Hi Blog. Terrie’s Take offers a good summary of the issues pertaining to the growing body of information regarding divorce in Japan and the horrible aftermath, particularly when it comes to international relationships. And he too forecasts an uptick in the divorce rate come April–when pension scheme reforms come into place. Thanks to Scott W. for forwarding this. Debito in Sapporo<\/p>\n
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TERRIE’S TAKE TT-411 — divorce surge It’s been a while since we wrote about divorce in Japan. However, an article To our surprise, the responding lawyer, a Ms. Doi, told the woman that she Let’s look at some of the real-life issues involved in 1. The lawyer, Ms. Doi, is being naiive in thinking the 2. Another big reason why Dads don’t pay is that the Family 3. A third reason why Dads cut themselves off is “PAS”: Parental Alienation The problem of getting deadbeat Dads to pay up is not The divorce rate in Japan is quite high, at about 40% of Until now, older women getting divorced have only been able Then of course there is the thorny issue of legal child abduction by The problem is that Japan is not a signatory to the Hague Convention in If you’d like to know more about the ugly side of ============================<\/p>\n BACK ISSUES OF TERRIE’S TAKE Terrie’s Take of March 4, 2007, offers a good summary of the issues pertaining to the growing body of information regarding divorce in Japan and the horrible aftermath, particularly for international couples.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","category-problematic-foreign-treatment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBy Terrie Lloyd. General Edition Sunday, March 4, 2007 Issue No. 411
\nCourtesy:
\nhttp:\/\/www.japaninc.com\/tt411<\/a><\/p>\n
\nin the Daily Yomiuri several weeks back reminded us that this is one big
\nblack hole in Japan and the law has not caught up with the changing social
\nrealities. The article was the so-called “Troubleshooter” column, in which a
\nwoman says that her 11-year old daughter is reluctant to see her divorced
\nDad. The woman said that she was concerned that if the child didn’t see her
\nfather (he wants to see her — unusual for a Japanese divorcee), she was
\nworried that he might be inclined to stop paying child maintenance.<\/p>\n
\nneedn’t worry. She said that even if the Dad couldn’t see his kid, he’d
\nstill have to pay the child maintenance and education costs. Does she really
\nthink he can be made to pay? Also, her comment that the child doesn’t need
\nto see her Dad if “she has started to become emotionally unstable because of
\nthe burden [of seeing him]” reveals one of the major reasons why he probably
\nnever will pay. Because he’s been marginalized.<\/p>\n
\ndivorce in Japan when it involves kids.<\/p>\n
\nhusband can be made to continue paying child maintenance. According to some
\nstatistics we’ve seen, only 20% of Japanese divorced Dads actually pay
\nmaintenance. One reason for such a low rate of court compliance is that
\nJapan has no concept of shared custody, and so there is no sense for the
\nfather of sharing responsibility for his off-spring. Indeed, the prevailing
\nview by lawyers and counsellors is that it is emotionally damaging for
\nchildren to see a divorced parent, since it makes them confused and upset.
\nTalk about a diametrically opposed view to the joint custody approach of
\nmost other nations!<\/p>\n
\nLaw Courts are toothless and have no power to enforce
\ncivil judgements, other than to allow the spouse to try to attach assets or
\nsalary. But she has to find the Dad first, and neither the court nor the
\npolice will help in this process. The simple fact of the matter is that a
\ndetermined Dad can easily shift cities and jobs, and his salary stays
\nintact. Alternatively, he can form a company with one other shareholder and
\nplace the assets in that company, preventing her from attaching them since
\nthey are no longer just his.<\/p>\n
\nSyndrome — something which is totally unknown here in Japan. Perhaps this
\nisn’t surprising, since PAS is only just starting to gain acceptance in the
\nUSA and elsewhere. In the theory behind PAS, a child instinctivly latches on
\nto its caregiver and if it senses that the caregiver hates the divorced
\nparent, then the child will take on the same values even if he\/she really
\nloves that parent deep down. We note that this is very similar to the
\nStockholm Syndrome experienced by kidnap victims.<\/p>\n
\nunique to Japan. But in considering just why there are so
\nmany deadbeats in this country, it is clear that the legal system offers no
\nopportunity for Dads to experience an on-going emotional bond and thus
\nsupport his children — kids who unfortunately have been encouraged to hate
\nhis guts anyway. Shared custody, with guaranteed access by both parents
\nwould go a long way to solving the problem of emotional detachment and
\nsubsequent non-payment. But then that requires some social re-engineering —
\nsomething we probably won’t see in our lifetime.<\/p>\n
\nthe number of marriages. The peak for divorce was 290,000 people in 2002.
\nHowever, this dropped to 260,000 in 2005 and 235,000 in 2006 (annualized
\nfigure drawn from Nov 2006 stats). Despite what you may think, the reason
\nfor the falling divorce rate isn’t an improvement in marital relations nor
\nan improved economy. Rather, it’s due to a new divorce law which comes into
\neffect in April this year and which allows women to claim up to 50% of their
\nhusband’s pension in the event of a split.<\/p>\n
\nto get a share of the pension if the hubby approved. If he didn’t, as has
\noften been the case, then the best she could expect was a much smaller
\nhardship pension. The divorce statistics imply that there is a huge number
\nof stored up divorces waiting to be registered after April — potentially as
\nmany as 55,000 more than normal. It should be interesting to see the effects
\nof both this surge AND the one that will inevitably come from the mass
\nretirement of the Dankai Sedai (Baby boomers) generation over the next 5
\nyears.<\/p>\n
\nJapanese escaping an international marriage. While the domestic media focus
\non the abduction of Japanese nationals to North Korea, they make little
\nnoise about the many abductions of kids of international marriages by
\nfleeing Japanese spouses. There are numerous documented cases, so numerous
\nin fact that some countries such as the USA consider Japan the second worst
\nhaven for international child abduction.<\/p>\n
\nrespect to the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, although it
\nhas adopted some of the other Hague Convention laws. Clearly this has been a
\nconscious choice by the government and our guess is that it is probably an
\neffort by the judiciary and political conservatives to maintain the current
\nstatus quo on societal attitudes and family law.<\/p>\n
\ninternational divorce, especially where kids are involved, check out the
\nChild Rights Network at http:\/\/www.crnjapan.com\/en\/<\/a>. If you’re wondering why
\nthe focus seems to be on fathers at that page, it’s most likely because a
\nforeign father is the party least likely to be allowed to keep seeing the
\nchildren of a divorced marriage. Yes, there have been cases of foreign
\nmothers being separated from their kids, but these are much rarer…<\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.japaninc.com\/terries_take<\/a> or,
\nhttp:\/\/mailman.japaninc.com\/pipermail\/terrie\/<\/a>
\nENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"