Small-government conservatives have largely overlooked the fact that no branch of government other than the tax authorities intrudes more forcefully and intimately into the lives of Americans than do our nation’s family courts. And that where there is forceful intrusion, there is political opportunity — and danger for either party, if it allows the other to grab and run with the issue of family-court reform.
These courts routinely redistribute enormous amounts of wealth, destroy small businesses, mandate when and where parents can see their own children, order people to vacate their homes simply on the request of their former spouse, order people to sell their homes (sometimes unavoidably in an asset division, but often not), and even dictate whether they can change their careers by holding them to a demanding child-support order that could not be obeyed during a temporary decrease in income.
Even worse is the negative impact they’re having on millions of children across our nation. The family courts continue to award sole custody to one parent after separation or divorce, ignoring the proven harm sole custody does to children compared with shared parenting (joint physical custody). And where does this authority come from?
A so-called “award” of sole custody to one parent is actually the removal of constitutionally protected parental rights from the other parent without any demonstration of a compelling state interest if both parents are fit.
Despite what many believe, shared parenting is uncommon. In fact, family courts award sole custody, usually to the mother, in over 80 percent of child-custody cases. Fortunately, nearly 20 states are now considering shared-parenting legislation to reform our family courts. Utah just passed such legislation.
Last year was a watershed for our understanding that shared parenting is best for children after parents separate or divorce. For instance, the widely respected psychologist Richard Warshak published a review of three decades of child-development research, and his conclusions were endorsed by 110 experts around the world — most importantly, his conclusion that “shared parenting should be the norm for parenting plans for children of all ages, including very young children.”
Later in the year, about 100 child-development experts met in Bonn under the auspices of the International Council on Shared Parenting and concluded: “There is a consensus that 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.”
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Likewise, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts established a think tank of legal and mental-health experts who stated that “considered as a body of work, the efficacy of shared parenting has been supported for children of preschool age and older.”
The accumulated research shows that if we instituted widespread shared parenting, children would do significantly better in school; suffer less depression; exhibit less anger, hyperactivity, delinquency, and truancy; engage in less alcohol and substance abuse; engage in less gang activity; commit fewer crimes; and have fewer teen pregnancies. Of course, shared parenting should be limited to cases in which both parents are fit and there has been no domestic violence.
We now have the opportunity to create a smaller government while also improving the lives of millions of children substantially.
By comparison, despite often-heroic efforts by single parents, the 35 percent of our nation’s children who are being raised in single-parent homes account for 63 percent of teen suicides, 71 percent of high-school dropouts, 75 percent of children in chemical-abuse centers, and 85 percent of those in prison, among numerous other negative impacts, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Justice, and the Census Bureau.
If the winner-take-all battles brought about by the sole-custody tradition were replaced with the expectation of shared parenting, the divorce rate would also decrease, post-divorce parental hostility would diminish, child-support compliance would improve, and the pay gap between women and men would decrease as large numbers of single mothers would have more time and energy to put into their careers.
And all of this without the need for any government programs or taxpayer subsidies. In fact, the costs of the safety net would decrease over time. So we now have the opportunity to create a smaller government while also improving the lives of millions of children substantially.
The politics of this simmering issue hold both opportunity and danger for both sides. Blue-collar men, including Reagan Democrats and union members, are those who are most hurt by the benighted actions of the family courts, together with the women who love them — their new partners, their mothers, their sisters. These are huge demographics, numbering in the millions. Conservatives could find that family-court issues become swing issues because of the intensity of the pain and resentment. Blue-collar men, both white and minority, could swing in their favor, as could the women who love these men and have seen the pain of their enforced separation from their children.
On the other side of this coin, the first liberal candidate to express sympathy for divorced/separated men and support for shared parenting could enjoy a big swing of traditionally conservative votes to her or his side of the aisle.
For either side, support for shared parenting would be a politically safe move if done adroitly, causing little or no loss of core constituencies, since many polls and surveys have shown that between 70 and 86 percent of adults support shared parenting as the usual outcome. Conversely, if either party allows the other to identify itself with family-court reform, it could suffer long-term defections.
It’s too bad that children can’t vote, because they want shared parenting most of all.
Source: National Review Online By Ned Holstein — May 21, 2015 — Ned Holstein, MD, MS, is founder and chairman of the board of National Parents Organization. Dr. Holstein served on the Massachusetts Working Group on Child Centered Family Law, and he previously served on a task force charged with reviewing and revising the state’s child-support guidelines.
So you’d rather watch tournament games and go bowling than support a “We Are Fathers” campaign for justice and equality. Well that’s your choice, it’s a free country, in theory anyway. But you should know that countless lawyers, child experts and bureaucrats are cheering you on because they profit from all this apathy and a misguided sense of priorities.
In America today, our government is engaged in the lucrative expansion of a child control bureaucracy that is harming our families, productivity and moral fiber as a nation. This vast public enterprise has invaded every aspect of private life, often wielding power beyond that exercised by the NSA, CIA or IRS. It is a silent and insidious trend eroding parental rights repeatedly declared by our Supreme Court to be the “oldest liberty interest” protected by the United States Constitution.
This interest is shared equally by fathers and mothers. But in practice, the male half has not been accorded its rightful place among our human rights due to a profit motive in family court driven by needless custody, support and divorce contests. Census Bureau reports continue to show the gender disparities on all domestic fronts. After promoting a parental rights cause in Paris recently, I was amazed to note how a million people together with world leaders could rally in that city within days to support free speech. Meanwhile, here in the states, more than 70 million fathers have yet to mobilize after a century of widespread discrimination.
Such discrimination is having harmful impacts on all aspects of society and quite likely the female population more so than its counterpart. Veterans, minorities and high profile figures are particularly vulnerable to a court system that has placed money and politics over genuine parent-child relationships. Fathers are a vital component of any social or family structure as they have been since the beginning of civilization. Unfortunately federal entitlement laws and incentive funding to the states have marginalized that role to a point of virtual extinction. This has led to educational costs, heinous crimes and moral deterioration on a vast scale corroborated by an exodus from all manner of religion. In practical terms, our taxpayers are funding the creation of social ills and then forced to pay for it on the back side with costly welfare programs.
Future generations will look back one day and be amazed at how truly barbaric our domestic relations courts once were. A scheme of laws and processes derived from feudal equity doctrines has been retained which features loving parents engaged in brutal contests over their offspring in a public arena. A winner-take-all battle for custody leads to overregulation of families by the state and marginalization, alienation or outright extinction of one fit parent from the children’s lives. Anal investigations of the combatants’ backgrounds by self serving advisors incite further controversy to last a lifetime. It is a spectacle reminiscent of the Roman Coliseum.
No person or entity has ever been able to achieve a comprehensive study of the vast detriment which this archaic custody and support system has had upon our society. Any such effort would assuredly be stymied because custody and unequal parenting are highly profitable. Yet common sense dictates that our nation could be well served with sweeping reforms here in our least scrutinized branch of government. We can put a man on the moon, split atoms, engage artificial intelligence and achieve vast breakthroughs in medicine but remain unable to extricate family courts from their nineteenth century practices.
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18 thoughts on “Sole custody should not be the norm following divorce or separation.”
Our Constitutional right to bear arms is front and center in state and federal legislatures. But where is the debate on protecting our basic human rights to parent our children? (also constitutionally protected by the 14th amendment) Every day in every state, mothers and fathers lose their basic human right to parent their children.
Why? Because the divorce industry wants your family’s money! Estimated at $170 Billion annually! How? We all have a family member, friend or neighbor who has been through a nasty divorce. Most of us believe children need both parents equally and that there exist a standard of 50/50 custody that the courts start from.
NOT TRUE!!!! THERE IS NO PARENTING TIME STANDARD!!! THIS LACK OF STANDARD CREATES 90% OF ALL DIVORCE CONFLICT AND DIVORCE LITIGATION!!! IT DESTROYS FAMILIES AND LIVES!!! STOP IT NOW!!!!!
In litigated divorce, there is no standard as to how children should spend their time between parents. The lack of a parenting time standard causes our children to be viewed as a prize where unethical lawyers and custody evaluators use them as pawns between parents. If there were a parenting time standard, it would resolve over half of divorce litigation taking place right now.
MAKE PRESUMPTIVE 50/50 THE REBUTTABLE STANDARD AND ELIMINATE CUSTODY EVALUATIONS
Start with the presumption that both parents are fit and entitled to an equal role in their children’s lives. This presumption is rebuttable only by findings of fact based upon a preponderance of evidence in abuse, neglect or addiction. Everything else unconstitutionally denies parents their rights to parent children.
ONLY OUR LEGISLATORS CAN PROTECT US FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF DIVORCE WITHOUT OBJECTIVE AND EQUAL STANDARDS
The divorce industry is $170B annually and motivated to oppose standards so they can create, promote and perpetuate conflict to increase billing hours exponentially. Have you ever heard “It’s only the lawyers who win in divorce”?
Add to lawyers: custody evaluators (duplicate roles in some states), criminal lawyers, courts, psychologists, therapists, investigators, GALs, an entire cottage industry of brokers! With overdue and demanded, simple and just changes to state statues, families and children can be forever protected from the ravages of the divorce industry by a simple and equal standard. The lack of a presumptive 50/50 rebuttable standard destroys lives and families, often forever. Children as pawns can be scared for life, arbitrarily lose a parent, or two, for life and are in much greater peril in life. Mothers and fathers lose their children and react badly. Suicide and homicide is not uncommon. Mothers and fathers can be jailed for protecting their children or going bankrupt. http://www.causes.com/campaigns/44294-enact-uniform-parenting-time-guidelines-separated-parents
We’re just inviting you to take a timeout into the rhythmic ambiance of our breakfast, brunch and/or coffee selections. We are happy whenever you stop by.
Small-government conservatives have largely overlooked the fact that no branch of government other than the tax authorities intrudes more forcefully and intimately into the lives of Americans than do our nation’s family courts. And that where there is forceful intrusion, there is political opportunity — and danger for either party, if it allows the other to grab and run with the issue of family-court reform.
These courts routinely redistribute enormous amounts of wealth, destroy small businesses, mandate when and where parents can see their own children, order people to vacate their homes simply on the request of their former spouse, order people to sell their homes (sometimes unavoidably in an asset division, but often not), and even dictate whether they can change their careers by holding them to a demanding child-support order that could not be obeyed during a temporary decrease in income. 
parenting is best for children after parents separate or divorce. For instance, the widely respected psychologist Richard Warshak published a review of three decades of child-development research, and his conclusions were endorsed by 110 experts around the world — most importantly, his conclusion that “shared parenting should be the norm for parenting plans for children of all ages, including very young children.”
Family Court Reform 
Our Constitutional right to bear arms is front and center in state and federal legislatures. But where is the debate on protecting our basic human rights to parent our children? (also constitutionally protected by the 14th amendment) Every day in every state, mothers and fathers lose their basic human right to parent their children.
Why? Because the divorce industry wants your family’s money! Estimated at $170 Billion annually! How? We all have a family member, friend or neighbor who has been through a nasty divorce. Most of us believe children need both parents equally and that there exist a standard of 50/50 custody that the courts start from.
NOT TRUE!!!! THERE IS NO PARENTING TIME STANDARD!!! THIS LACK OF STANDARD CREATES 90% OF ALL DIVORCE CONFLICT AND DIVORCE LITIGATION!!! IT DESTROYS FAMILIES AND LIVES!!! STOP IT NOW!!!!!
In litigated divorce, there is no standard as to how children should spend their time between parents. The lack of a parenting time standard causes our children to be viewed as a prize where unethical lawyers and custody evaluators use them as pawns between parents. If there were a parenting time standard, it would resolve over half of divorce litigation taking place right now.
MAKE PRESUMPTIVE 50/50 THE REBUTTABLE STANDARD AND ELIMINATE CUSTODY EVALUATIONS
Start with the presumption that both parents are fit and entitled to an equal role in their children’s lives. This presumption is rebuttable only by findings of fact based upon a preponderance of evidence in abuse, neglect or addiction. Everything else unconstitutionally denies parents their rights to parent children.
ONLY OUR LEGISLATORS CAN PROTECT US FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF DIVORCE WITHOUT OBJECTIVE AND EQUAL STANDARDS
The divorce industry is $170B annually and motivated to oppose standards so they can create, promote and perpetuate conflict to increase billing hours exponentially. Have you ever heard “It’s only the lawyers who win in divorce”?
Add to lawyers: custody evaluators (duplicate roles in some states), criminal lawyers, courts, psychologists, therapists, investigators, GALs, an entire cottage industry of brokers! With overdue and demanded, simple and just changes to state statues, families and children can be forever protected from the ravages of the divorce industry by a simple and equal standard. The lack of a presumptive 50/50 rebuttable standard destroys lives and families, often forever. Children as pawns can be scared for life, arbitrarily lose a parent, or two, for life and are in much greater peril in life. Mothers and fathers lose their children and react badly. Suicide and homicide is not uncommon. Mothers and fathers can be jailed for protecting their children or going bankrupt. http://www.causes.com/campaigns/44294-enact-uniform-parenting-time-guidelines-separated-parents
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