|
- |
YOU OUGHT to be
Baskerville, an associate professor at a 9-year-old Christian college in Berryville, is also a member of the Libertarian Party of Virginia, according to that organization's Web site.
As an attorney who has practiced family law in the Fredericksburg region for more than 27 years, I would like to correct as many errors as possible of those contained in Baskerville's commentary.
Divorce does not license government intrusion, "including the power to seize children, loot family savings, and incarcerate parents without a trial."
Baskerville is wrong. In most divorce trials you don't receive one trial, but two.
The first brief trial, known as a pendente lite hearing, usually places in effect a court order to maintain the status quo as much as possible. It is designed to assure both parents access to children and the protection of family savings, so that one parent does not run off with the children and the family funds. No one is incarcerated without a trial and due process under the law.
A second full hearing, which sometimes lasts a full day or two, provides both parents with the ability to present all of their evidence and witnesses to the court to help it make a fair ruling in this emotion-packed litigation.
Baskerville is also 75 percent wrong when he states that judges, psychotherapists, social workers, and lawyers "profit from ensuing litigation."
Judges, psychotherapists, and social workers don't profit from ensuing divorce litigation. Judges are paid a salary to be a judge and hear trials that men and women bring to them. They are not paid on commission.
Most psychotherapists and social workers with whom I've worked over the years try to avoid litigation. They can't help clients if they, the psychotherapists and social workers, are sitting in court all day.
Lawyers do profit from litigation. That's what lawyers get paid for doing. Most of us litigate.
However, most family-law lawyers whom I know urge other means of dispute resolution first (such as mediation, collaborative law, and agreements between the parties) before the expensive, stressful, and uncertain option of litigation.
Baskerville's claim that "child abuse is itself the creation of welfare bureaucracies" is so absurd that
Baskerville also claims that fathers suffer "incarceration without trial."
Wrong again. First, fathers are not the only ones who pay child support. More and more mothers pay child support to fathers; and when the payor parent (man or woman) fails to pay as ordered
In closing, may I suggest that when The Free Lance-Star publishes irrational rubbish from such individuals as Stephen Baskerville that you try to balance it with commentary by someone who is actually from this planet?
Thomas Savage is a Fredericksburg lawyer.
