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"Joint Custody Could Improve States Child Support Efforts"
Tim OBrien
February 28, 2006
Detroit News Article
Ever since the switch to a "no-fault" divorce system made kids chances of being raised by both parents a 50-50 proposition, child support collection has been a major growth industry for state and local government.
One thousand seven hundred employees now work full-time in Friend of the Court offices as referees, counselors, clerks, and support staff in all 83 Michigan counties. In addition, many employees of the criminal justice system devote a major portion of their workday to this last vestige of debtors prison.
So it is no surprise that there was consternation in Lansing over a federal plan that cut nearly a quarter billion dollars in Michigan subsidies for child-support enforcement. But one state legislator, Rep. Leslie Mortimer, R-Horton, has introduced a bill that could reduce the need for devoting so many resources to child support enforcement.
It would simply amend the Child Custody Act of 1970 to create a presumption that parents who divorce maintain joint custody of their minor children. Both would retain the legal right to authorize medical treatment, have access to school records and so forth. Both would have physical custody of their child(ren) for alternating and substantially equal periods of time.
Although the current standard for determining custody includes consideration of a dozen criteria, putatively based on "the best interests of the child," nearly all custody decisions turn on a few, unwritten suppositions:
Childrens sense of stability and security is enhanced by having as little disruption of their routine as possible, especially in continuity of residence.
The noncustodial parent can effectively contribute to a childs upbringing during "visitation" -- generally alternating weekends, holidays and vacations.
Children generally have greater need of ongoing access to their mothers nurturance and their fathers earning capacity.
Temporary custody of children must be granted while the divorce action is pending.
When divorce proceedings have finally concluded, return to supposition No. 1 and the vicious circle is complete.
Although the court rules are nominally gender-neutral, in effect a wife/mother can always get a divorce -- citing no specific grounds -- and almost always take the husband/fathers children, home and half of all other property acquired during the marriage.
Then the courts force him to subsidize the breakup of his family by ordering him to hand over a huge portion of his income to his ex until the last of his children has reached legal age. He is, incidentally, not entitled to any accounting of what becomes of the money. Apologists for the status quo are quick to label those who object as "deadbeat dads" trying to evade their responsibilities. In point of fact, fathers are rarely given the option of assuming them.
And that is what Mortimers "Equal Parenting" bill would change.
The legislation makes provision for rebutting the presumption of joint custody -- if a parent is either "unfit, unwilling or unable," or moves residence so far away as to preclude maintaining established school schedules. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, it will simply give defendants back some control over their own fate.
The reform merely empowers both parties and so avoids the poisonous resentment -- and, too often, open hostility -- that makes child support collection so problematic that the federal government is subsidizing it.
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