Jeffery Leving comes across in person as low-key, almost self-effacing. There’s a kind of gentle unobtrusiveness in his manner–as if he would go to great lengths not to offend. You will find none of the abrasive, state-your-business-because-time-is-money manner typical of high-powered attorneys. Nor will you find indications of the neater-than-thou sterility of great corporate law offices at Leving’s headquarters near Madison and Clark. Like the chief proprietor, everything is a bit rumpled, askew, and out in the open. Nonetheless, this soft-spoken, 38-year-old man with a receding hairline, tired eyes, and an expansive mustache tirelessly promotes his law firm through ads and news releases, has appeared on dozens of radio and television shows, and is involved in a multimillion-dollar suit against Geraldo Rivera.
Leving is a cowriter of the Illinois Joint Custody bill, which allows a judge, after granting a divorce, to assign equal responsibility to both parents for the raising of their children. And he is credited with generating much of the pressure that got the bill passed through the General Assembly in 1985. Today Leving is an advocate of other initiatives that are far from universally popular: the rights of grandparents to maintain close contact with their grandchildren even when a parent is opposed; the right of a male parent to have a say in his partner’s decision regarding an abortion; the need for the legal system to punish, by fines or prison, mothers who deny child visitation to their former husbands.
She discusses a recent difficult case in which she fought successfully for a father’s joint custody of the children. “I know the father,” she says, “and personally I think he’s a schmuck. But he’s their father, and those kids need their father.”
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Theoretically, of course, the law’s inequity has no sex bias. A father with custody has the same right to free assistance from the state’s attorney if the mother reneges on child support. However, notes Leving, the courts invariably take a softer approach with a delinquent mother, since society says support is, after all, basically the man’s job; if a mother is not paying, there’s an assumption that she can’t help it. Besides, a study of noncustodial mothers published in 1988 found that the overwhelming majority were not required by courts to pay any child support.
Dr. Robert Fay, a leader of the National Congress of Men and a longtime Leving admirer, says the standard of visitation rights in American society is “outrageous and blatantly sexist.” Fay is an Albany, New York, pediatrician who is as acerbic in his comments as Leving is reserved. The very term visitation is “foul and disgusting,” he says. “A visitor is, by definition, an outsider. He has no concern for the educational, medical, or other needs of a child. And that’s just how visitation is understood. I say fathers don’t need or want visitation time; they need parenting time!”
In fact, Leving cites the case of George Ford, a Chicago man who had been granted custody of his two children at the time of his divorce. When he moved to Will County from Chicago, he did not immediately inform his ex-wife, who was living in Florida. She went to court, claiming child concealment. The judge saw fit to take the children away from the father and award full custody to the mother. “You can see,” says Leving, “where the presumption of the law lies.”
The issue at hand is whether Argos should be denied all rights of visitation to his two children, ages six and seven, whom he has seen only once in the past nine months. The judge, Everette Braden, an elderly, somber man, exudes patience and forbearance. With Gull at his side, Varchetto seeks from the judge a ruling on a petition he filed weeks ago. It presents a decidedly unsavory picture of Argos: He is “believed to be involved in illegal activities,” he has “been stabbed eight times,” he was “physically abusive” of Gull, he hasn’t paid child support, he hasn’t obtained medical insurance for the kids. And then the clincher: he has sexually abused the children. Varchetto and his client want a trial right now on the issues; the witnesses are rarin’ to go.
