State Continues as Custody Battlefield : Families: Recent legislative gains by fathers have triggered increased lobbying on behalf of mothers’ rights.

Dena Haywood figured a good wife had no other choice. When her husband was transferred to Ohio last year from Southern California, she planned to pack up her 8-year-old son from a previous marriage and follow.

But her ex-husband, Robert Gawel, didn’t want his boy whisked across the country, out of touch, virtually out of his life. So he took it to court. For the next six months, Haywood had to remain behind with the child to fight the case.

Her persistence paid off. Faced with years of litigation, Gawel ultimately relented and agreed to limit his time with the boy to the summer and long holidays. “One of us had to give in and sacrifice something very deeply,” he said. “This is the most devastating loss of my life.”

Such sad struggles in divorce-rife California are fanning a fierce debate in the state Capitol over the dissolution of marriage. Like two icebergs grinding past one another, opposing camps representing men and women are waging a battle of the sexes in Sacramento, one that is reshaping divorce and its often-messy aftermath.

California has long set trends in family law, ranging from the state’s landmark no-fault divorce decree signed in 1969 to the recent debate over surrogate parenthood. The coming months may bring further changes in the arrangements of family life after divorce. Debate has roamed from the proper level of child support to a redefinition of joint custody to legislation making it easier for Dena Haywood and others to move children far from an ex-spouse.

The most vocal participants of late have been advocates for fathers. Emboldened by the emerging ethos of the men’s movement, they are beating a drum of protest in Capitol corridors in hopes of giving dads a better deal in divorce. These fathers say they are tired of being relegated to the role of Disneyland dad or maligned as deadbeats. The middle-class man of the ‘90s, they contend, yearns for a role as nurturer--even after divorce.

“We need to bring the father back to the family,” said state Sen. Charles M. Calderon (D-Whittier), the Legislature’s guru of the men’s movement and himself a survivor of an ugly divorce. “In divorce as in marriage, the family needs the father.”

Women’s advocates don’t quibble on that point, but say that divorced men often fail to hold up their end of the bargain on matters ranging from paying for a child’s health care to changing diapers. They are also worried that hard-fought victories by custodial mothers over the past decade are suddenly at risk.

“There’s just too much attention and deference being given to what fathers are calling father’s rights,” said Sheila Kuehl, an attorney with the California Women’s Law Center. “That’s not the touchstone of family law. The touchstone is what’s best for the children.”

Of late, the fireworks are flying over child support. Reacting to federal orders, California has hiked the rates twice since 1991. In some cases support levels rose by as much as 500%.

Advocates for fathers argue that the payments now are ridiculously high and represent a form of back-door alimony. They also complain that their new wives and children suffer because of the extra financial burden, and some say they’ve even contemplated leaving the state to avoid the boosted payments.

A few have already left. After being laid off from a Southern California aerospace firm, Peter Richardson moved to Las Vegas to be closer to his young children from a short-lived marriage--and to escape California’s child support law. “When I was paying $500 a month, I agree, it needed to be raised,” said Richardson, who saw his monthly payment more than double. “But I got slammed.”

Women’s advocates see it far differently. Men like Richardson, they say, were getting off easy before, and the increase finally brought the payments in line with the state’s high cost of living and the price of raising children.

They also argue that the welfare of the original family should be the first consideration for men who have remarried. “You can’t expect to have two families for the price of one,” said Blanche C. Bersche, president of the Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law, which provides low-income legal aid in Los Angeles County.

Irked fathers prodded legislators to introduce several bills this year to mitigate the effects of the new support rules. Advocates for mothers responded with measures of their own, including one by Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) that would have required an ex-spouse to continue child support payments past age 18 if a teen-ager went to college.

The issue has grown so polarized that the debate on almost every proposal is riddled with bitterness, and most of the legislation has either been scuttled or held over until next year. Watson’s college-support bill, for instance, was thumped in the Senate. Meanwhile, a measure by Assemblyman Trice Harvey (R-Bakersfield) allowing fathers to phase in the support hike became embroiled in an emotional discussion before it finally escaped the Assembly floor earlier this month.

Calderon has fared better, pushing forward a bill that would restrict judges from considering a second spouse’s income when computing child support awards. And he sees bigger things ahead--specifically a meatier role for fathers on the custody front.

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It’s not a new fight. Lawmakers in California pioneered the concept of joint custody in 1980, figuring it would allow divorced parents to share equally in the upbringing of their children. In practice it became yet another battleground for the sexes. Trouble erupted when judges began interpreting the law as favoring joint custody over the objections of one parent, usually the mother. Women’s rights advocates responded by successfully pushing through a 1988 amendment requiring approval by both parents.

Calderon sees the amendment as a ghastly retrenchment and plans to write a law that would plow new turf by presuming men and women should share physical custody. Not only does the arrangement promote needed paternal nurturing, he said, but studies have demonstrated that fathers sharing custody have a far better track record for making support payments.

“I think men are changing, and I don’t think the laws or institutions are keeping pace with that change,” Calderon said. “We need to bust the myth that men are incapable of raising children.”

Feminists say such assessments are true to an extent, but suggest the utopian vision of equality between the sexes has yet to be realized in practical terms. Women invariably end up doing most of the nurturing--and many men simply use custody as a bargaining chip in child support disputes, they argue.

Kuehl calls joint custody “a social experiment” that has not worked and leaves children feeling rootless. Instead of being liberating, it’s expensive, emotionally wrenching and a logistic nightmare for both parents and children.

Even some who think men should have a better deal in custody battles say splitting the kids between two homes can prove sticky. “It’s a mixed deal,” said Ray Dapp, whose two children--a boy, 12, and a 10-year-old girl--commute from his Huntington Beach home to his ex-wife in Torrance for weekends. “I used to think in idealistic terms that it would work out, but in a divorce situation, where you’re not communicating that well to begin with, it’s expecting a lot. It’s just a rare case that works.”

Dapp said his two children seem fine--they get straight As and are good athletes. But he worries that the arrangement will eventually create problems. Snags crop up between the parents over everything from haircuts to discipline differences. For the children, loyalties to one parent or the other can be torn. They also experience the childhood trauma of leaving behind school friends on weekends.

“If they gave frequent flyer miles for traveling the 405 Freeway, my kids would have enough bonus miles to go anywhere in the world,” Dapp said.

While the joint custody debate simmers, lawmakers are grappling with a pair of bills that address the plight of people--like Dena Haywood--held back from moving because of child custody conflicts with a former spouse.

Recent court cases have been “so punitive” that custodial parents, typically mothers, are “in effect made prisoners,” shackled to the state or town where their ex-spouse lives, Bersche said. Such arrangements, she and others argue, can end up harming children by causing stress in both homes.

Moreover, interpretations of the law vary from judge to judge. “It comes out to a simple crapshoot, a matter of which judge you get,” said Dorothy Jonas of the Coalition for Family Equity, which is sponsoring the legislation.

After battling to move away with her child, Haywood approves of bills pushed by Watson in the Senate and Assemblywoman Hilda L. Solis (D-El Monte) that would put the onus on the dissenting parent to show concrete reasons why the move should not occur. “There cannot be any room left for question or interpretation by a judge,” Haywood said. “It can just wreak havoc in everybody’s life.”

Her ex-spouse, Gawel, maintains that such decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis. Gawel, a Redlands resident, said “blanket laws that cover everything” do not allow for the many nuances that can characterize life after divorce--like the bond between a father and son being shattered by distance.

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“This will definitely change my relationship with my son,” Gawel said of the 2,500 miles that now separate him from the boy. “I won’t be able to watch him go through a season of Little League, I won’t be able to monitor how he grows up and how he matures and develops. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll be with him when he loses a tooth or experiences some other first instead of hearing about it long distance.”

Even as Sacramento tussles over the parameters of family law, some experts say the biggest problem lurks within the courts themselves. In divorce and child custody cases in particular, “we’re getting a generation of litigants who prepared their legal papers on the kitchen table with a ballpoint pen,” said Alameda Superior Court Judge Roderic Duncan. He speculates that half the family law cases in the state do not involve lawyers, usually because of the expense.

Some suggest that the only solution is to funnel more cases through less-costly mediation, where disputes can be more easily resolved without the adversarial psychology of the courtroom. Currently, the state requires mediation only in child custody disputes. “Step by step, given our diminishing judicial resources, we’ll see a move to mediation of more issues,” said Justice Vance Raye, a state appeals judge in Sacramento helping study court changes needed through the year 2020.

Even as the Legislature churns out new laws and the courts grapple with the load of divorce and custody cases, some believe real solutions will come only as men and women edge closer to settling their longtime tug-of-war over equality.

“As the world changes and opportunities for women in the workplace improve, it will have an effect on the battle between the sexes in the divorce realm,” said Kate Sproul, California legislative director for the National Organization for Women. “I think things like who gets the kids will be settled a lot more equitably.”

Times researcher Sheila A. Kern contributed to this story.