Shared Parenting, by Burrett and Green

Jill Burrett, a psychologist who helps divorced parents as a counselor and mediator, and Michael Green, a lawyer who runs a private mediation practice, have published the book Shared Parenting: Raising Your Child Cooperatively After Separation.

These two experts, each one with over 30 years of experience, wrote this book as an handbook for separated or divorced parents who want to develop a a successful shared parenting strategy. The authors emphasize the importance of children having significant time with both parents so they can maintain meaningful relationships.

They cite supporting research, which indicates how important it is for children to continue healthy relationships with their parents after family breakdown. They sustain that once a good shared parenting arrangement is working, all the parties involved receive emotional benefits: mothers becoming more comfortable with sharing the children, fathers learn to be truly involved in their children lives, and children are happy for being able to be with both parents. The authors write:

“We don’t think fortnightly weekend parenting is meaningful shared parenting. We think that shared parenting means having real chunks of time engaged with your children for a flexible 35–50 percent or more of their available time.

Sole-mother ‘custody’, with mother doing all the parenting and father merely paying the bills and popping into the kids’ lives from time to time, isn’t really good enough for children – and often not for mothers – in either separated or ‘intact’ family situations”.

Some of the most interesting chapters of the book are:

Chapter 1 Parenting after separation: Shared parenting can produce happier children and more satisfied parents; a few guidelines for making it work.

Chapter 5 Sorting out your motives: How parent’s feelings can interfere with their parenting, and how they can get past their hurt and anger and focus on approaches that will benefit their children.

Chapter 8 Designing a parenting plan: How to design your own parenting plan.

Chapter 9 Sample parenting plans.

Chapter 10 Communicating between households: Tips for communication between divorced parents.

This book than can help all of us who have shared parenting schedules and want them to be successful.

The Absence of Agreement between Parents Is Not a Valid Reason to Deny Joint Custody

Many divorced parents reject the concept of joint custody, and there are many of them who not only reject joint custody, but who also reject arrangements that are usual in sole custody cases. In Pascale v. Pascale (140 N.J. 583, 1995), the case that led to a revision of the child support guidelines in New Jersey, established that:

…many traditional custody arrangements… will include more than one night of parenting a week for the secondary caretaker of the children. 140 N.J. 611 (1995)

These parents reject even what would be considered a small variation of the traditional arrangement. Having said this, it should be said that in Beck v. Beck, the landmark joint custody case in New Jersey, the mother also rejected the idea of a joint custody arrangement, but that fact was not an obstacle to grant joint custody. To the objections to a court ordered joint custody, Dr. Clark, one of the experts used as consultants, replied that:

…the ideal joint custody arrangement would be one arrived at by agreement between parties. Nevertheless, in the absence of such an agreement, joint custody could successfully be carried out by Court decree, provided the parents put the best interest of the children first and were provided with certain “ground rules” governing the custody arrangement. 86 N.J. 492 (1981)

If both parents are responsible parents, joint custody will work, no matter if this arrangement has been ordered by court. Beck v. Beck dissipates any doubt that a court ordered joint custody could arise:

Although joint custody may be less likely to succeed if ordered by the Court than if achieved by the parent’s agreement, court-ordered joint custody is likely to be no more prone to failure than court-ordered sole custody following a divorce custody proceeding. 86 N.J. 498 (1981)

What the child will gain from a joint custody arrangement is so much, and what this child would lose in a sole custody arrangement is so much, that the Court should put all its effort to lead the divorcing parents to a joint custody arrangement, even if one of them disagrees.

Rhonda Gale

I recently read the blog post titled “Dads Are Winning Custody of their Children” by Rhonda Gale (http://mother-2-mother.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html), on which, with admirable motherly spirit and solidarity, celebrates the recent advancements of fathers on the matter of the custody of their children, and points out in a brief but accurate way the factors that have allowed this achievements to happen.

Two things called my attention in a special manner. First, that the author of the text is a woman that writes in a blog for women. Many times, we the men who fight for the cause of joint custody, tend to forget that there are many women who are also fighting for the cause, women who are wives, grandmothers, aunts, friends, in summary, women who although are not fathers, see and suffer the harmful effects that the current family laws have in their children and their families.

Second, it surprised me the simplicity and the clarity with which Gale enumerates those causes of the advancements of fathers and children rights. I now summarize those that I consider more important:

• Fathers are becoming more involved in their children's upbringing.

• Fathers are educating themselves on how to win the custody of their children, convincing the judge that they are just as fit as mothers are.

• Fathers are using their intelligence and emotional stability to win their cases.

• More men are willing to invest the money on attorney fees preparing for the legal battle.

• Men are forming support groups and learning from other fathers who have won custody of their children.

Take note.

Rejoice with me!

My friends:

God has visited me, again.

You all know how much I have fought for the joint custody of my daughter Sofía.
Last July 17 of 2009 I went court again, and although the judge did not grant me joint custody, he added another overnight a week to the one that I already have, what makes the current parenting schedule a de facto joint custody arrangement. From next week on, Sofía will have dinner with me on Tuesdays and go to her mom’s house afterward, and on Thursdays, I will pick her up at school and will bring her to her mom’s house on Saturday night.

The judge also awarded me vacation time, which I did not had until today (now I can visit my family in Puerto Rico), and at my request, the judge set a schedule to start disclosing to Sofía the fact that she is adopted, an issue that really worried me.

I want to point out two things that should be remarked. First, that during the hearing, both my attorney and the judge acknowledged the major advancements of fathers’ rights in recent years. Although it is true that these changes have not come at the speed that we would like them to come, they are coming, and in sustained and clear pace.

Second, that persistence and faith pay. If I had given up, as many people, including friends, had told me to do, this victory would never have happened. It was my faith in God and my will to fight what gave me the strength an the vision to keep on insisting on the rights of my child and my rights as a father.

So, God has smiled at me and life is good.

Vidal

One Step Forward, One Step Backward: Canada and Australia (2 of 2)

During the past decade, the Australian court system, by means of the Family Law Act of 2006, has supported joint custody as an important way of maintaining family life after divorce. The Act, which surveys in Australia have shown has high levels of support among Australians, presumes that joint custody is the arrangement that works best for both children and parents, and establishes shared parenting as the norm for post-separation custody arrangements.

Recently, an organized movement, formed mainly by government bureaucrats, feminist extremist and the family law industry itself, has opposed these advancements and has requested changes to family law, changes that in practice would bring Australian family law to the previous anti shared parenting policies. This movement argues that the current shared parenting laws put children in harms way, using as example several recent cases on which children have been murdered during visitation time with their fathers.

Several issues have to be discussed here. First, as recent horrendous cases have tragically proved, violence and filicide are not the exclusive realm of fathers. There are violent fathers, but there are many violent mothers too. Second, if the current law has loopholes through which inadequate parents have contact with their children, those loopholes should be corrected without removing the shared parenting concept, as the anti joint custody movement is requesting right now. Being the proved best option for children of divorced parents, shared parenting should be protected always. If we follow the logic of the anti joint custody movement, we would abolish marriage because many married women have been killed by their husbands. Of course, we should not, because marriage, as joint custody, has proved that its benefits for the whole society are far more numerous and important than its setbacks.

This type of step backwards is not new in history. In New Jersey, women were granted the right to vote in 1776, bust they lost it again in 1807, when the right was restricted to white males only, with the excuse of avoiding electoral fraud and simplifying the electoral process. As long as a right is not accepted as right but as a concession, there will be always a chance the forces against it would find a way to take it away.

The case of the Australian Family Law Act proves something important for the shared parenting movement. Having a pro joint custody legislation approved is not, I repeat, is not end of the road. It is just the beginning. Once a country has a good family law, we should stay vigilant, knowing that a law that is not enforced is dead, and that many retrograde forces will try to move back to the previous regime.

Sadly, many people like to live in the past.