Shared Custody Battle Goes Federal

Last week a federal lawsuit was filed against the state of Pennsylvania by the Indiana Civil Rights Council and like-minded groups such as the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. These and similar organizations plan to sue all 50 states and U.S. territories. At least 40 suits have already been filed, according to the Council.

The lawsuits use a wide range of constitutional grounds to argue that a child’s parents both have an equal right to custody and directly challenge the commonly utilized legal standard known as “the best interest of the child.”

The lawsuits seek $1 million in damages for any plaintiffs who sign on to each class action, meaning the potential damages run into the trillions nationwide. But what the groups really want are changes in the laws to provide a “presumptive standard” that physical custody should be split 50-50 unless one parent can prove that there’s a good reason for a different arrangement.

Legal custody, which gives both parents a say in issues such as religion, health and education, can be shared equally even when physical custody is not.

But many of the experts say legislating a 50-50 standard is a bad idea. What do you think?


5 Replies to "Shared Custody Battle Goes Federal"

  • Ann Haralambie
    October 8, 2004 (5:27 pm)

    I think this is awful. It is great to see fathers involved in their children’s lives, but this emphasis on 50-50 custody takes us back to a foregone era of “children as chattel.” It is time for children’s rights with respect to their own lives to be vindicated in the courts and balanced against parental ownership claims. I hope that children’s rights organizations nationally (the ones that really champion children’s rights rather than merely co-opt the phrase) monitor these cases and intervene as amici.

  • Livia Bardin
    October 10, 2004 (3:15 pm)

    This reminds of a case I was involved in as therapist, in which the judge had ordered 50-50 physical custody and the child was shifting parents every FOUR DAYS. I don’t know who was more confused, the school, the child, or the parents. One could argue that this was an extreme case, but it is just an amplification of the practical difficulties of the concept. How exactly are parents to carry out 50-50 physical custody? Months don’t have equal numbers of days, so one can’t simply alternate months (who would take February?)and have a 50-50 result. One would have to reckon in weeks, of which there are an even number in the year, but which might result in some awkward switch dates, or in years, which is quite a long period for a child to go without seeing a parent. Similarly, must the divorced parents live within blocks of each other in order to provide school continuity (hard economically to do in many suburbs and potentially hard on a career)? Or, if one parent lives in a different community, must the child switch schools midyear, since one can’t encompass even a single school year on 50-50 physical custody? What if there is more than one child? Must all switch together or should the changes be staggered, allowing more quality time for the parent with each child, but resulting in siblings who hardly know each other?

    It’s hard to see how this rigid kind of interpretation could be less than harmful, or why denying the children the stability they need will benefit either parent.

  • Anonymous
    December 5, 2004 (6:19 pm)

    So two months after here are my two cents.

    First, both commentors here are women. The first seems to be an imposter.

    The link no longer works to the story at findlaw.

    So I’m not able to know to what extent moving from “best interest” to ‘chattel’ is a part of the real issue but for me there is one.

    I support legislative activity that allows the wisdom of leaders in the community with the knowledge of at least vigilant members of the community being involved.

    So I support a child living in home with a parent if the other smokes even over the opposition of a court with lesser justification. And an emphasis on practicallity like the kids nutrition coming first, so a nonrelative in the home of a parent or even donating from miles away should be able to feed a infant with the cooperation of the parent who will facilate this regardless of why a parent can’t provide the food themselves. Breastmilk should be available to babies and mothers should not have the right to decide against this especially for there own children. Historically women have obtained custody on this basis, but now this basis should determine custody from the interests of the child, and a mother who isn’t obviously shouldn’t be favored for this reason but more importantly should be chosen over a father who plans of formula or vice versa.

    If it is actually Ms. H. who commented the issue of chattel actually explicitly raise the lost right to be considered valuable in and of themselves. Our pets still enjoy this right, and can’t be so easally taken from us because of it. The notion that considering children as worthless from a property perspective somehow gives them and those they care for and are cared for by LESS rights isn’t founded in the present. That abuse occured in the past has little to do with other then the emotional signifigance of the term “chattel”.

    Throughout our nation familes are denied advocacy for there members but given it for there cars, homes, even snakes because of federal protection for what they own.

    We should be providing assistance in getting legal emergencies covered by competitively priced insurance or allowing children of any age to borrow for such needs with the government making such loans profitable to the lenders in at least allowing parents to signup for them with a promise to repay at least as enforcable as those for tradeschools or college.

    What notions of seven figure per person damages should raise is how the impotence that allows such harm to occur needn’t be tolerated. That we can afford to loan at least a month or more of legal time, tens of thousands of dollars, to any family going through a divorce or under attack for any reason from outsiders. That such needs should rightfully compete against the demand for advocates in fender benders and arguments over summer homes among the elite but mainly for time before our judges in our courts.

    Disputes of even mid five figures are getting evicted from our halls of justice and of course childrens issues have always and continue to even more not even be welcome in the ‘real’ courthouse in most towns.

    So yes the question should be federal, it should not matter if you can load up the kids in a SUV and haul ass across state lines. No one knows this more than Ms. H. For sure the existence of more than the mother needs finally to be practically recognised and abstractions put aside so that the facts for each child can have there day in court without exception. I support advocacy for every child given birth in America, of access to our nation infrastructure not just ‘for’ them but by them when they need it. Any child born out of wedlock deserves an advocate of there own. ANy child whose family is suffering a divorce should be able to borrow at least as much as they will for college to participate meaningfully.

    “Best interests” has always meant “for reasons best kept secret, for thumping of naked power” and our children deserve better than at best the toss of a dice or imposition of some corrupt or not courts bias too often completely uninformed.

    It should threaten women who have drawn a salary from misery and chaos without attacking it head on but rather trying to steer it and ride it and I believe befriend it. It is natural but it is not good. Goodness comes from meaning and merit. Our present system is based upon disempowering adults and to teh extent children are empowered it is almost always by such stratagy.

    Children are precious and should be treated as priceless not merely outside of the free market. We don’t have to choose. Someday perhaps those fortunate or unfortunate enough to be born by licensed parents, of man and women or not, might be fare game but until them those who we pray for less often then we prey upon should at least have both of there parents able to participate in every decision when they are willing. Adults who give birth with another adult should have no right to not have to cooperate with the other or “get over with” doing so at any point, and certainly not for the first few decades that follow…….

    THat is, more then “vindication”, is necessary.
    “Rights” are abstract, are of little use hypothetically, and only matter to the extent facts support the goals they further. It is in the details that real championing finds opportunity, and in evil that chaos thrives under the whip of dead word speaking fools.

  • Anonymous
    December 21, 2004 (9:52 pm)

    Congratulations James R. Marsh.

    I feel cheered and grateful for your comments on that very insensitive and dehumanizing choice of subjects for a public television “show”. The mind of the producer reminds me of the distorted mind of the Roman Emporer Caligula who ripped open his sisters womb so he could see his illigitimate child en uterero.

  • Wisdom
    June 13, 2005 (7:31 pm)

    EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL PARENTS AND EQUAL RIGHTS TO THE CHILDREN TO DESERVE BOTH PARENTS, 50-50!!!! FATHERS ARE THROWN OUT AND REMOVED, AND CHILDREN ARE SUFFERING BECAUSE THEY WANT THEIR FATHERS AND BOTH PARENTS, NOT ONE.

    STOP THE INJUSTICE AND BLACK SLAVERY THAT IS HAPPENING TO MEN AND EVEN SOME WOMAN.

    WHEN WE WITHHOLD 50-50 EQUAL RIGHTS CUSTODY, OUR CHILDREN ARE THE LOOSERS, OUR PARENTS ARE THE LOOSERS AND THE SOCIAL ILLS THAT ARE CREATED IN OUR CHILDREN ARE COSTING OUR SOCIETY BILLIONS OF DOLLARS EACH YEAR!!!!!!!!!

    ALL COMMENTS YOU READ THAT ARE AGAINST THIS ARE LAWYERS AND MOMS, LAWYERS NEED MONEY, AND MOMS WILL ABUSE THE SYSTEM BECAUSE THEY CAN, THERE IS BOTH A FINANCIAL INCENTIVE AND A CONTROL INCENTIVE. BOTH MUST BE REMOVED. YOU WILL SEE, IF BOTH ARE REMOVED, MOMS WILL BE MORE THAN GLAD TO HAVE DADDY HELP OUT 50% and DO HIS SHARE, THEN THE CHILD WILL BE HAPPY TOO, BUT, THE LAWYERS WILL LOOSE THEIR JOBS ( CUSTODY BATTLING AND CONFERENCES ) and STATES CAN NO LONGER TORTURE MEN FOR BLOOD MONEY TO HAVE THEIR CHILDREN REMOVED AND CHILDREN NO LONGER HAVE TO PEEK THRU THE WINDOW WAITING FOR DADDY BECAUSE HE WAS THROWN OUT AND BOOTED. STRANGE THING, THAT DAD IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN TO SEE HIS CHILDREN BY LAW, WHEN, EVEN A DRUG ADDICT FRIEND OF THE MOM CAN SEE THE KIDS EVERY DAY. COOL. OUR CURRENT SYSTEM NEED A BOOT INT HE BUT. MEN, FIGHT, DEMAND YOUR EQUAL RIGHTS, FOLLOW YOUR HEART………………….

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