Category: Blog

By Edward Kruk, Ph.D., President, International Council on Shared Parenting

A groundbreaking event within the field of shared parenting is quickly taking shape, in which for the first time researchers, practitioners and activists in the co-parenting community will be engaged in a facilitated dialogue and collaborative process of problem-solving with researchers, practitioners and activists in the arena of family violence and woman abuse.

My work in the field of co-parenting has spanned over a quarter century. It started with a research question, the focus of my doctoral dissertation, of why so many fathers disengage from their children’s lives after separation and divorce. The findings of my research led me to challenge the many myths and stereotypes surrounding non-residential parents. My main focus since then has been the promotion of shared parenting as in the best interests of children and families.

Much of my time today is devoted to the International Council on Shared Parenting, of which I am president. The Council is unique in that it studies shared parenting from the perspective of children, and includes three groups of members: academic scientists, child and family professionals, and members of civil society. We have held numerous national and international conferences, which have led to a series of research-based consensus statements on shared parenting as in the best interests of the great majority of children and families, which have served as the foundation of family law reform efforts in several counties, including the Council of Europe resolution that shared parenting be established as the foundation of family law in member states.

The Fifth International Conference on Shared Parenting will be held at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver on May 29-June 1, 2020. The theme of the conference will be the Intersection of Shared Parenting and Family Violence. The importance of this theme is underscored by the fact that because shared parenting is contraindicated in situations of family violence, legislators have been reluctant to legislate a presumption of shared parenting, assuming (incorrectly) that co-parenting arrangements would become the norm in situations of violence and abuse. Family violence remains a major obstacle in the establishment of shared parenting as the foundation of family law around the globe, and the conference aims to address issues surrounding family violence while at the same time exploring the feasibility of a rebuttable legal presumption of shared parenting which fully takes on board the concerns of family violence specialists.

Proponents of a legal presumption of shared parenting recognize that any legal presumption of shared parenting must be rebuttable in cases of family violence. At the same time, removing a loving parent from the life of a child by means of sole custody and primary residence orders is itself a form of family violence; and turning a blind eye to parental alienation and the forced removal of loving parents from their children’s lives is also a form of family violence.

Vancouver 2020 will provide an opportunity for leading scholars and international experts in these two fields of scholarship–shared parenting and family violence–to participate in a facilitated dialogue with the goal of developing policies, guidelines and procedures in regard to parenting and co-parenting after separation in the context of family violence. This will include discussion of both a rebuttable legal presumption of shared parenting and a rebuttable presumption against shared parenting in situations of family violence. The conference will thus be of interest to both academic scholars and family professionals, but also to parents and the general public, concerned with the question of the best interests and well-being of children and parents after separation, as well as to those concerned with the question of the best interests and well-being of children and parents exposed to family violence in the context of parental separation. The conference will bring together leading figures in both fields and provide an opportunity for dialogue and the development of specific practice and policy guidelines with respect to a wide range of issues, including:

• the education and training of family professionals helping families develop parenting plans after separation in the context of family violence: what education and training are necessary for divorce professionals? What standards of practice and qualifications should be put in place with respect to education and training in family violence?
• screening for family violence: screening and a rebuttable presumption against shared parenting in cases of family violence; timing of screening; separate initial meetings between parents; safety measures; voluntary agreements; fairness and ability to negotiate parenting arrangements.
• safety and specialized procedures: planning for safety; safety at every stage of the family separation process; safety and specialized interventions; safety and a rebuttable presumption against shared parenting.
• alternatives to shared parenting in situations of family violence: children and safety; abused spouses and safety; protocols in the context of family violence.

The leading figures in both shared parenting and family violence will be making plenary and workshop presentations at the conference, including a free forum to which members of the public will be invited to hear the conclusions of the conference. I invite all members of NPO to join us at this groundbreaking event, which will proceed from both a child-focused and a gender equality perspective. It will lead to the development of best practices and more enlightened laws and policies in the best interests of both children and parents after separation, particularly when family violence is an issue of concern.

We very much look forward to seeing you in Vancouver on May 29-June1, 2020, for the Fifth International Conference on Shared Parenting! vancouver2020.org

August 21, 2019 by Ginger Gentile, Deputy Executive Director, National Parents Organization

Can people from different ideological persuasions work together for a shared goal? You bet! My friendship with Robert Samery, one of the founders of the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE), is a great example. Not only is CAFE the largest financial supporter of my documentary, Erasing Family, but I had the pleasure of tabling with Robert at many conferences. I’m impressed by how he is able to talk to anyone. He created an organization that is not only bold in its initiatives, but friendly and welcoming!

So, what’s in CAFE’s secret sauce? Canadians are just nicer, eh? Between screenings of my film Erasing Family at the American Psychological Conference, I was able to ask some questions about working with feminists, domestic violence groups, and building a broad coalition for family court reform.

Ginger: Robert, can you tell me about the mission of the Canadian Association for Equality?

Robert: We deal with equality issues in general and focus on boys’ and men’s issues in Canada. We are a boys’ and men’s issues organization- not a men’s rights organization. Family law is one of our main areas of focus.

Ginger: Have you seen any shift in the understanding of the general public since you’ve started working on family court issues?

Robert: When I started dealing with these issues about 15 years ago, there was denial that this was even an issue. This is no longer the case. People now have more understanding in how lack of equal-shared parenting can cause harm.

Ginger: Have you seen any shifts in politicians?

Robert: I think politicians in Canada are dragging behind. What we’ve seen recently is that politicians are falling behind public opinion. For example, the presumption of equal-shared parenting, which has enormous public support, didn’t make it into a bill to reform the divorce law.

Ginger: Because we’ve tabled together at several conferences, I’m always impressed by how many women come to speak with you and offer to help CAFE in its mission. Why do you think you and CAFE have positive interactions with women, while other similar organizations often scare women away?

Robert: When men in particular come to this issue from their own personal experiences, they can be very angry. At CAFE, we developed a culture that doesn’t focus on the negative aspects of what’s happening, but instead focuses on what we can build up rather than tear down. That seems to be much more attractive to almost everybody, and works better than blaming!

Ginger: Tell me about the recent success you had at your conference in early August, focusing on how it relates to family court issues.

Robert: What was surprising about our conference, “Momentum,” was that leaders from the violence against women movement who had been working in the field for 20-30 years insisted that they speak at our conference. They stated that the domestic violence movement misses the mark when it comes to both the clients and families of shelters. They view, as we do, that these are not gender specific issues, but are issues that affect entire families. Perpetrators ought to be held accountable, but they also need support. They need counseling to learn how to better resolve their issues and ensure that they don’t become violent in the future.

Ginger: Have you met women who identify as feminists who would support a presumption of equal-shared parenting after divorce or separation?

Robert: Many feminists I’ve met support the presumptive equal-shared parenting portion of the Family Law Act. Another topic they agree with us on is triaging high-conflict cases.

Ginger: So, just because you disagree with people doesn’t mean you can’t have a good working relationship with them.

Robert: We don’t share a great deal with many of those on the left side of the political spectrum, and yet many people from the left side were welcomed and able to speak at our conference. We focus on the similarities rather than differences. People who we may disagree with on certain issues, even very strong ones, are still able to be loyal partners on other things.

Ginger: What are some of the commonalities that you have with feminists?

Robert: We both agree that the victims must be supported. It’s in the best interest of children to have relationships with both parents. We can engage far left-leaning feminists on that issue, because there is more acceptance that victims can be male or female. There was a time when the Premier of the province of Ontario said that although men could be victims of domestic violence, they comprised significantly less than 1% of the population of victims. That false viewpoint is no longer expressed! We search out commonalities rather than differences and move forward on what we have in common, rather than highlight our differences.

August 20, 2019 by Robert Franklin, JD

It’s more than just family courts and laws that keep fathers and children apart.  Other somewhat unexpected institutions do too (The Conversation, 6/14/19).  Professor Jessica Troilo of West Virginia University tags schools as one of the those that make it hard for dads and kids to maintain meaningful relationships following divorce.

Troilo makes a funny, sad and trenchant observation, one that had never occurred to me.

By the time Father’s Day takes place, the school year is usually over.

She rightly calls that an “apt metaphor” for the way schools often treat fathers. 

Troilo has conducted a bit of research.  She only interviewed 20 fathers, so her findings are scarcely definitive, but listening to those fathers suggests much.

“My son’s school never calls me,” one father told me in a statement that could be emblematic of the plight of noncustodial fathers.

Teachers and school administrators do what’s so common: they assume that Mom is the primary parent and the default for “family communications” regarding the child.  Often enough, that remains true even when Dad has a court order requiring him to be informed.

[T]hey’re often simply not seen as part of what takes place at school. These fathers are often viewed as irresponsible and uninvolved.

I learned this by talking to 20 fathers as part of my research. I found that divorced fathers, especially those who don’t share a residence with their children over 50% of the time, can find it challenging to remain involved in their children’s academic development. Several fathers told me about how often teachers and administrators at their children’s schools fail to recognize them.

Those attitudes of course simply reflect the current zeitgeist that’s revealed elsewhere by, for example, family courts, family laws, adoption laws, child protective services, child support laws and pop culture.  So it’s not as if the schools Troilo refers to are going out on a limb.  On the contrary, they’re solidly in the mainstream of institutional behavior toward dads.

Troilo moves on to point out some of the problems with marginalizing fathers in the lives of their children.

When fathers who don’t live with their children are involved with their kids’ school, the kids are less likely to repeat a grade or be suspended. They are also more likely to have higher grades.

That’s quite the irony, isn’t it?  We might think that schools, of all places, would bend heaven and earth to enhance children’s academic environment.  Doing so would in turn improve kids’ performance and satisfaction with their experiences in school.  That would likely encourage a healthy attitude toward learning generally.  Indeed, Dr. Anna Machin’s book The Life of Dad cites a 40-year study of 17,000 kids in the U.K. that finds that fathers are primarily responsible for their children’s mindset regarding academics.

But, if Troilo’s research reflects the reality faced by fathers in dealing with their children’s schools, then they’re doing the very opposite of what would be fair to fathers and good for their kids.

In cases in which fathers are battling a gatekeeping ex, schools only make matters worse.  In effect, they abet that wrongful behavior.

Of course, when divorced dads have conflicts with their children’s mothers, it can make it more challenging to stay involved in their children’s education. The fathers I spoke with said conflicts with their former spouses often led them to find out about parent-teacher meetings, school activities or extracurricular performances after the fact.

The father who misses his daughter’s school play or soccer game has become a commonplace in the discourse about fathers and kids.  Inevitably, those portrayals present dads in a negative light, i.e. the father cares so little about his children that he can’t be bothered to show up. 

Troilo’s work suggests there’s a lot more to the story than just callous and uncaring fathers.  There’s a whole host of opponents to fathers’ maintaining real relationships with their kids, and schools look to be one of them.

Next time, I’ll say much the same about the medical profession.

August 16, 2019 by Don Hubin & George Piskor

On June 7, Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed into law Senate Bill 318, a shared parenting bill to take effect  in January, 2020. Initially, there was some skepticism about how significant this achievement was. The bill, as signed, adds just one clause to Oregon’s parenting plan laws. It says:

“In developing a parenting plan under this subsection, the court may order equal parenting time. If a parent requests that the court order equal parenting time in the parenting plan, the court may deny the request if the court determines, by written findings, that equal parenting time is not in the best interests of the child or endangers the safety of the parties.” ORS 107.102(4)(c)

The first sentence does not grant Oregon family law courts any power that they didn’t already have. The significance of the new law rests on the second sentence. 

The concern that the law was not strong has to do with what, exactly, the statute requires courts to do in order to deny a parent’s request for equal time. It doesn’t really come to much if all that is necessary is for the court to state in its judgment: “equal parenting time is not in the best interests of the child” or “equal parenting time endangers the safety of the parties.” Courts are not constrained from making their decisions on any grounds they wish or on no grounds at all.

However, reviewing the legislative history of SB 318 tells a fuller story of the legislative intent of the bill. “Staff Measure Summary” says: 

“[Senate Bill 318] … clarifies that the court may only deny a request for a parenting plan that orders equal parenting time when it enters written findings describing why equal parenting time is not in the best interest of the child or endangers the safety of the parties. 

In one sentence, this legislative summary clarifies two points. First, that the ‘if’ clause is really an ‘only if’ clause. That is, the written findings in question are a necessary condition, for the court to deny the request; courts are required to provide written findings.

Secondly, the summary makes clear that the intent of the legislature was that a mere declaration of the sort imagined above would not be satisfactory. A court can deny this request only if it “enters written findings describing why equal parenting time is not in the best interest of the child or endangers the safety of the parties” (emphasis added). Merely declaring that it does is not sufficient. 

Some judges, called ‘textualists’, hold that legislative intent is irrelevant to interpreting the law. Statutes must be interpreted based solely on the text of the statute. However, most judges will attempt to resolve ambiguity and vagueness by looking at the problem that the legislature was attempting to solve and what they were attempting to do to solve it.

The requirement that family courts justify denying a request for equal parenting, taken by itself, is a strong equal parenting presumption. This new statute, again, taken in isolation, would make Oregon’s laws among the strongest equal parenting laws in the country, albeit via an unusual opt-out approach that is almost certain to be challenged.

However, Oregon law also has a provision that is terrible for shared parenting. It states that:

“The court shall not order joint custody, unless both parents agree to the terms and conditions of the order.” (ORS 107.169(3))

This provision effectively gives one parent a veto over joint parenting. How will these two elements of Oregon’s statutes be handled by the courts? Will some courts hold that absence of agreement on the terms of joint custody is grounds for holding that equal parenting time is not in the children’s best interest? Will some courts hold that, because of the parental veto provision, they can’t order joint custody, but they can, nevertheless, order equal parenting time? 

We at NPO will be watching. But, in the meantime, while SB 318 as introduced was a considerably stronger and better bill, the version of the bill that was passed and signed into law by the Governor is likely to have significant beneficial consequences for Oregon’s children. Those who worked hard to get SB 318 passed are to be congratulated. We hope they’ll work to get the parental veto clause repealed.

August 15, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

My Daughter’s Keeper is the true story of Mark Winkler’s rocky road through family and dependency courts in New York.

When Mark Winkler says, “I didn’t win,” he couldn’t be more right. Yes, he eventually got primary custody of his daughter Kisha and yes, he seems to be the type of father we’d want every kid to have. But the heartache and anguish he had to endure to get custody, the long hours in court, the sleepless nights wondering what misadventure would come next mean he “won” nothing. Everything he now has cost, if not blood, then certainly sweat and tears.

In fact, no one won. His little daughter didn’t win. Several years of her young life included witnessing emotional abuse between her parents. That time would have been shortened had Winkler not been so scared of family court. He’d heard the horror stories and hung onto a relationship with Kisha’s mother that he otherwise would have abandoned years previously. Then Kisha spent two months when she never saw her father. That was followed by countless visits from and to the child-protective agency (OCFS), mental health professionals, lawyers and courtrooms. The little girl’s life became a whirlwind that started with parental conflict and broadened into the whole panoply of family and dependency courts and everything they entailed.

Kisha’s mother didn’t win. Although she was entirely to blame for ending up with only minimal visitation, she went through as much heartache as anyone.

The taxpayers of New York didn’t win either. Mark Winkler is a thoroughly decent father, not without flaws, but unquestionably suitable to care for his daughter whom he loves to distraction. But proving those facts to a couple of judges and numerous caseworkers, supervisors, lawyers, therapists, etc. took an outrageous six months in one trial alone, plus other hearings, meetings, mediations and the like. How much that cost the State and City of New York, is anyone’s guess, but whatever the figure, the taxpayers didn’t win either.

And yet, people who know Winkler tell him “You won,” and by the standards of family law, he did. That of course is because, in the family law system, there are winners and losers and, according to those standards, Mark “won” and Katherine, Kisha’s mother, “lost.” It is one of family laws greatest flaws that both parents know that, when the dust settles, there will be a winner and a loser. Unsurprisingly, that fact alone produces much of the bitterness and conflict that makes up divorce and child custody cases.

Winkler’s book, “My Daughter’s Keeper,” is no horror story. When measured against other cases we’ve read about, Winkler’s looks comparatively free of outrage, the type of face-palming “how-could-they-DO-such-a-thing?” blatant errors and bias that we see so often.

Winkler had a non-marital relationship with a woman, Katherine, with whom he was not at all compatible and whom he didn’t love. Katherine felt the same. But, when she became pregnant, he vowed to marry her and be an active father to his child. He managed the latter, but not the former, as his relationship with Katherine never ran smoothly. They seemed to be always on the verge of splitting up, but Winkler’s fear of family court prevented it.

Eventually though, he filed for shared custody. That precipitated a cascade of false allegations against him by Katherine. First it was domestic violence, then child abuse, then more child abuse, and on and on it went. There were claims to DV courts, family courts, the OCFS and finally the police.

Fortunately though, Katherine was long on emotional indignation and short on common sense and calculation. Put simply, she wasn’t a very good liar and, with each new false claim, she only dug the hole she was in deeper. Soon, no one believed her.

In the end, the judge hearing the case called Katherine “not credible,” “nonlucid” and pointed out that she not only contradicted herself, but was contradicted by her own witnesses. Plus, “it is the opinion of this court that OCFS’s allegations that the mother emotionally abused her child, including coaching the child to lie against her father and interrogating the child after visitations, are in fact true and accurate. As a result the child shall be placed in the father’s full-time care, with the father having full physical and legal custody.”  

What’s perhaps most remarkable – and most damning – about Mark Winkler’s journey through family court Hell is that his case, by the standards of family court, is fairly unremarkable. At every turn, those charged with making some key decision made the right one. The DV restraining order was dissolved, false allegations were found to be unsubstantiated, he never lost custody and the court finally gave primary custody to the right parent. And Kisha seems to have survived the ordeal reasonably well.

In short, by the lights of family courts, everything worked as it should have. But it was still a too-long, maddening, anxiety-provoking gauntlet that Winkler, his relatives and his daughter had to run. In a frightening way, Mark Winkler’s case is the good news about family courts.

And that’s as powerful an indictment of family courts, family law and our child protective system as any I can think of.

“My Daughter’s Keeper” is a short and easy read. To his everlasting credit, Winkler rigorously holds himself accountable for his own mistakes and character flaws. He doesn’t claim to be a wronged saint, but only a loving father fighting to maintain a relationship with his daughter. In that, he’s like most dads who wind up in family court. None are perfect, nor should we ask them to be. His book indicts a system that too often ensures that, while there are no true winners, everyone loses.

You can find it here.

August 14, 2019 by Ginger Gentile

Everyday I am contacted by parents who are suffering greatly because they cannot see their beloved children after divorce or separation. For some, it has been months. For others, decades. Finding the family courts to be of no help and few resources, they are desperate for their story to be heard. In an attempt to capture attention, they often start their stories with the same words:

“My Parental Alienation story is the worst you ever heard.”

As a documentary filmmaker (www.ErasingFamily.org) I have seen parental alienation stories end in suicide, murder, murder-suicides, and worse (don’t ask). Trust me, you don’t want to be in the competition for worse story. 

By making each story exceptional, we fail to effectively communicate that these stories share many factors: histories of family trauma being played out in custody battles, the failure of the family courts to intervene, lack of resources, and societal pressure to “lawyer up” and “protect what’s yours”. When we fail to communicate what the stories have in common, we are unable to effectively push for legislative reform-default shared parenting-and moving away from an adversarial family court system. Politicians, academics and family court professionals aren’t moved by an exceptional case, they are moved by data and patterns. 

If you are moved to tell your story, put it in context: how many other cases like yours are you aware of in your community? You can also mention the polling done by Professor Jennifer Harman out of Colorado State University which found that over 22 million parents in the United States report being alienated from one or more of their children. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181127171419.htm

Let’s stop playing the trauma olympics. Let’s focus on reform and positive efforts to reunite our families erased by the family courts. 

Does this research mean that, on balance, daycare for all young children is beneficial? No. It means that the story is complicated, that the benefits and risks of daycare depend on a variety of other factors, including the child’s temperament and home environment,  and that there is significant disagreement among experts who research in this area. For a nice balanced discussion of these matters, see this informative blog article by Noam Shpancer, Ph.D., a psychologist who specializes in the effects of daycare on children’s wellbeing.

Given the state of the research, parents should not tolerate a judge telling them that they should not have equal parenting time on the grounds that their plan would involve the use of daycare, which is harmful to their children. Being deprived of the full involvement of one of your loving parents is most certainly harmful to children.

August 9, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

Few publications I’ve read deal adequately with the issue of paternity fraud, but this piece is an exception (VeryWell, 7/12/19).  It’s an accurate and informative article that men, particularly young men, should familiarize themselves with.

Paternity fraud occurs when a man is led to believe he’s the father of a child when in fact he’s not.  Fortunately, few women engage in the practice, but when one does, she can give rise to a host of ills for him, the child and the biological dad.

Misattributed paternity can be devastating for men who have spent years believing they are biologically tied to a child, only to later learn that they actually share no DNA. In addition to the emotional pain caused by paternity fraud—which affects the biological father, the non-biological father, and the child at the center of it—victims of misattributed paternity may have been paying child support for years.

Important as child support is, it’s usually the least of the problems men experience when they learn a child they’ve thought of as theirs turns out not to be.  The neurochemistry on fatherhood tells us that men who live with their pregnant partner, are present for the birth and care for the child experience significant changes in their hormonal makeup and brain structure.  Those are all aimed at forming attachments to the child.

So when a man then learns, at some point during the child’s life, that he’s not actually the father, he’s typically devastated, as the article says.  He’s staked much of his sense of self on fatherhood and finds that swept away with a few words.

Worse, when paternity fraud is discovered, the child becomes confused about who is and who isn’t its father.  The man who’s raised it or the biological father?  Often children find themselves trying to negotiate the rocky ground of, on one hand, increased distance from the man they’ve known as ‘Dad’ and, on the other, a brand new relationship with a stranger. 

Sometimes of course paternity fraud is only discovered in the worst possible way, for example in a doctor’s office.

Every person needs to know his/her medical history.  Indeed, some diseases and conditions like cystic fibrosis can’t be diagnosed without it.  Others, like cancer and heart disease can be diagnosed much more easily if the person’s family history is known.  Children with misidentified fathers can’t communicate accurate information on their medical history with their doctors.

And of course there’s the biological father who’s been denied an opportunity to bond with and help raise his child.  The United States Supreme Court has many times ruled that parents have a fundamental liberty interest in the association with and caring for their children.  But paternity fraud means that, whatever the biological father’s constitutional rights, exercise of them is simply not up to him.

Then, as the article so cogently notes, there’s the matter of child support.

If a man, believing he’s the father, has been paying child support before learning the truth about the child’s paternity, he’ll have to go to court to try to get the payments stopped.  Of course some men consider the child theirs even without a biological connection.  In that case, they may be happy to continue their financial support.  But for the others, stopping payments isn’t always the slam-dunk it should be.  The “best interests of the child” standard may trump whatever right to keep their own money they may have.

And getting re-imbursement from the mother is all but impossible.  That’s because she’s committed no legal wrong.  In about five states, he may be able to sue to get some of his money back, but even that assumes she’s not judgment-proof, which many, many people are.  Plus, the Bradley Amendment at the federal level forbids any retroactive orders regarding child support, further complicating re-imbursement actions.

There’s a simple solution to all this of course – DNA testing of every child at birth.  Currently, children undergo a welter of tests when they’re born.  Why not one more?  Knowing for certain the identity of every child’s father would circumvent all those problems outlined above and save the state significant sums of money when it seeks fathers for re-imbursement of welfare benefits paid to mothers.

Another step would be to require mothers by law to identify the father of their child.  After all, almost invariably, women know with whom they’ve had sex, but men don’t necessarily know (a) that sex resulted in conception or (b) if conception occurred, who the father is.  We should require mothers to accurately identify all possible fathers of the children to whom they give birth.  Only then can the correct man take up his golden opportunity as a father.  And only then can we begin to achieve gender equality in matters related to parents and children.

As with the general failure to enact and enforce shared parenting laws, our failure to prevent paternity fraud strongly suggests a certain ignorance about the value of fathers to children.  Once we, as a society generally, understand that value, things like shared parenting will become the norm and paternity fraud will receive the opprobrium it so richly deserves.

For now, we’ll have to rely on fine articles like the one in VeryWell to educate men about the risks of paternity fraud and how to avoid them.