State Affiliates Leadership Report of the First Meeting

To: National Parents Organization Affiliates Leadership From: Rita Fuerst Adams, National Parents Organization The first meeting of National Parents Organization Affiliates leadership was held via conference call Thursday evening, November 6th. Forty volunteer leaders from twenty-three states participated to learn about National Parents Organization’s goal to introduce Shared Parenting in Temporary Custody Orders in 2015 and National Parents Organization’s work to grade child custody statutes in every state. National Parents Organization is asking each of our state affiliates to: Commit to introducing shared parenting in temporary custody orders in 2015. Contact Rita Fuerst Adams NOW if your National Parents Organization affiliate is committed to working with us on this. Participate in rolling our grade for child custody statutes in your state. Our PR consultant, Burton Taylor, will work with you to place Op Eds in your local media. National Parents Organization conducted this study to respond to questions from legislators and to promote the scope of the issue with the media. Again, contact Rita Fuerst Adams NOW to let us know you are ready to participate. Meet, via conference call, to report on our progress, at 6 pm, Eastern, Tuesday, December 16th. In 2015, Affiliate leaders will meet quarterly. Please note that all materials that you need for introducing shared parenting in temporary custody orders are on Sharepoint. Look in the National Library for the folder Shared Parenting in Temporary Custody Orders. The list of affiliate leaders is there too.   Summary of November 6th meeting: Ned Holstein, Chair and Founder, joined the meeting early to welcome volunteers and to speak about the upcoming Divorce Corp. conference. He encouraged our leaders to attend informing us that it is a great opportunity to meet each other and to learn more about our issues. National Parents Organization is hosting a reception on Saturday evening, November 15th. Please let Rita Fuerst Adams know that you are attending Divorce Corp. conference so we know to look for you. Don Hubin, Chair, Executive Committee, National Parents Organization of Ohio; and member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization addressed the importance of shared parenting in temporary custody orders and why National Parents Organization is making this our priority. At the early stage of parental separation, children are concerned that they are losing one of their parents. Beginning with an assumption of shared parenting is helpful to our children. Ideally parents should cooperate but we know this does not happen. Children need both of their parents to help them in this adjustment period. Not awarding shared parenting in temporary custody is a major impediment to not awarding in permanent custody orders. When shared parenting in permanent orders is routinely opposed by judicial organizations, we are told it is because we cannot have a presumption. We cannot have cookie cutter orders. Judges use this to work against us. But, for establishing temporary orders, the court does not know anything about the case. So, the judges cannot go before the legislature and say they need to make the decision in the best interest of the children because they do not have any information to make such a decision. Awarding shared parenting in temporary custody orders provides a testing ground and parents will have to stand up and prove they want it. Alaska is the only state with shared parenting in Temporary Custody Orders Oklahoma used to have such verbiage, but reverted on this, so research WHY it didn’t work in Oklahoma Only 6 states have statutes that say courts CAN award shared parenting in Temporary Custody Orders: Alaska Georgia (National Parents Organization Affiliate) Illinois Kansas Oklahoma Washington (National Parents Organization Affiliate) Only 4 states have statutes that ALLOW a presumption of joint/shared custody in Permanent Orders: Arizona DC Iowa New Mexico Establishing shared parenting in temporary orders is critical to establishing shared parenting in permanent orders Strategic Reasons for Establishing Shared Parenting in Temporary Orders: Judges state that they don’t want shared parenting as the norm, because each situation is different and they want to have the purview to make decisions in the best interests of the children involved. While that may be their intent, the reality is that, during the process of establishing a Temporary Custody Order, judges have no substantive evidence, other than brief statements from each party, on which to base the wording of the Temporary Custody Order. Puts both parents to the test: During the time period that the Temporary Custody Order is in place, judges will see exactly how serious each parent is in being a shared parent for their children and with the other parent. Need to address the issue of domestic abuse and/or violence: DV abuse exception should be allowed only when there is credible and evidentiary proof of said DA/DV. We want to protect our children and other victims, but also guard against false allegations for the purpose of establishing sole custody even during temporary custody orders. For any false allegations made knowingly or recklessly, we need to establish some sort of judicial response, in order to safeguard the judicial process. In Mississippi: If allegations are found to be without foundation, then the party, who made the false allegations, pays all court costs and attorney fees to the other party. Also ensure to award compensating time to the falsely-accused parent, who has lost time with their child as a result of the false allegation. Matt Hale, chair, Executive Committee, National Parents Organization of Kentucky, addressed how he has been working in Kentucky to promote shared parenting in temporary custody orders. Matt said that his representative emailed the legislation to his local family court judge. This judge spoke well of it and agreed with introducing shared parenting in temporary custody orders. His bill died in committee because a line was added to it. It spoke to parents having the financial resources, without this could not get shared parenting. He got the line removed and Kentucky has refiled the legislation. Curtis Vandermolen, member, Executive Committee, National Parents Organization of California, spoke to his history of 10 years working with the legislature. Reminded people to be attuned to their states own culture. It can impact strategy. Noted that Matt spoke well about introducing a bill in Kentucky and much of this will work in most states. He reminded people to know the deadline. If you miss deadline may push your work to the following year. Best to have someone in your committee to work on questions. Ok, to say you do not know and get back to the legislator later. Recommended getting. Good to meet with the staff. They are first line to educate. Reminded members to remember the Governor. Still needed even if you have strong voice with legislators. California has been working for the past year to introduce shared parenting in temporary custody. Good contacts to make in the process of introducing legislation: Your local representatives Judiciary Committee members Other allies: PTAs, School Boards, etc. Burton spoke about the national grade card and why this is important for our work and our media strategy. It is going live the week of November 10th and is going to key target media. National Parents Organization’s 2014 Shared Parenting Report Card is the first national study to provide a comprehensive ranking of the states on their child custody statutes, assessing them primarily on the degree to which they promote shared parenting after divorce or separation. This study was motivated by the tremendous impact our nation’s family courts have on children whose parents are divorced or separated, and also by recent consensus statements by leading child development research organizations that confirm children thrive with shared parenting following separation or divorce. National Parents Organization evaluated each state’s child custody statute to instances of divorce to determine its grade. In 45 states, the statute also includes custody determination for nonmarital children. This is important to note because, according to recent U.S. Health and Human Services data, nearly 40% of children in our nation are born to unmarried parents. As a result of our research, National Parents Organization found that a majority of states received poor grades on shared parenting statutes.

Some Quick Advice

1. A judge is unlikely to *order* shared parenting, meaning tell the parents that they must share parenting responsibilities equally. They will, however, often sign and endorse shared parenting agreements that parents agree to on their own. So you likely must negotiate for it, or agree to it, on your own terms.
*Why* judges are currently unlikely to order this custody arrangement is discussed in, among other sources, Edward Kruk's work: http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/edward-kruk-phd

2. In a parenting plan, settlement, there is no need for anyone to be called the "primary physical custodian," *except* the child support worksheet. In shared parenting, there is no primary physical custodian, and the law does not require that there be one. Nearly all discussions of the issues assume that there must be a primary physical custodian, but there need not be, except for the child support worksheet.

3. The child support worksheet, however, does currently require that there be a "primary physical custodian." This complicates factors since it attempts to generate financial obligations based on the assumption that one parent has the child(ren) most of the time. And there is no systematic way to deviate from that presumption: no schedule E deviations are determined by any standard method. So there is no standard method to calculate any child support obligations in a 50%-50% custody arrangement. For discussion and guidance, see the economist Mark Rogers: http://rogerseconomics.com/

See also
https://www.nationalparentsorganization.org/blog/21453-how-to-calculate-child-support-in-shared-parenting-cases

Since the primary physical custodian tends to receive a financial benefit from having this designation, this discourages shared parenting: the parent who would receive these funds might resist shared parenting so as to receive this financial benefit. And the parent who is seeking the deviation might be discouraged since, even though she (or he) has her (or his) children 50% of the time, she pays the amount of child support that would be due if she (or he) had the children rarely, e.g., every other weekend. The child support system should readily accommodate shared parenting by developing a systematic way to determine child support in an equal, shared custody arrangement.

From the Baltimore Sun

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-child-custody-20141008,0,2573219.story

Joint custody should be the rule, not the exception [Commentary]

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By Ned Holstein

12:24 p.m. EDT, October 8, 2014

A little-noticed research revolution confirms that our family courts are damaging the health of our children on a daily basis.

In 2014, three separate and independent groups of experts reviewed decades of child development research. They found that after parents separate or divorce, children do much better with shared parenting — joint custody — on multiple measures of wellbeing than with single parenting. Yet in more than eight out of 10 custody cases today, one parent (usually the mother) is awarded sole guardianship.

The negative impact on our children is dramatic. For instance, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Census Bureau, children raised by single parents account for:

•63 percent of teen suicides,

•70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions,

•71 percent of high school dropouts,

•75 percent of children in chemical abuse centers,

•85 percent of those in prison,

•85 percent of children who exhibit behavioral disorders

•And 90 percent of homeless and runaway children.

Last year's formation of Gov. O'Malley's Commission on Child Custody Decision Making is a promising start to tackling the problem. However, much work remains to ensure that more children experience the benefits of shared parenting, which include fewer behavioral and emotional problems, higher self-esteem, better family relations and better school performance than children in sole custody arrangements, according to 2002 Maryland research. Psychologist Robert Bauserman, then of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, conducted a meta-analysis of 33 studies between 1982 to 1999 that examined 1,846 sole-custody and 814 joint-custody children and found that children in joint custody arrangements were as well adjusted as intact family children on the same measures.

As the International Council on Shared Parenting put it in July, "shared parenting is a viable post-divorce parenting arrangement that is optimal to child development and well-being, including for children of high conflict parents." This represented the consensus of nearly 100 experts from over 20 countries. Similar sentiments were recently expressed by the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts ("Children's best interests are furthered by parenting plans that provide for continuing and shared parenting relationships "), and by 110 experts around the world who endorsed a consensus statement published in February the journal of the American Psychological Association ("shared parenting should be the norm").

Shared parenting is also better for parents. The claim is often made that joint custody exposes children to ongoing parental conflict. In fact, the studies in Mr. Bauserman's review found lower levels of conflict with shared parenting, possibly by disposing of the winner-loser feelings that come with a sole custody decision. Shared parenting also gives each parent a break from continuous child care responsibilities.

Towson dad Mark Cyzyk reports that, "12 years out" his teen-aged daughter is thriving. She recently brought home straight A's, has a good group of friends and appears well adjusted. "For as far back as she can remember," Mr. Cyzyk said, "she's had two homes, two extended families, and now with remarriages that's four extended families, all of whom care for her deeply. I couldn't be more proud of her and am lucky to have been awarded shared physical custody years ago. But I should not have had to rely on luck — nor should she."

And neither should the other Maryland children whose parents separate or divorce. The alternative to reform in Maryland is a continuation of the one-size-fits-all tradition of giving sole custody to one parent. This is the outcome in more than 80 percent of cases, so that 35 percent of American children are being raised by only one parent, according to the U.S Census Bureau. In some cases, one parent has walked away from the children. But in most cases, the family courts have created a sole custody arrangement even though both parents are fit and both wish to remain closely involved with their children.

Governor O'Malley's commission holds out hope that family structure after separation or divorce will become part of Maryland's dialogue about children's health, emotional balance, educational difficulties, substance abuse problems, bullying and violence. Family court reforms that return both parents to 35 percent of our children where possible would help them in all these realms at no cost to the taxpayer, while bringing children what they most want: two loving parents actively involved in their lives.

Dr. Ned Holstein is founder and chair of National Parents Organization, which has an affiliate in Maryland. His email is nedholstein@nationalparentsorganization.org.

From The Federalist

• PARENTING

What ‘New’ Studies Say Is Best For Children Of Fractured Homes

Trading weekends is out. Children need open access to both parents.

By Leslie Loftis

OCTOBER 6, 2014

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What is the best custody arrangement for children after divorce? Most of us outside of family lawyers and courts don’t think about that question until we are faced with it. And then adults tend to choose administrative stability, figuring the kids are as exhausted and spent as themselves. Children of divorce face such an upheaval that it makes sense to adults that the children need time to rest and recover, and so we prioritize routine.

Certainly our custody assumptions support this kind of stability. Typically, one parent gets primary custody, while the other gets Wednesday evenings, every other weekend, half the summer, and alternating holidays. This is so normalized that I was recently encouraged to host a women’s event on Wednesday night because that’s when the kids of divorce are with their dads. It is widespread and predictable.

But those custody norms are informed by old research. We have new research now. In fact, we have enough research that we have long-term studies of children of divorce and meta studies—studies of those studies, a few of which I covered here last summer.

Grant Children Their Rights, Too

What children want and what children need—what they see as stability—is open access to both parents. From a 2000 paper by William V. Fabricus and Jeffery Hall onyoung adult perspectives on living arrangements after a divorce, reporting on their follow-up in the late ’90s with children of divorce they had studied in the ’70s:

Earlier research on younger children’s perspectives on living arrangements has demonstrated that children desire free and frequent access to noncustodial parents. For example, Rosen (1979) found that 60% of children wanted unrestricted contact, regardless of whether the noncustodial parent was mother or father. Children repeatedly insisted that being able to see the noncustodial parents whenever they wished and being able to see that parent often made their parents’ divorces tolerable for them.

Kelly and Wallerstein (1977) reported that young children viewed the typical every-other-weekend visitation arrangement as severely inadequate. ‘The only younger children reasonably content with the visiting situation were those 7- and 8-year-olds visiting 2 or 3 times a week, most often by pedaling to their father’s apartment on a bicycle’ (p. 52).

…The perspectives of young children, although compelling, have not had much influence in public policy debates about custody and visitation. Young children’s feelings may be suspected of being relatively temporary, malleable, and ultimately not strongly connected to measurable outcomes. The public policy debate about custody and visitation has generally been framed in terms of parents’ (and, most recently, grandparents’) rights rather than children’s wishes (Mason, 1999). Thus, it is important that Wallerstein and Lewis (1998) have recently reported on the longitudinal follow-up of the perspectives of these children now that they are adults. Their report is based on a subsample of 25 respondents who were the youngest (now ages 27 to 32) in the longitudinal study.

Wallerstein and Lewis (1998) found that many of their respondents reported that their visitation schedules with their fathers had been too disruptive and too inflexible and that when this was true they got little enjoyment or benefit from visitation in the way of enhanced relationships with their fathers. As adults, they feel strongly now, as they did then, that their wishes should have been taken into account, and they remain angry and resentful that they were not.

But the children’s desires have had a hard time breaking through the conventional wisdom. Myths about single-adult attachment and simple routines persist. Considering the relative advantages for children of intact families, that children need both parents should not surprise us. Yet it does.

Historical and Practical Ruts

Divorce wasn’t commonplace until the 1970’s. Before then, social scientists studied orphaned children and mother and young child attachment. Mothers were the primary caregivers of children, so studying them first made sense. Then, when the divorce rate spiked, courts didn’t have other information to advise them about the best custody arrangements for children. They granted primary mother care based on the only available research and the prevailing cultural practice. Then social science started to study the effects of a fractured family or father absence.

Courts should grant shared custody to divorcing parents unless presented with clear and convincing evidence this arrangement is not in the best interest of the child.

After about four decades of such studies, we have another answer to “What is best for the children?” (Or really we find another example of being led astray by partial data that our common sense should have warned us to be wary of back in the ’70s.) Absent extenuating circumstances such as abuse, children want and children need open access to both parents.

Advocacy groups for children of fractured homes are opening all over the world trying to break though the old myths with the new studies. They typically seek a presumption of shared parenting rather than the current unstated presumption of primary maternal custody, which covers for an epidemic of familial alienation when the sole-custody parent restricts visitation by other family members.

Simply, courts should grant shared custody, roughly 60 to 40 percent splits of time, to divorcing parents unless presented with clear and convincing evidence that this arrangement is not in the best interest of the child. Abuse, addiction, instability—evidence of each could prompt the court to grant custody to one parent. The court would simply start from the idea that the child should have time with each parent.

The Opposition: Lawyers and Feminists

As simple and logical as that presumption sounds, the two main groups actively resistant to shared parenting make for powerful opposition: lawyers and, paradoxically, feminists. That lawyers oppose shared parenting makes sense. Shared parenting arrangements tend to reduce parental conflict and therefore the continued need for lawyers and their fees. (See generally, the myths link above, page 3 and studies cited in footnotes 16-21.) But feminists, a group often heard demanding more domestic participation from fathers and who we might expect to vehemently object to the old legal assumptions that expect the mother to provide primary care for children, their opposition to shared parenting makes no sense.

In other contexts, feminists complain about the cultural assumptions of childrearing putting an unfair burden on women, but when the law tries to redress that burden and demand that parents share in childrearing, then feminists object. Why? Since courts have overwhelmingly awarded primary custody to mothers in the past, feminists see shared parenting as part of the men’s rights movement. They object to shared parenting as men trying to usurp women’s power by trying to assume the parental responsibility women normally assume, as an attempt to lower child support payments, and as society failing to protect women from abusive men. A particularly tight contortion in reasoning from a recommendation of the National Association of Women and the Law in Canada, where a shared parenting law was defeated back in May:

In fact, as long as women remain the primary caregivers of children, women’s equality is in the best interests of children, and law reform can and must simultaneously take into account and promote both the best interests of children and the equality interests of women.

So while the assumptions about mother care hold, then the assumptions should be followed? I thought feminism was, partially, about breaking assumptions about women’s roles. (Pause here for a moment to ponder that although non-feminists keep getting lectured about how feminism isn’t anti-men, their actions suggest otherwise. They turn their own goals inside-out for simple spite.)

Playing to type, in the North Dakota political battle over the “new and improved” Measure 6, the only active vote for a presumption for shared parenting in this U.S. election cycle, the group running the opposition campaign is all lawyers plus a male pastor and a female domestic violence advocate—and they seem to be using State Bar resources to oppose the legislation. The group that sponsored the measure, however, isn’t the stereotypical men’s rights groups. That group is all women.

Shared parenting is about family.

There are many fathers’ rights groups who support shared parenting, of course, but that is only because fathers are usually the alienated parent. I’m a member of Leading Women for Shared Parenting and the stories we receive in that organization are overwhelmingly from women. Some are mothers who hardly see their children. Others are grandmothers and aunts who cannot see their grandchildren, nieces, or nephews, because their son or brother is denied access to his children. The heartache strains other family relationships, like the distraught father who avoids talking to his mother so he can keep his angst from overflowing or the mortified sister who inadvertently posted a FB link that upset the alienating parent and ended the little contact her brother had with his children.

Shared parenting isn’t about fathers’ rights. It isn’t even just about children’s rights, although their hurts are certainly the deepest because they last a lifetime. Shared parenting is about family. Divorce is hard enough, severing the family’s spirit. Physically splitting the family as a matter of course means those spiritual wounds cannot heal for anyone, especially the children.

It is time to stop playing money and politics over children from fractured homes. They have enough to deal with. We should do what is best for them. And the four decades of studies really just tell us what we intuitively know: Children need their parents—both of them.

Misunderstandings about Mandates versus Presumptions, Again

The Ordway Law Group of Atlanta recently posted a blog entry entitled, "Georgia child custody still based on best interest of the child." They write (emphasis mine):

Throughout the country, including in Georgia, there are groups that are lobbying state legislatures for passage of laws that will make it mandatory for shared custody or joint custody arrangements to be ordered by the courts. 

A technical glitch with their blog prevented comments from being accepted to be posted. I emailed my post in but didn't get a reply. Unfortunately my original response was lost, but I basically said this:

You write that "there are groups that are lobbying state legislatures for passage of laws that will make it mandatory for shared custody or joint custody arrangements to be ordered by the courts."  

I study these issues and know of no such group that is seeking that shared or joint custody be mandatory or required. Who would argue that, irrespective of any circumstances, some custody arrangement be mandatory, that a judge must order that custody arrangement (irrespective of the judge's judgment about the case)?? Nobody. If you can point to any people or groups who actually seek this, please let me know, since I believe there are no such people or organizations.  

Rather, people and organizations seek a shared parenting presumption, which is entirely different from a 'mandate.'  They argue that equality -- that is, equal physical and legal custody -- should be the standard or starting point: the ‘burden of proof’ is on anyone seeking a non-equal custody arrangement.  

I hope that your readers, clients and potential clients will appreciate this correction concerning what advocates for shared or equal parenting actual argue for.  

This is the second instance that I've seen of an attorney claiming that people organizations advocate for a shared parenting mandate, when none of them do. I wonder what's the motivation for this misunderstanding or misrepresentation.

Recommended Readings

Braver, Sanford L. Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1998. 

Hubin, Donald C. “Daddy Dilemmas: Untangling the Puzzles of Paternity.” The Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy 13 (2003): 29–80. 

———. “Parental Rights and Due Process.” The Journal of Law and Family Studies 1 (1999): 123.

Kruk, Edward. “Arguments for an Equal Parental Responsibility Presumption in Contested Child Custody.” The American Journal of Family Therapy 40, no. 1 (January 2012): 33–55. doi:10.1080/01926187.2011.575344. 

———. The Equal Parent Presumption: Social Justice in the Legal Determination of Parenting after Divorce, 2013. 

Nielsen, Linda. “Parenting Time & Shared Residential Custody: Ten Common Myths.” The Nebraska Lawyer, February 2013. http://www.osbar.org/_docs/sections/family/FamilyLaw_2013Feb.pdf. 

———. “Shared Residential Custody: Review of the Research (Part II of II).” American Journal of Family Law 27, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 123–37. 

———. “Shared Residential Custody: Review of the Research (Part I of II).” American Journal of Family Law, 2013. http://lw4sp.org/s/Nielsen_2013_ajfl-published.pdf  

Warshak, Richard A. “Social Science and Parenting Plans for Young Children: A Consensus Report.” Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 20, no. 1 (2014): 46–67. doi:10.1037/law0000005.

Child Support and Shared Parenting

HOW TO CALCULATE CHILD SUPPORT IN SHARED PARENTING CASES

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January 14, 2014 by Don Hubin, PhD, Chair, Executive Committee, National Parents Organization of Ohio

Many don’t realize that our modern (and I use the term advisedly) federal child support system is an outgrowth of the welfare system. It was not originally designed for cases of divorce; it was originally designed to ensure that those men who had sired children assume financial responsibility for them. (I say ‘sired’ instead of ‘fathered’ because fathering is much more than causing a pregnancy.) It is because of this heritage that child support agencies often used to refer to obligors as “Absent Parents”. This label is seldom used outside the agencies anymore; it caused some measure of offense, which seemed to surprise the child support agencies. (I remember vividly coming home one night to cook dinner for my kids, help them with their homework, put them to bed and, finally, get a chance to open my mail, only to find a letter from my friendly child support agency addressed with the salutation, “Dear Absent Parent”. when I complained, the director of the agency asked me what I wanted to be called. I said, “father”.) The legacy lives on, hidden from public eyes, in many child support computer systems that designate obligors as ‘AP’s.

This history of the federal child support system affects more than just the way that child support agencies look at and label child support obligors. In many states, it affects the way child support is thought of and how it is calculated. The child support calculations used in many states assume that child support obligors have no direct expenses on their children; they are assumed to be genuinely absent parents. Furthermore, often the methodology used to calculate child support is hostile to true shared parenting.

In some states, for example, shared parenting is treated as an instance of “extended visitation”. One parent is treated as the custodial parent and the other as noncustodial for child support purposes, and then a deviation (adjustment) is made to acknowledge the extended parenting time. This happens even if the two parents share parenting time and expenses equally and have similar incomes. The results are often bizarre. In one Ohio case, for example, the parent with the lower income was designated the obligor and the result was, though the parents divided the children’s time and expenses equally, that parent was ordered to pay child support to the parent with the higher income, resulting in further disparity between the two homes. (This case is discussed, with citations, in the first two documents available on this page: https://sites.google.com/site/hubincase/legislative-efforts.)

Some people believe that in shared parenting cases, there should be no child support obligation at all. But this ignores the fact that the parents might have very different resources and, even though they’re sharing custody, different expenses on the children.

How should child support be calculated in shared parenting cases? I’ve thought a fair bit about this because it was the issue in my own divorce that I took to the Ohio Supreme Court. Conceptually, it’s not that complicated. A reasonable and justified estimate needs to be made of the costs necessary to raise the children in a manner appropriate given the parents financial resources. That constitutes the parents’ combined child support obligation. The obligation to contribute toward that sum should be apportioned between the parents based on their ability to pay. (This might sound like communism — “from each according to his/her ability” — but it concerns only the distribution of child rearing costs within the family and I’ve heard no one argue that support of one’s own children should be subject to a laissez faire marketplace.) Then, that sum should be divided between the two parents’ homes based on the anticipated expenses on the children.

This approach gets the result right. Consider a few test cases. Suppose that mom and dad have equal incomes and expenses on the children. In such a case, neither should be paying child support to the other. “No child support!” you can almost hear some people shriek. But this doesn’t mean “no child support”; it means no child support transfer payment. The children are supported by each parent directly and there is no need for a transfer payment between the parents. Suppose, now, that the parents have equal incomes but one parent has substantially higher child costs than the other — perhaps because the time isn’t divided equally or perhaps because that parent is paying for child care, lessons, private school, or whatever. In this case, the parent with the lower direct child-related costs would make a child support transfer payment to the parent with the higher costs. This transfer payment is made so that each parent makes an equal contribution to the support of the children. Now suppose that one parent has far higher income than the other but they have equal time and expenses on the children. In this case, the higher earning parent would make a transfer payment to the other parent. This isn’t in order to equalize the incomes in the homes. It is to assign to that parent his or her fair share of the combined cost of raising the children.

This approach seems so obviously sensible to most people that it’s surprising how foreign it is to those involved in setting and enforcing child support obligations. Surprising, that is, until you realize that the federal child support system was designed to ferret out scofflaws and ne’re-do-wells who abandon their children and get money from them in order to relieve the taxpayers of some of the cost of raising their people’s children. It was not designed originally to handle the cases of divorces and separations where both parents have been, and hope to continue to be, involved in raising their children. It doesn’t deal particularly well with these cases, which is why National Parents Organization is dedicated to changing child support laws and policies in ways that will promote, rather than inhibit, true shared parenting.

NATIONAL PARENTS ORGANIZATION IS A SHARED PARENTING ORGANIZATION

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

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#DonHubin, #Ohio, #Welfaresystem, #Childsupport, #Divorce, #Separation, #Fathered, #Absentparents .

CREATING TRUE SHARED PARENTING IN AN UNFRIENDLY LEGAL ENVIRONMENT

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January 7, 2014 by Don Hubin, Chair, Executive Committee, National Parents Organization of Ohio

Many of us, unfortunately, live in states where statutory provisions and court practices make true shared parenting difficult to achieve. In my home state of Ohio, for example, there is no legal preference for shared parenting and many cases that are designated “shared parenting” are shared parenting in name only. Over the last two decades, many parents have shown me their shared parenting orders which, two pages into the order, say things like, “under this shared parenting plan, mother shall be the custodial and residential parent and father shall have parenting time with the children according to the following schedule.” These parents walked out of court, thinking they had true shared parenting only to realize later that they’d been sold the proverbial “pig in a poke.”

Even when both parents are clearly designated custodial and residential parents in their parenting plan, courts sometimes try to treat the parents unequally based on irrelevant asymmetries. For example, I’ve seen cases where the designation of one parent as the residential parent “for school placement purposes” was used to conclude that this parent was the sole custodial parent.

Those of us who are advocates for true shared parenting often find ourselves in a legal environment that is unfriendly to shared parenting. Such an environment can make true shared parenting harder to achieve. But there are strategies that can improve your chances of succeeding. Here are a few worth considering and discussing with your attorney.

The Basics:

• Explicit Designation of Residential Parent and Legal Custodian Status: Every plan for true shared parenting should explicitly designate each parent a residential parent and legal custodian of the minor children. The language doing this should be entirely symmetric. Avoid language such as “Father is the residential parent and legal custodian of the children except when the children are with Mother.” Instead, say, “Father and Mother are each designated residential parent and legal custodian of the children while the children are in their care.”


• Avoid Asymmetric Language in General: In any parenting plan, do not speak of the children “residing with” one parent and “visiting” the other parent. Children do not visit their parent. Do not use “parenting time” as a synonym for “visitation”. It is fine to use the term “parenting time”, but it should be used for the time with each parent, not just with one. Children do not live with one parent and have parenting time with the other; they reside with, live with, or have parenting time with eachparents according to a schedule.


• If Asymmetric Language is Necessary, Explicitly Limit Its Implication: When absolutely required to designate one parent “residential” for school placement purposes or for purposes of receiving public assistance benefits, explicitly limit the asymmetry to this function. Add language like, “…and for no other purposes.”

Pro-Active Strategies
In many states, courts have struggled with the issue of how to calculate presumptive (guideline) child support in shared parenting cases. Because of this, special attention needs to be given to crafting a shared parenting plan so that it will work as intended. Courts always retain the authority to adjust child support levels, and a victory for true shared parenting in the initial decree of divorce can be partially undone by later administrative and court actions if the shared parenting plan and other court documents are not carefully drafted.

• Maintain Symmetry in Child Support Worksheets and Deviation Entry: In many states, parents engaging in shared parenting must use the same worksheet used in sole custody cases. This presents an opportunity for asymmetries to enter and the equality of the shared parenting to be undermined. The child support amounts agreed to pursuant to a deviation from one parents’ child support obligation at one time may be very inappropriate at a later time when child support is recalculated. 
  
  One strategy for dealing with this problem is to complete and submit two child support worksheets, one designating the mother as the child support obligor and one designating the father as the child support obligor. This allows the court to see the effect calculating the child support obligation each way and helps combat the mindset that the only question is how much of a break to give dad when he’s an equal parent.


• Use “Nominal” Split Custody to Create “Real” Shared Parenting: When more than one child is subject to the parenting plan, it is possible to create true shared parenting by employing a split custody decree, a decree that designates each parent the sole custodial and residential parent for at least one child. This sounds like splitting up the children, Parent Trap style. In most cases, that would be a very bad solution; most children—especially those adjusting to a post-divorce living situation—need to maintain strong relationship with their siblings. But, split custody can be combined with a parenting plan that does not divide the children for parenting time and requires agreement between the two parents on all major decisions concerning the children. If this is done, the effect can be true shared parenting despite the fact that one parent is designated the sole residential parent and legal custodian for at least one child and the other parent is so designated for at least one child. This approach can help to achieve the proper outcome with respect to child support, too, since each parent will be the presumptive obligor for at least one child and each will be the presumptive recipient for at least one child. The court can then make an appropriate adjustment from these baselines.

National Parents Organization is working to make true shared parenting the default outcome when parents divorce or separate. I hope you’ll assist National Parents Organization in this worthy effort. Progress is being made but we have a long way to go still. In the meantime, parents need to recognize that many laws and practices of courts and government agencies create an unfriendly environment for true shared parenting. Parents need to take special care to ensure that true shared parenting can be achieved in such an environment.