Fathers Day gift from Peter Dunne

Usually Peter Dunne is next to useless, changes to the blatantly anti-father child support rules however are a welcome and surprising move...

Changes to child support system
The Government intends using increased data matching abilities between departments and will introduce mandatory automatic payments as it seeks to crack down on what is now $2 billion in overdue child support payments.

...while the ever brilliant Gordon Campbell over at Scoop points out that there could be some drawbacks, most would agree that these inflexible bullshit anti-father child support rules must be changed to enable men to be better fathers for their children.

Making it ball breakingly impossible to start a new life with someone else through child support payments that ignore the role fathers provide in their childrens lives or the financial position of the mother creates the kind of bile that fuels angry Dad movements alongside a draconian penalty regime used by the IRD that is out right revenue gathering.

The real problem is that IRD see the late fees as a source of revenue. Inland Revenue do not send out monthly accounts to solo fathers, they send one letter at the start, and that's it. Note of the supposed 'billions' solo fathers are supposedly owing, only $560 million is actually owing, the rest, a staggering $1.2 billion is in bloody late fees. I can understand the anger many solo fathers feel at having to pay late fees to IRD that NEVER go onto the child, that money simply goes to the IRD.

If the IRD wanted to do the right thing, they would send out monthly accounts and rather than a late fee penalty regime that will see a father punished 10% of the entire payment if the payment is even one day late, give him a weeks grace in getting the money through to them!

Because the utter unfairness of this system has been aimed at men for such a long time, no one has done a bloody thing to change it in 18 years, it's time some serious changes were adopted to enable those men who want to be responsible fathers can do so without a payment and penalty regime that cripples them and recognizes that men can play a positive role in the upbringing of their children.