Madam, - In recent days there has been a lot of media coverage regarding the financial and other costs of marriage breakdown for one high-profile father. However, the consequences are even more serious for men of more limited resources.
Over the past 10 years Amen has been contacted by thousands of fathers who have been practically ruined by the family law courts. These men, in the main, find themselves relegated to living in substandard bed-sittters and in some cases are left homeless. Many live lives of quiet desperation simply because their marriages fail. They effectively become "beasts of burden" or, as one man described himself, "a wallet" or "a hole in the wall".
The mistreatment of such fathers has far-reaching implications for society and will return to haunt future generations. It is high time the Government stopped banishing fathers to the margins of society and devised more humane methods of dealing with marriage breakdown. The loss and pain should be shared equally by men and women. At present men lose their homes, their children and the bulk of the family finances.
Surely this inhuman injustice should be at the top of the political agenda for the next election. - Yours, etc,
MARY T CLEARY, Founder/Co-ordinator, Amen, Railway Street, Navan, Co Meath.