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Man Ordered To Apologize To Wife On Facebook

New submitter Marillion writes "Photographer Mark Byron was so bothered by his pending divorce and child visitation issues that he blasted his soon-to-be ex-wife on his personal Facebook page. That touched off a battle that resulted in a Hamilton County judge ordering Byron jailed for his Facebook rant — and to post on his page an apology to his wife and all of his Facebook friends, something free speech experts found troubling."

18 of 400 comments (clear)

  1. The lesson here isn't about free speech by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's about how men are shit on in pretty much any divorce case.

    Wife alleges you hit her? Off to jail, guilty until proven innocent buddy.

    Wife alleges you molested the kids? Say goodbye to your kids forever, pal. Maybe if you're lucky we'll let you see them for a few hours once a month with a supervisor present.

    Wife wants child support? We don't care that she's spending all the money on her new ex-con boyfriend's meth lab, you'll pay it or it's jail for you, sparky!

    Wife is a drug addict who neglects the kids? Tough luck pal, she's still getting full custody over you. That's what you get for showing up to court with a penis.

    Wife won't let YOU have the kids during your court-appointed custody days? File this paperwork. We'll look into it in about a year, if you're lucky.

    You won't let HER have the kids during her court-appointed custody days? Freeze, motherfucker! Get you're hands on your head NOW! ON THE GROUND, ASSHOLE! DON'T MAKE ME SHOOT YOU!

    Welcome to the world of divorce court, Mark.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:The lesson here isn't about free speech by Toe,+The · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well, it's also about free speech.

      Someone being required by law to post an apology is rather frightening.

      You can't even force a kid to say a prayer, but you can force a guy to pretend he is apologetic?

    2. Re:The lesson here isn't about free speech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      At least someone is trying to change things.

    3. Re:The lesson here isn't about free speech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A forced apology is not an apology.

    4. Re:The lesson here isn't about free speech by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      However, this is from my experience as a third party witness. Once of the premarital discussions I had w/ my wife was to agree that we'd settle shit like adults if things went sour. Life's too short to be worrying about making the other miserable. There's no need to drag kids through that crap either. The more disagreements you can resolve outside of the court amicably the better, IMO. Now we'll see if things actually pan out that way if I ever have the cross that bridge...

      Speaking as a third party witness to several divorces. You underestimated the influence of your wife's potential attorney. He will strongly encourage your wife to ask for what's more than "rightfully" hers in order to have an advantage during negotiations. Remember the attorney is looking out for himself while he represents your wife. Being fair is not his objective. Getting the most for his client so that he himself will make more is his primary concern. Also the more contentious the divorce the more legal fees he is allowed to charge.

      I have seen amicable divorces but it's a rare thing.

      --
      These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
    5. Re:The lesson here isn't about free speech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      More true than you'd know, buddy.

      Consider:
      - Women are almost never arrested, arraigned, prosecuted, or convicted of filing false police reports - BUT
      - A false police report = an arrest record, which can be used against the man in the divorce proceedings.

      True story: my best friend was going out with a waitress, knocked her up... his own fault for failing to use a condom. But he manned up, did the right thing when they split up a year and a half later, filed for custody.

      Judge basically told him he had NO legal rights to his kid other than visitation. He got weekends at first; then the bitch ran two states away to prevent him from even having that after he filed another motion for more rights, followed 2 months later by her filing paperwork about how, from 800 miles away, he had supposedly "not arrived for his visitation once in the past two months." Meanwhile he's got 5 motions in asking the judge to order her to return and stop interfering with his visitation rights.

      Judge THEN ordered... that she move back to the city and not leave without informing the court (a) where she was going and (b) that her travel must not impact his visitation rights. She got back into town, filed a false police report, claimed he had come over and "beaten" her. Police actually did their job, examined her for bruises, took her to the ER to get checked up... not a fucking scratch or bump on her or the kid. She admitted to their faces she was lying to get him in trouble when confronted... but they couldn't haul her in ("because it would leave the kid with nobody to look after her") and the local DA refused to prosecute ("not enough evidence and we'll never get all 12 members of a jury to convict her"). So, there's a record of her CALLING IN a false police report, but no arrest and no arraignment and no conviction on her record... meanwhile my buddy spent an overnight in jail because "standard procedure" said he had to be held in a cell till they could release him after morning paperwork.

      She ran off again a few months later.. and the judge REFUSED to hold her in contempt of court for violating his orders, just filed another "return or else" order.

      Eventually the judge ruled to give her sole custody and my friend only "visitation rights" on a permanent basis, because the now 3-year-old kid had "a mother-child bond." Despite the fact that my friend had been fighting tooth and nail for the right to be a parent to his daughter. The only reason my buddy has custody now is that she turned over custody when she moved in with her "boyfriend" a year later, because the boyfriend didn't want to have kids in his house.

    6. Re:The lesson here isn't about free speech by El+Torico · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Remember to record everything on video; just ask Salvatore Miglino
      The Evil Bitch of a Mother-In-Law called 911 and lied immediately after she shot him three times in a planned ambush. Fortunately for him, she's as stupid as she is evil and used a crap ass .22 caliber automatic that jammed. If he didn't have the recording, he would be the one in jail.

      --
      In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
    7. Re:The lesson here isn't about free speech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Absolutely agree. Having recently gone through a divorce and custody battle myself it amazed me how blatantly biased the family court system is against men that have done no wrong and only want to continue to be a part of their children's lives.

    8. Re:The lesson here isn't about free speech by kelemvor4 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's about how men are shit on in pretty much any divorce case.

      Wife alleges you hit her? Off to jail, guilty until proven innocent buddy.

      Wife alleges you molested the kids? Say goodbye to your kids forever, pal. Maybe if you're lucky we'll let you see them for a few hours once a month with a supervisor present.

      Wife wants child support? We don't care that she's spending all the money on her new ex-con boyfriend's meth lab, you'll pay it or it's jail for you, sparky!

      Wife is a drug addict who neglects the kids? Tough luck pal, she's still getting full custody over you. That's what you get for showing up to court with a penis.

      Wife won't let YOU have the kids during your court-appointed custody days? File this paperwork. We'll look into it in about a year, if you're lucky.

      You won't let HER have the kids during her court-appointed custody days? Freeze, motherfucker! Get you're hands on your head NOW! ON THE GROUND, ASSHOLE! DON'T MAKE ME SHOOT YOU!

      Welcome to the world of divorce court, Mark.

      I bet those that have never been divorced think you're exaggerating. When I got divorced, the first time I saw my lawyer he pretty much laid it out exactly as you did. He did mention there were some fairly reasonable reasons for most of that stuff.. but I have forgotten what they were.

    9. Re:The lesson here isn't about free speech by Tharsman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No mod points but I'll applaud you. I suspect this whole story will be riddled with various anecdotes of how the man shafted a man over the same issues.

      My most immediate frustration with the system is the insane imbalance of child support and how it's geared so the father pays 100% of what they say is required to support a kid. Even if prior to the divorce the wife worked and paid half into such expenses. It's completely unrealistic.

      To be fair, ever state handles things extremely differently. From recent experience of a friend, I have learned that Tennessee has fixed tables for child support and they are entirely based off W2 and income. If the father has no income job, he is not forced to pay. Actually, without a job but with shared custody every other weekend, the woman may be forced to pay him based off how much time a year he has the kids and how much she earns. It's insanely unlikely a man will get main custody there, though.

      I hear in Florida... or California... can’t remember and may not be either... but at least one state will take infidelity insanely seriously. If a mother is found guilty of infidelity, she will lose complete custody and may get weekends IF the father is generous.

      However, this is from my experience as a third party witness. Once of the premarital discussions I had w/ my wife was to agree that we'd settle shit like adults if things went sour. Life's too short to be worrying about making the other miserable. There's no need to drag kids through that crap either. The more disagreements you can resolve outside of the court amicably the better, IMO. Now we'll see if things actually pan out that way if I ever have the cross that bridge...

      As my dad said in regards to getting married "Boy, choose wisely."

      If it's not written in paper, good luck with that. The person I noted above had similar oral agreement. She took the guy to court every other month (she also happened to steal "from him" during the marriage over the years until she collected enough in a secret bank account to put the down payment on her new house immediately after the divorce started (she did not even wait until it was finalized, she knew the guy didn’t had the money to fight possession of that house in court.)

    10. Re:The lesson here isn't about free speech by hiryuu · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I have seen amicable divorces but it's a rare thing.

      I'll agree it's rare, and will venture out on the embarrassment limb by saying I've been through two divorces. My first wife and I, after the emotional turbulence had somewhat subsided, sat down and agreed on how to part. I hired the only attorney, who submitted our drafted agreement to the court. What few things came up before or after the divorce was final that required further discussion, we handled ourselves, and managed to do it without being psychotic toward each other.

      My second wife, on the other hand, decided that what was hers was hers, what was mine was hers, and that she was going to make it as ugly and vindictive as possible to either browbeat me into staying or to take everything possible from me. Our divorce lasted longer than the pre-filing marriage - and this without kids or any significant property at stake.

      --
      Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
    11. Re:The lesson here isn't about free speech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      my buddy spent an overnight in jail because "standard procedure" said he had to be held in a cell till they could release him after morning paperwork.

      This is standard procedure internationally and is based on one flawed experiment conducted without the concent of the participants:-

      The idea for these arrests came from something called the Minneapolis Police Experiment (MPE) of 1981-82. In the experiment police offices were given pads with one of three words written on them; counsel, send or arrest. Counsel meant the officer was to try to mediate the couple's spat. Send was to send one of the spouses out of the house for eight hours as a cooling off period. Arrest was arrest one of the two spouses. The officer was to do as the top paper on the pad said to do. The experiment was set up by the Police Foundation and Lawrence W. Sherman was the lead researcher. The results show counseling resulted in a future assault in 24% cases, send was 19%, and the arrest option resulted in a future assault in only 10% of the cases. Perhaps a cheap way of cutting down future domestic violence.

      In 1984 The U. S. Attorney General's Task Force of Domestic Violence recommended arrest as the primary weapon in domestic violence assault. Lawrence W. Sherman recommend not using the arrests because the MPE was just one study and it could be wrong. They ignored him. And by 1992, 93% of the police departments in the nation had adopted some form of mandatory arrest in domestic violence cases.

      But by 1992 five more addition studies similar to the MPE became available. Lawrence W. Sherman reviewed all five studies. Then once again he wrote that the police should not use arrest. In two of the five studies, they found the same result as they did in the MPE, that an arrest cut down the odds of a future assault. But in the other three studies an arrest actually increase the odds of a future assault. So arresting someone in a domestic violence situation to cut down on future assaults did not work any better than just flipping a coin. I do not know if Lawrence W. Sherman is still alive. But fortunately he wrote a book call Policing Domestic Violence that was published in 1992.

      So we have 800,000 American police officers arresting one in every six adults in the country and throwing 25% of the men, women and children out on the streets in an effort to enforce a policy that they knew did not work back in1992. And I had always assumed that you needed a man to really screw something up. Oh well, there goes another glass ceiling.

      Why would they push an arrest policy that does not work? There are two schools of thought on the reason why. The first comes from Lawrence W. Sherman. He calls it the Law of Just Desserts. Revenge for slights and offenses, real or imagined. I am sure there are some that would argue that women are not vengeful. But what is that old saying? Hell hath no fury...

      See http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2686327&cid=39126951 for full details.

    12. Re:The lesson here isn't about free speech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A good parent is, above all, a role model.

      A bad husband is a bad father.

      A bad wife is a bad mother.

      In more general terms, anyone who breaks a close trust has no place in a position of responsibility.

      A failing marriage can be ended amicably. The partners are free to hump others after this.

    13. Re:The lesson here isn't about free speech by mcgrew · · Score: 5, Interesting

      So true. I wrote this on Mon Dec 15, 2003:

      Monday reared its dreary head this morning in anticipation of the pending divorce. I went to the courtroom, put my stuff in the tray, shoved my coat into the X-Ray box, and walked through the metal detector as half a dozen or more armed people stood around directing more normal, unarmed people.

      I found my way to the same floor I had been on during the previous hearing, and found when asking that I was on the wrong floor.

      I got to the seventh floor and found the courtroom, and sat in front of a very unattractive woman who smiled at me broadly, as to say "fuck me now!"

      I shuddered, and smiled weakly back and sat down.

      The hearing was at nine, and by ten after I didn't see my lawyer or the judge.

      Finally a bailiff said "all rise" and the judge said "sit down". The judge then spoke to lawyers and the court reporter and somebody said something about some guy in jail.

      I asked the bailiff if I was in the right courtroom. He checked with the court reporter, and I was indeed in the right place. No lawyer.

      They brought a long haired, bearded prisoner wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt from a side door. The guy had spent the last three weeks in jail over a typo!

      This fellow was adamant that his child support payments were taken out of his paycheck just like the court order said.

      After the court reporter and a District Attorney and some other guys in suits who I couldn't figure out talked about and mulled over a piece of paper on the judge's bench, the judge finally said "but look here, this Court Order is obviously in error."

      It seems from what I could gather, not being a lawyer and all, that they were only taking half the amount from his paycheck, but the payroll slip reflected what the judge had said.

      "Calm down," the judge said, "you're getting out. But if you're not here on January 15th we'll put out another bench warrant on you."

      They took him out a door on the other side.

      "Is there anybody here for... McGrew?"

      I stood up and walked forward. Its lawyer wasn't here, either!

      "Yes sir, uh, your oner. I, uh, my lawyer's not here, I think she's..."

      "Ok, ok," says the judge. Who's next?

      I sat back down, and some black fellow got divorced. His ex wasn't there, nor did he have a lawyer. It took five minutes.

      I should have done that! Although you have to be separated for over two years before you can get divorced without your wife's permission.

      My lawyer finally came in, along with Satan's lawyer. The black guy was free from slavery, and I was next!

      The judge made me raise my hand and swear, although no bible was evident to swear on.

      The service, marriage, divorce... I hate raising my right hand!

      My lawyer asked my name, age, where I was married (the Old Cahokia Courthouse, oldest court house in or west of the Mississippi Valley) and was I sure that counseling would not make me want to change my mind.

      "We tried counseling. That's when I found out about her adultery, which is in fact what our 'irreconsilable differences' are."

      "Oh," the judge says.

      "I have no further questions, your honor."

      "No Questions," Lucifer's shyster said at the judge's nod.

      And it was over. There is to be one more hearing before the first of the year, and I'll be completely single, after over a year after she left. And then speaking with my lawyer afterward- Evil X gets part of my pension! Yep, that's law. And my daughter Patty gets no child support, since Leila's living with her mother and still going to high school, even though she's 18.

      The bank will be taking my house at a completely unrelated hearing tomorrow morning. They already repossessed my van (which had a broken transmission anyway).

      But... freedom! Liberty! At the cost of most of everything I own, at the cost of personal bankruptcy, at the cost of about fourteen hundred bucks in legal fees IF I don't fight for custody...

      I took an extra happy pill when I got back to work. It didn't work too well.

  2. Free speech experts must be single by Dishwasha · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't they know men give up the first amendment right to free speech the second they get married, if not months or years ahead of time. Particularly when the mother-in-law is in town.

  3. Got it beat... by retech · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was ordered to remove my outgoing message on my answering machine or risk "threatening civil negotiations... and be seen as adversarial...". I explained that it was in fact my phone line, my answering machine and people were calling me. If the ex didn't want to hear it, she in fact did not need to call. But, none-the-less, I had to take it down or all negotiations were off and she would be awarded everything by default.

    The machine said that I was in a fugue since my ex had slept around with a number of people and was in fact a whore. Personally, I thought this was just stating fact.

  4. Look at judges/socialworks etc by Tyr07 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Anyone notice anything related to family often has female lawyers, female judges, female social workers etc?

    Talk about gender discrimination. It's not okay for there to be plenty of men in a place where a lot of control is, but it's fine if it's all women? I think not. It's proven time and time again that both sides equally discriminate and it needs to stop.

  5. One man's view of divorce by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is a more detailed view of divorce courts from a man who committed suicide outside of one:-

    Last Statement by Tom Ball

    A man walks up to the main door of the Keene N.H. County Courthouse, douses himself with gasoline and lights a match. And everyone wants to know why.

    Apparently the old general was right. Death is not the worst of evil.

    I am due in court the end of the month. The ex-wife lawyer wants me jailed for back child support. The amount ranges from $2,200. to $3,000. depending on who you ask. Not big money after being separated over ten years and unemployed for the last two. But I do owe it. If I show up for court without the money and the lawyer say jail, then the judge will have the bailiff take me into custody. There really are no surprises on how the system works once you know how it actually works. And it does not work anything like they taught you in high school history or civics class.

    I could have made a phone call or two and borrowed the money. But I am done being bullied for being a man. I cannot believe these people in Washington are so stupid to think they can govern Americans with an iron fist. Twenty-five years ago, the federal government declared war on men. It is time now to see how committed they are to their cause. It is time, boys, to give them a taste of war.

    There are two kinds of bureaucrats you need to know; the ones that say and the ones that do. The bridge between them is something I call The Second Set of Books. I have some figures of the success of their labors. You and I are in these numbers, as well as our spouses and children. But first let me tell you how I ended up in this rabbit hole.

    My story starts with the infamous slapping incident of April 2001. While putting my four year old daughter to bed, she began licking my hand. After giving her three verbal warnings I slapped her. She got a cut lip. My wife asked me to leave to calm things down.

    When I returned hours later, my wife said the police were by and said I could not stay there that night. The next day the police came by my work and arrested me, booked me, and then returned me to work. Later on Peter, the parts manager, asked me if I and the old lady would be able to work this out. I told him no. I could not figure out why she had called the police. And bail condition prevented me from asking her. So I no longer trusted her judgment.

    After six months of me not lifting a finger to save this marriage, she filed for divorce. Almost two years after the incident, I was talking with her on the phone. She told me that night she had called a mental health provider we had for one of the kids. Wendy, the counselor told my then wife that if she did not call the police on me, then she too would be arrested.

    Suddenly, everything made sense. She is the type that believes that people in authority actually know what they are talking about. If both she and I were arrested, what would happen to our three children, ages 7,4 and 1? They would end up in State custody. So my wife called the police on her husband to protect the children. And who was she protecting the kids from? Not her husband, the father of these children. She was protecting them from the State of New Hampshire.

    This country is run by idiots.

    The police sergeant Freyer screwed this up from the get go. When I got the Court Complaint form the box was checked that said Domestic Violence Related. I could not believe that slapping your child was domestic violence. So I looked up the law. Minor custodial children are exempted. Apparently, 93% of American parents still spank, slap or pinch their children. To this day I still wonder if Freyer would have made this arrest if it had been the mother that had slapped the child.

    Labeling someone's action as domestic violence in American in the 21st century is akin to labeling someone a Jew in Germany in the 1930's. The entire legal weight of the state is coming down on him. But I consider myself lucky. My family was destroyed. But that poor bastard in Germany