specific term called assignment of
00:33:56.480support rights so when you sign up for welfare you are assigning your support rights to the county
00:34:01.280and now it becomes the county's right to go after to the child support to to reimburse the the
00:34:05.600federal you know the treasury basically it becomes the state's concern at that point now public
00:34:10.240family law has intruded into a private family deal so you can see how all those pieces kind
00:34:15.200of interplay there if she gets off of welfare let's say she's on welfare yeah take away welfare
00:34:20.640from women good luck yeah okay if it happens then miracles happen i guess sorry take away
00:34:30.680free things from women never well you know yeah i mean that that's going to be a challenge
00:34:37.040especially as you know i i kind of think about that too and um it seems like we're going more
00:34:42.760towards a uh i don't want to say like i guess socialist would be the word but but style of
00:34:47.500governance and programs there as we move further and further away from what it was. But going back,
00:34:52.660if she gets off welfare, the support rights are assigned back to the mom. So she can say, hey,
00:34:58.040close the case down against dad. I don't want to have a case open against them. It's actually
00:35:02.560causing a problem to our relationship. And I'd rather you guys close that down. And then dad
00:35:07.560would only be responsible to pay back the county what he owes. And then mom and dad can continue
00:35:11.860to take care of it. And that kind of brings in a whole other subject. There's actually a lot of
00:35:17.480literature and studies and papers written on this like i guess one thing i want to say is that there
00:35:22.120are a lot of smart academic minds i mean we got princeton and columbia and all these people
00:35:26.920looking at this stuff and they're trying to figure out what's best here you know and a lot of the
00:35:31.000programs that we have now are created from you know scholars looking at this working with politicians
00:35:37.320trying to solve the problems that they had back then but we got new problems now you know things
00:35:42.200have changed traditionalism's gone all these kinds of things and for a long time we didn't have data
00:35:47.880on on unmarried fathers and what the relationship between them and their children look like so after
00:35:52.680the 96 you know beefing up of child support that was acknowledged that we didn't have that i mean
00:35:57.160we knew that you know relation outcomes for children are better when they're in a intact
00:36:02.200family you know with both parents we knew that domestic violence and things are are higher and
00:36:07.080and outside unmarried parents what we didn't have for that data was if between bio dad or just a
00:36:12.920social father as they called it someone who's not the kid's dad but so they undertook a gigantic
00:36:18.640study called the fragile families study basically it's been since renamed in 2023 i don't think the
00:36:24.160name was politically correct i think it's now called the future well-being of families study
00:36:28.840or something like that but fragile families is you know if you look that up you'll find it and
00:36:33.280basically what they did is they they took about like about 4200 kids born in hospitals in big
00:36:39.120cities and they've been following these kids throughout their entire life from age one to age
00:36:44.380two to age five to age ten uh the kids just turned 22 i think last year so they're not kids anymore
00:36:50.320but the whole time they're looking at that and they're saying okay when is dad involved in the
00:36:54.560life okay does dad pay mom for this is there domestic violence they're going through and
00:36:58.740they're interviewing the parents of these children and all these kinds of things and what they found
00:37:02.980out uh there's a paper that's that's pretty interesting here i actually have it up it's
00:37:07.460called questioning child support enforcement policy for poor families and that's from leslie
00:37:11.300joan harris she's she's a pretty big name in this so it's like sarah mclanahan erwin garfinkel aaron
00:37:16.580garfinkel and sarah mclanahan's uh were the two academics that started this this gigantic study
00:37:22.580and um what they found is is typically the the father is involved you know in an unmarried uh family
00:37:32.980to help out and want to participate. And what this paper specifically says is it's asking,
00:37:47.120is the public child support enforcement system that we have, does it actually help or harm poor
00:37:53.060families? And if you read this paper at the end of it, what you see is that in cases where the
00:37:58.240child support program is involved, the poor children actually get less money and less
00:38:04.440involvement from their fathers than if the child support program isn't involved. The mom gets more
00:38:09.820informal direct payments. The children have more time with the dads. But when the government gets
00:38:14.980involved, it actually makes it harder for poor families, which is ironic because this whole
00:38:19.560thing started because it's supposed to be helping poor. Well, it was to recoup welfare tax dollars,
00:38:23.700but it's also to be helping poor families. So, you know, you have academic literature that shows
00:38:28.980these kinds of things. And, you know, it's obviously something we know. The men know it.
00:38:33.300The grumblings are there on the Internet. They know something is wrong. I think they have trouble
00:38:38.320putting it into words because, I mean, this is a gigantic rabbit hole when it comes to the laws.
00:38:42.560I mean, no one person can fully get their mind wrapped around, you know, the intricacies of
00:38:48.020this entire system. It's like looking at, you know, our legal system is so refined. It's like
00:38:54.020as sophisticated as the engineering on an iPhone or something. So looking under the hood here and
00:38:58.200trying to figure out what's going on is pretty tough. It's really confusing. And, you know,
00:39:02.560there's a lot of people that are like, we need to change the laws. And the answer is absolutely
00:39:05.520yes, we do. But the question tends to come up, okay, what laws do we change? Then you start
00:39:10.840looking at them. I say ban child support, but I don't know how easy that would be.
00:39:14.780well you know i mean again it's tied to the welfare system right i personally believe child
00:39:21.160support should be curtailed it's too powerful right now i think there should be there should
00:39:25.520be limits on the amount you know like here's the problem like when it was just poor families
00:39:29.880dealing with the public laws nobody cared because it wasn't that many of them but as feminism and
00:39:35.980you know out of wedlock birds have increased and the culture has changed they're able to exploit
00:39:40.760these public laws for their own gain. And now it's become a problem to where the public laws
00:39:46.500were just for the poor. It has now intruded into the middle class. It has now intruded into
00:39:50.260Tyrese Gibson's house in a Hollywood celebrity. And that's a problem. You know what I mean? So
00:39:55.800they're able to leverage this against men. And the question is, okay, what do we do about it now?
00:40:02.100How do we change it? The things that, you know, my personal axe to grind, you know, like, I guess
00:40:06.980my bigger axe would be paternity laws. That's the kind of stuff. I don't like paternity fraud. I
00:40:11.400don't like that when I see that. My smaller but also sharp axe to grind is, you know, spousal and
00:40:17.780child support, I think, need to have caps. That makes sense to the economic area you're living in,
00:40:22.380you know, because with no-fault divorce, you know, if you as a man are supposed to be the provider
00:40:26.960and you are successful and you have done a good job of being able to be a great provider, you know,
00:40:31.940mom can walk away the this is the uh you know i'm not happy meme from coach greg adams and uh she
00:40:37.860can leave and and the law basically says you are entitled to his lifestyle you can leave for no
00:40:42.660reason uh if you look at the spousal support court uh if you look at the family law code in california
00:40:47.460for spousal support uh you know early on in there one of the things the judge is going to take into
00:40:52.020account what was the lifestyle uh what are the people used to within the marriage and so when
00:40:56.340it comes to awarding spousal support i mean then whatever lifestyle is theirs is fair game same
00:41:01.540thing with child support if you look at the codes it basically says and then it makes them a target
00:41:06.180right yeah it makes them yeah exactly that's my biggest thing with it because you know when you
00:41:10.420get into a lot of the conversation a lot of it is about a high value man you know kevin samuels made
00:41:15.780that popular he was talking to women and you know he was talking about high value man there's a lot
00:41:20.100of self-improvement stuff going on uh you know a lot of the other big podcasts andrew tate you know
00:41:25.460was was this i just watched a uh i think it was a stream with those two andrew tate and the fresh
00:41:32.260and fit guys and towards the last half hour of that conversation uh they talk about you know
00:41:36.980self-improvement and getting to this place myron literally says being average isn't good enough
00:41:41.540anymore which to me i mean you can stop right there that just means traditionalism is gone
00:41:45.380because if you can't be average like what was traditionalism ever for if not for the common
00:41:49.460people right i would like to think so if you if average if you can't be average anymore
00:41:54.020traditionalism is gone well i don't think myron says that traditionalism is here i think he'd
00:41:58.980agree with you on that yeah yeah he would absolutely agree with me but if if we can
00:42:03.620if we agree that being average isn't good enough then then when you look at going back to being
00:42:07.140traditional and you know not not being a high value man then that's not going to work um andrew
00:42:12.100tate you know he is kind of emblematic of this entire phenomena you know he he's he has one in
00:42:17.460the material world like he he beat everybody he's got the bugattis this that everything now even him
00:42:23.780even Andrew Tate has to jump ship because he needs to go somewhere where the jurisdiction is
00:42:28.800not as harsh against men in terms of family law and marriages. You know, he's not starting a
00:42:33.180family in London or in the US. I wonder why. So it's like you can be that you can beat the game.
00:42:38.940You know what I mean? And those guys still don't want to be having a family here, which to me
00:42:42.960signals that the problem is the law, because right now people aren't women are incentive to be,
00:42:47.960you know, predators in that way. You can be high value. You can attract these women. But
00:42:52.720the minute you try to long-term invest into someone, you are now completely vulnerable to
00:42:57.420the system. So, you know, people like Myron, I mean, I have his book right here, Why Women Deserve
00:43:02.180Less, or Andrew Tate, you know, they will sell the self-improvement mantra as the long-term
00:43:09.860answer, but it's not. It's good in maximizing short-term options. But the minute you decide
00:43:14.280to fully invest in one of these, you are now subject to what these laws are going to do to you.
00:43:19.240And there's no way to avoid it if you have a kid. That's that.
00:43:21.480there's no way yeah because i i talked to um i don't know if you know lead attorney have you
00:43:26.420seen his stuff oh yeah i know i know i spoke to him about this and he told me he didn't fear
00:43:31.440marriage he said look i've been married you can get a you can get a prenup that's pretty good you
00:43:36.200can get a divorce whatever what i fear is children because when you have kids in this country these
00:43:41.840kids are not yours he's like i would get married again tomorrow i could i i'll do marriage but he
00:43:47.860he's told me that there's just no way unless you do surrogacy to have a child and it really
00:43:53.060belonged to you as I cannot stand surrogacy I'm not saying he's wrong that's another thing that
00:43:57.420it's just something that personally irks me it's super weird yeah no I think it's weird too but
00:44:01.560you know it's weird it's going viral it's going viral that a guy got a surrogacy thing like but
00:44:07.080it's interesting someone in Mexico or Brazil or something but what's interesting to me is there
00:44:10.920was such an outcry about it from the trad con but women have been doing the same thing for like
00:44:16.280how long 30 50 i don't know go on you can go on reddit right now and look up a subreddit called
00:44:22.600single mothers by choice it is the craziest thing it's just to me it's so selfish but a guy gets
00:44:28.540but a guy gets one kid and everyone's freaking out everyone's mad i i agree with you it's weird
00:44:34.440you know but i'm like i mean women have been doing it for forever you know i will rather have the dad
00:44:41.180in that case because you know i'm pretty sure the kid's going to have a better outcome in that way
00:44:46.260i mean it's funny because you can see okay who's the better parent which kids are going to get the
00:44:49.620better outcome is it being raised by a single mom or a single father ideally it should be too
00:44:53.620dad you already know so easy yeah so like and that's the thing it's to me it's just it's just
00:44:59.140cruel if um and i can tell you some funny cases that kind of like we had a case with two lesbians
00:45:04.100you know and this kind of goes into the multi-parent thing but they got a sperm donor and they didn't