Phoenix Family Law Blog

--"USA Today" reported that the divorce rate has reached its highest level since 1999. The overall divorce rate was 3.7 percent (the civilian divorce rate is 3.5 percent).

While individual units of the military had different rates -- Air Force divorce (3.9 percent), Marine divorce (3.8 percent), Army divorce (3.7 percent) and Navy (3.6 percent)  no one unit of the military has consistently held the highest rate. In 2006, Navy enlisted had the highest rate and Marines the lowest. (Officers consistently have lower rates of divorce than enlisted.)

According to the latest census data, 1.8 million men are single dads. And 32 percent of men with wives in the workforce said they were regularly caring for their children under age 15 (an increase of 6 percent over respondents in 2002). With these kinds of statistics, it seems like America has truly embraced fatherhood, but if you ask these active dads, many of them will say that they are still viewed with suspicion by the courts and by other parents.

For dad's seeking custody of a child in divorce or renegotiating an existing child custody arrangement, demonstrating involvement in the child's life is essential.

In our last post we talked about actions that parents or the Arizona Department of Economic Security can take to get payment from a parent who owes back child support. But sometimes these efforts are not successful. A parent who is intent on not paying the support they owe can put their property in another person's name, may not file a tax return, or may work strictly for cash.

There are other actions a custodial parent or the DCSE can take to make life difficult for the non-paying parent. Sometimes this can compel the parent to finally live up to his or her obligation to a child.

So you've gone to court and the judge ordered child support for your children, and yet you are having difficulty getting that support in full, month after month. What can you do? There are a variety of actions that a parent or the Arizona Department of Economic Security can take to compel a parent to make child support payments, including:

• Wage collection: DCSE will send an order to an employer to withhold current support and may order an additional amount for back support that is owed

Some 22 million children under the age of 21 rely upon child support from a non-custodial parent. A new report from the U.S. Census Bureau casts light on the plight of these children, the majority of whom are not getting the support they are due.

In 2009, just 41 percent of custodial parents received the full amount of child support owed to them. Only half of those custodial parents reported having a court order in place to receive child support from a non-custodial parent. About 9 percent of parents had an informal arrangement for payment, which could include health insurance and other types of assistance.

A California man involved in a messy child custody dispute is now in court seeking punitive damages against his estranged wife, a private investigator, a police sheriff and deputy, and several others. He is charging civil rights violations, bad faith arrest, false imprisonment, abuse of process, intentional affliction of emotional distress and constitutional violations.

The man says that his wife wanted him to look bad to the court in the child custody case so she hired a private investigator who arranged for him to be arrested for drunk driving.

The private investigator worked with a number of other people to ply the man with drinks. When he left the bar, the investigator called a sheriff's deputy, who promptly arrested him.

Fathers are important to a child's development. Whether you are involved in a child custody case right now, or your divorce is long past but you are having trouble co-parenting, the work of Dr. Warren Farrell affirms that the hard work of setting aside your differences and putting your children first can pay off.

Dr. Farrell is a psychologist and author of the book Father Child Reunion. He has spent more than a decade analyzing research from around the world to understand why children who have regular contact with their fathers do so much better in 26 different areas of life than those who don't.

Although Kim Kardashian filed for divorce a month ago, citing irreconcilable differences with her NBA-star husband, Kris Humphries, Mr. Humphries filed papers in court this week asking for an annulment of the 72-day marriage. His reason? Fraud.

Humphries will have to prove that there was "deception regarding a significant matter." So far it's unknown what that fraud might be though unnamed sources told TMZ that the marriage itself was a fraud, staged to benefit Kardashian's reality TV show.