Author: Super User

National Parents Organization seeks to promote children’s well-being by making equal shared parenting the norm when parents are living apart. There is a compelling, and growing consensus among researchers that true shared parenting by separated parents is usually best for children, even when there is (non-violent) conflict between the parents and even when the parents do not initially agree to shared parenting. And the benefits to children increase as they have more equal time with each of their fit and loving parents.

To determine the degree to which state legislatures had absorbed and acted on this consensus about what parenting arrangements work best for children when parents are living separately, in 2014 NPO undertook the first ever evaluation of states’ statutory provisions promoting shared parenting. This 2019 report updates and enhances the 2014 report.

NPO found that, despite the research that now strongly supports the desirability of a legal presumption of equal shared parenting, many states have been extremely slow to alter their statutes concerning custody of children when parents live apart. There are, since 2014, signs of improvement and, in a few cases, extraordinary improvement. But far too many states lag behind the times and, in so doing, fail to promote the best interest of their children.

In the 2019 NPO shared parenting study:

• 2 states received ‘A’s
• 7 states and the District of Columbia ‘B’s
• 25 states received ‘C’s
• 15 states received ‘D’s
• 2 states received ‘F’s

NPO calls on those states with weak statutory provisions concerning shared parenting to review the research on the well-being of children whose parents are separated and to enact statutes creating a rebuttable presumption of equal shared parenting. Children are entitled to the presumption that both of their fit and loving parents will continue to be fully engaged in their upbringing regardless of whether or not the parents are still living together.

2019 Shared Parenting Report Card

October 7, 2019 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

A lawsuit against the State of New York seeks to overturn a 39-year-old law that appears to blatantly and unconstitutionally discriminate against unmarried fathers.  Just when I think I’ve seen everything, something like this crops up.

In New York, mothers, whether married or not have the full panoply of parental rights.  Unmarried fathers do not.  So if Mom is found to be unfit to care for little Andy or Jenny or is abusive toward them, she can lose her parental rights.  The question then becomes, “What happens to the kids?”  As the Urban Institute discovered back in 2006, all too often Dad is ignored as a possible placement for the children who go into foster care.  That particular scenario was held to be an unconstitutional infringement on fathers’ rights by the 9^th Federal Circuit, but unfortunately for New York fathers, the 9^th Circuit doesn’t control New York courts.

But that’s far from all.  Not only are fathers often ignored as possible placements for children, but, unknown to them, they’re required to pay child support, not to the mother who’s lost custody, but to the state foster care system.  Yes, there’s a law requiring them to do that, but there are a few hitches.  First, the state never lets them know they’re obligated to pay.  Second, the state never lets them know how much to pay, to whom or where.  Third, the state never lets them know that, if they don’t pay, they’re considered to have abandoned the child and the state will move to terminate their parental rights.

In New York, lawyers for fathers said that making payments to foster care agencies was not even possible. The agencies do not try to collect the money, they said, and fathers do not know where or to whom to send it.

“I’ve tried to imagine ways of doing it — having my clients get child support orders against themselves, which they can then pay, or offer to pay the agency in cash every time they can, just so it’s in the record that they tried,” said Yusuf El Ashmawy, a lawyer who represents Mr. Dunbar and other fathers. “It’s mind-bending.”

 Here’s the New York Times’ story about a father named Ping A (New York Times, 9/25/19).

But when child welfare officials found that Amanda’s mother had inflicted excessive corporal punishment on her in 2013, they removed the girl from the home. Even though court records show that Ping had never committed abuse and was not present when it took place, a judge later decided that he would lose his daughter, too. Ping could not have custody or any say in her life anymore.

Now, the 9^th Circuit doesn’t control New York law, but the U.S. Supreme Court does and if that law survives Supreme Court scrutiny, I’ll eat my hat.  In the first place, the Court has long held that unmarried parents have the same parental rights as married ones.  Plus, in Troxel vs. Granville, the court held that parents have a fundamental liberty interest in raising their children that the state may interfere with only on a showing of harm or the potential for harm to the child.  Clearly, the New York statute requires the state to make no such showing and must be overturned.

Amazingly, New York is just one of 12 states that use the same scheme to deprive children of their fathers.

In New York and 11 other states, if a mother is accused of abuse or neglect but the father is not, and he is not married to her, he must prove that he is a parent in his own right — otherwise he will not have a say in whether the child is put up for adoption. In most of those states, including New York, proof means paying child support — not to the mother but to the government agency that has taken the child.

Unsurprisingly, the zeal with which New York (and the other 11 states) shanghai kids from their fathers is rooted in their desire to channel them into the adoption system.  New York of course was the first state in the nation to enact a putative father registry whose entire purpose is to remove unmarried fathers from the adoption loop.  Forcing adoption on kids with fathers who are ready, willing and able to parent them is, as I’ve said many times before, bad for kids and their dads, but far worse, deprives children who do need adoption of adoptive parents.

That zeal produced the 1980 law in question.

Defenders of the New York law, which dates to 1980, say it helps children who have been languishing in foster care to get a permanent home sooner by preventing unmarried fathers who do not support their children from using the courts to delay or stop an adoption.

If those fathers had full rights, “we would have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that he abandoned the child … which can take years,” said Ira L. Eras, a New York lawyer who has mostly represented foster care agencies for three decades.

So yes, the law is all about facilitating adoption.  The problem is that, if its aim is truly to help adopt children who’ve been “languishing in foster care” for years, then why be so secret?  After all, how hard could it be to inform a father like Ping that he needs to pay the foster care agency if he’s to preserve his parental rights?  But New York doesn’t do that.  Instead it hides the ball in the hopes that the Pings of the world won’t find it.  Apparently many don’t.

The state does not track how often the law is given as the reason for ending a father’s parental rights. But a review of Family Court decisions and interviews with foster care lawyers suggests it is routinely cited in those cases.

The point being that, if a father is fit and willing to parent his child, then why force it into the adoption system?  There are far more children in the U.S. and the world who need adoption than there are qualified parents who want to adopt.  So by forcing adoption on a child like Ping’s daughter, who had a good father who wanted to care for her, another child somewhere, who does need adoptive parents, will continue “languishing in foster care.”  In short, the excuse offered by defenders of the New York law is a fraud and Ping’s case proves it.

It’s long past time that New York and other states stopped lining the pockets of adoption agencies and lawyers at the expense of children and unmarried fathers. 

October 8, 2019 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

When he was growing up, Ronnell Hampton’s father wrote a check every month for $600 for child support.  But because Hampton and his mother lived in California, they only ever saw $50 of that per month.  Why?  Because Hampton’s mother had received welfare payments and, under California law all child support except the first $50 per month went to the state to reimburse it for those payments.

Now there are two laws awaiting the governor’s signature that would ever so slightly improve child support policy in the Golden State (CalMatters, 9/30/19).  The first would direct the first $100 – instead of the first $50 – of each child support payment to the child’s family and still reserve the rest to the state.  In other words, the California Legislature still prefers revenue for the state’s general fund over money for kids.

The original bill would have sent all support payments to the children for whom they were intended, but lawmakers eyed the money brought into state coffers from non-custodial parents and capped the amount at just $100.

An earlier version of [Senator Nancy] Skinner’s bill would have gone even further, directing 100% of child support payments to the family. That provision was ultimately removed amid concerns it would be too costly for the state…

California receives about $370 million each year from non-custodial parents who intend it for their kids and it seems lawmakers aren’t about to let the little tykes have it.

To add a bit of perspective, on average nationwide, families of three who received benefits under the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) program, received about $486 per month (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 8/21/19).  Of course that would have been higher in California, since the Golden State also has among the highest costs of living in the country.  Whatever the exact figure received by Hampton’s family in TANF benefits, the taking of all child support except $50 per month effectively capped earnings at the amount of those benefits plus $50.  That was true regardless of the amount his father paid.  The official poverty level for that family of three is a little under $1,800 per month.  In California, of course, it’s higher.

“Once it becomes a debt owed to the government, that money never gets sent to the child,” says Jessica Bartholow, a policy advocate with the Western Center on Law and Poverty, which co-sponsored the bills. “It’s kind of the original sin of the child support system we have in place today, which is, how do we call it a child support system where none of that money goes back to the child?”

Indeed.  When non-custodial parents know their kids will get their support instead of the government, they’re significantly more likely to pay.

A recent study from the Urban Institute, for example, tracked 32 parents participating in a San Francisco pilot project that paid off their government-owed child support debt. Researchers determined that the debt relief led to more consistent child support payments, with an 18-28 percent increase in payments among participants in the pilot project. Parents whose debt was paid off also reported reduced levels of stress and anxiety and had better credit scores, housing opportunities and employment outcomes, the researchers found, as well as improved relationships with their children and even their co-parents, after the debt was eliminated.

The second law to reach Governor Gavin Newsome’s desk for his signature eliminates interest on child support arrears.  That rate now stands at an astonishing 10% per annum.  Over the years, many states have either eliminated interest on child support debt or drastically reduced it.  The realities of child support debt make any interest at all on that debt a pipe dream of state officials.  The overwhelming majority of child support debtors are the poorest of the poor.  They’re so poor that they can’t afford even the minimal amounts set for them to pay.  Who in his/her right mind believes people that poor, who can’t afford to pay the amounts ordered can, in some way, pay that plus 10%?  It’s in states like California that it’s not unusual to find child support debtors paying the full amount required by the court’s order but falling further and further behind every month.

It’s an untenable situation and one that’s above all unfair to and unhealthy for kids.  The two new California laws will, if signed by the governor, make an ever-so-slight dent in a problem that’s gone on far too long in the face of too much evidence that the system is dysfunctional in too many ways to count.