Now I Understand

This is why they do it. I know that now. The ones who don’t survive. The ones who lie down on the railway track and wait to die. This is why.  The utter hopelessness of it.

I’ve always believed in holding on to hope. Today there is none.

When your government tells a man that not only are they going to make it impossible for him to work, but then they’re going to jail him for non-payment of spousal support and he’ll live in a nightmare revolving door to a jail cell for the rest of his life, this is when hope dies.  This is when they put a bullet through their heads.  This is when they lay down to die.

Only, I’m not a man. I’m a woman in love with a wonderful man who’s had to watch the nightmare unfold. Who’s fought along side him as best as possible. Who’s taken on insurmountable debt to pay legal fees in a failed attempt to get Family Court to listen.  My sweetie, under the order that the Court of Appeal upheld yesterday, will spend the rest of his life unable to work to even try to make the incredibly inflated support payments and then will be sent to jail for 15 days for every missed monthly payment and 30 days for every missed quarterly payment on the arrears.  The awards currently amount to three quarters of a million dollars.  The monthly payments are $3,000.  He’s 62 and in a fragile state of health and will be going to jail because an over-zealous court decided that he’s worth more than he really is, based on no evidence of his.  Just her word.  They’ve never heard his evidence, taken note of his financial or medical filings.  Never.  That was their decision.  They acted on it.  And now, my sweetie is an undischarged bankrupt who has never been able to make the court ordered payments, and he has been handed a life sentence.  The Family Responsibility Office says, “Nobody ever does the entire time in jail.  After a few days the money always shows up.”  But, all these 15 day and 30 day stints in jail add up when you have no money to pay.  300 days a year for the rest of his life (there was no end date to the payment orders for a relationship that lasted less than three years). 

I don’t know how many men have completely lost hope because of the way the family court system works here.  I know two others from the same jurisdiction as has thrown the book at my sweetie.  I’ve read of several others.  Now, I understand.

Public policy is based in ideology.  The ideology was put into place by a government trying to curry favour.  The ideology is an insult to women because it assumes that we are victims.  The ideology is an insult to women because in an attempt to balance a wrong, another wrong has been created.  But it’s OK, because this ideology based public policy gives women all the power.  You know what?  I don’t want the power!  Especially if it punishes and victimizes another group!  That is tyranny.  That is the law under which we live.  The tribunal at the Court of Appeal on September 28, 2011, knew what was happening was wrong.  They knew.  It was obvious to everyone there in the statements they made and the questions they asked.  They knew.  Yet still, they upheld to the letter the Family Court rulings that put my sweetie in this position.  They knew, but they didn’t have the courage of their convictions to stand up and say, “This.  Is.  Wrong.”

My sweetie and I are no longer planning our wedding.  We are just trying to find a way to get through the day.  All we want is to live our lives together.  Now, our government is making that virtually impossible with the support of our courts.

Now, I understand why they just lay down and die.