One case among thousands: a father spends his days between courts and police stations to see his son, loses his job and his income, then finds himself prosecuted over maintenance. Why the unable must be distinguished from the unwilling.
Among the latest victims of the problem of imprisonment for non-payment of maintenance: a father, a member of the association, who, instead of devoting himself to his work to live decently and provide for his son, found himself caught in a spiral of trips, morning and evening, between courts and police stations to be allowed to see his son and protect him — to the point of having to give up his business and his source of income.
Add to this the intense stress, nervous breakdown and depression that make a father unable to work and earn a living, the consequence of losing his children, of his powerlessness to protect them or to report any harm they suffer as their legal guardian, of the slowness and complexity of the procedures, and of the manoeuvres of incitement and denigration of the father in front of the children and society.
Unable… not unwilling
All this makes him a father who is unable, not unwilling, to pay maintenance. And this is only one case among thousands. That is why the association asks that the law and the courts distinguish the father who deliberately refuses to pay from the one whom the procedures and the deprivation have robbed of his ability to earn a living, and that the causes of that inability (deprivation of the bond, length of the procedures) be addressed instead of relying on repression alone.