Guest view: Child support is welfare because it lacks accountability - Utic... http://www.uticaod.com/guest/x2102343506/Guest-view-Child-support-i...

Guest view: Child support is welfare because it lacks accountability

By Leon Koziol
Special to the Observer-Dispatch
Posted Mar 06, 2010 @ 09:00 PM

If you believe that children require money more than they need their fathers, read no further. This column is based upon
traditional beliefs, biological equality of parents and our cherished rights under the American Constitution.

It is made necessary by gross mischaracterizations of my child support/license suspension headlines. The public’s diverse
experience with domestic matters has made me an undeserved sounding platform for gripes having no relevance to my personal
case.

After commending my civil rights accomplishments, for example, guest writer Mary Ules “takes offense” with my sacrificial
stance on child support by citing irrelevant parallels to her life as a single mother during the 1980s. A gender-insecure letter
writer follows with a gripe in outer space proclaiming ownership rights over children based on a birthing process caused by
human evolution.

The problem with this platform is that I owe no child support to either writer, and certainly nothing to my ex-spouse. My hard
earnings are owed only to my dear children, and I need no government directive, vindictive lecture or career blackmail to
recognize this. It is a principle of natural law fully protected, but not properly enforced, under our Constitution.

Successfully observed by committed parents since the beginning of civilization, this principle has become tortured by a
mandatory custodial institution of childrearing for those who simply choose to live apart. It is a gender discriminatory process
that places money and children over parents as a part of a barbaric and never-ending “custody” war, hence the social and moral
breakdowns of our day.

Our Constitution prohibits government interference in childrearing privacy unless serious abuse, neglect or abandonment is
found. No such finding could be made or even concocted when I quietly filed an uncontested divorce in September 2005,
immediately prior to my prominent bids for public office. It was based upon more than one year of successful (joint)
childrearing activities in separate homes.

However, when the state intervened in February 2006, based upon a money collection formula, four years of escalating
controversy brought us to the world stage at the United Nations.

During this period, my petitions for parenting time were routinely denied while money petitions were vigorously enforced. This
led to the absurd result that I was paying the state and its appointed “custodial” parent to systematically end my parent-child
relationships. Support money was being diverted from my children to lawyers and court costs, thereby making me the sole payor
for both sides of the process. This is not uncommon to countless oppressed fathers simply due to an arbitrary caregiver doctrine
and their gender status at birth.

Such discrimination is rationalized for the same reason that slaves, ethnic minorities and women were oppressed in an earlier
era: free labor and arbitrary empowerment. Unlike dictatorial regimes, however, our government has perfected this oppression
through legislative propaganda, which exploits the child into a multi-billion dollar industry, fleecing parents of finite resources
and discouraging income productivity.

Quotes and sound bites to a vast audience unfamiliar with a complex case could not hope to overcome decades of stereotypes
and draconian laws designed to perpetuate this child control industry. My best hope, therefore, existed in a news conference at
my home where genuine child support could be observed first hand. A father’s mortgage, taxes, play areas and holiday
enjoyment are a father’s child support, made impossible when a third of income goes to taxes, and another third to a support
collection unit.

My point continues to be this: a self-sufficient father has the same right to enjoy a family unit as a self-sufficient mother. An
American form of government encourages each to grow those units. Under the current socialist form, I nevertheless satisfied
years of one-sided obligations until they were abused without any child payments in return. This showed not only that I was a
responsible parent, but prepared to commit my career to enforce God given rights to raise my children.

Unlike the 1950s, a vast majority of today’s parents are raising their children in separate households. If we can bus 5-year-olds
to school, we can certainly allow fathers in the same communities to enjoy equal time with their offspring. Such logic, however,
would negate the need for lawyers and child support transfers as the engine behind federal grants and collection unit interest
revenues to a dysfunctional state government.

In short, the privacy right which I have been compelled to secure through the courts is a meaningful father-child relationship
free from joint power abuses by the state and a superior creature of law known as the “custodial parent.” It may be analogized to
the woman’s privacy right established in Roe v Wade.

For those still clinging to the current antiquated system, however, child support is a welfare payment because it lacks
accountability. Abuses such as drug or gambling addictions, lawyer-generated controversies, partner support, income
destruction and father replacement agendas are highly disguised in our overburdened courts. Still unanswered by my
government is how I am supposed to raise my children without a 23-year law license.

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Guest view: Child support is welfare because it lacks accountability - Utic... http://www.uticaod.com/guest/x2102343506/Guest-view-Child-support-i...

Leon Koziol is a Utica attorney. On Feb. 11, the state Supreme Court’s Appellate Division suspended his law license because he
has not made child support payments for his two children.

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