Category: Blog

May 17, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

The same article I wrote about yesterday goes on from Scott Vogel’s story about spending $130,000 and three years of his life trying to get more than about 14% parenting time with his son and daughter (KARE11, 5/14/19).  It discusses a bill before the legislature that would establish a presumption of equal parenting.

State Representative Peggy Scott, R-Andover, is leading an effort to change the law.

She and a long list of supporters feel it’s time for the law to catch up with culture.

“It’s a winner and a loser,” said Scott. “It’s a contest to see who can be a better parent in the eyes of the court. And that’s not fair to the kid.”

Yes, the idea that there has to be a “winner” parent and a “loser” parent has always meant that, whichever parent comes out on top, little Andy or Jenny is the loser.  Going from seeing Dad every day and forming an attachment to him to seeing him only four days per month is a trauma for kids.  I hope we’ll someday look back on that routine practice of family courts and call it ‘child abuse,’ because that’s what it is.  It’s injurious to children.  That we have so much science demonstrating the fact and yet still marginalize dads in their children’s lives is not defensible, absent unfitness or abuse by the marginalized parent.

And let’s be clear.  When Rep. Scott says it’s time the law caught up to the culture, she’s right, but could have added that it’s time the law caught up to the science of children’s well-being and parenting time.  Of course state bar associations doggedly refuse to teach judges those all-important facts revealed by that science, so we can’t entirely blame the judges.  But still, it’s not as if the pertinent information is in hiding somewhere.  Ask NPO or any of the other organizations seeking family court reform and we’ll all be glad to inform anyone about what the science shows.

Scott’s bill would make a new presumption, right off the bat, that each parent receive 50 percent parenting time. A judge could then alter that if there’s proof one parent would endanger the child physically, emotionally or mentally. The judge can also change parenting time if there are logistical or geographical issues. Parents would still have the ability to agree on a schedule that works best for the child and them without the aid of a judge.   

In other words, the bill would presume equal parenting as long as both parents were fit to do the job, but judges would retain flexibility to order some other arrangement if the circumstances required it.  And, as ever, parents could always fashion their own parenting plan.

Also as ever, the state bar opposes the bill.  Of course it does.  And, as always, it ignores obvious realities in order to do so.

[Attorney Samantha] Gemberling believes a 50-50 starting point is not in the best interest of every child.

See?  Gemberling hides behind the pretense that, in some way, if the bill became law, “every child” would be stuck with equal time.  The bill is clear that that’s not the case, but, lacking any real argument with which to oppose equal parenting time, Gemberling opts for an unreal one.  The idea of simply aligning her opinions with the science on shared parenting apparently isn’t an option for her.

The same is true of custody evaluator Mindy Mitnick.

“Are we talking about a child who is nine months old who is nursing multiple times in the middle of the night?” said Mitnick. “What would happen to that if the child is 50 percent of care with the other parent? What if we have a two-year-old who hasn’t settled into the routine of sleep and toileting? It doesn’t make sense from that perspective that every child would be appropriate for an equal time share…

But that complaint too has already been refuted by the science on overnights for even the youngest kids.  Indeed, five years ago, 110 scientists worldwide joined Dr. Richard Warshak’s analysis of the pertinent research on young children having regular and frequent overnight time with both parents.  And guess what; kids who have that time with both parents tend to do better than those with just one.  As to Mitnick’s specific question, the way Dad feeds the baby when Mom’s not there is that Mom expresses milk and hands it to him to use as needed.  That’s true if the two are married and she goes on a business trip, and if they’re divorced.  Mitnick of course knows this full-well, but again, has no responsible argument to make, so she’s left with an irresponsible one.

Sadly, those who are opposed to children’s having equal time with each parent once again carried the day in the Minnesota Legislature.

Scott’s bill made it to the House floor for a vote to attach it to the House Omnibus public safety finance bill. It initially had enough votes to pass, 71-64, but as the roll stayed open for several minutes, four representatives flipped their votes, ultimately failing to pass by a tie of 64-64.

That’s undeniably bad news, but shared parenting forces will return next year.  And the year after that and the year after that until state legislatures from coast to coast follow Kentucky’s example and do what’s best for kids and what’s fairest for parents.

Win, lose or draw, we aren’t going away.  And every year, we get a little stronger. 

May 16, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Here’s a balanced and informative article on the push for shared parenting in Minnesota (KARE11, 5/14/19).  NPO’s good friend, the redoubtable Molly Olson has been battling the state legislature on behalf of shared parenting for well over a decade now, so it’s good to see her getting a bit of a boost from the press.

The article starts with Scott Vogel and his donnybrook in family court.

Unable to agree on a schedule for the kids, Vogel took their case to court where he has spent three years and more than $150,000 hoping a judge will award him equal parenting time.

Needless to say, it’s utterly unconscionable that a child custody case should take that long or cost that much.  Perhaps the main reason it so often does is that one parent wins and the other parent loses.  One parent ends up with the kids 80% of the time and the other gets the remaining 20%, usually every other weekend, some extra time during holidays and maybe a month during the summer.  A presumption of shared parenting would mean that neither parent wins or loses, that each would maintain real, meaningful relationships with their children post-divorce.  So there’d be less need to fight, resulting in fewer court appearances and therefore drastically lower attorneys’ fees.  So what did all that time, money and heartache achieve for Vogel?

“I have four nights a month with my son and two nights a month with my daughter,” said Vogel.

But surely, that must mean Vogel’s a problematic parent, right?  Well, no.

In a court ordered custody and parenting time evaluation, the evaluator found no issues with physical, mental or chemical health from either parent and found both parties “willing and highly capable of providing care for the children.”

So why was Vogel relegated to about 14% of the parenting time?

Yet, the evaluator recommended giving Vogel his son 34% of the time and his daughter 25% of the time without explaining the reason for the schedule. 

In other words, the well-established pro-mother/anti-father bias of family courts is alive and well, at least in the court Vogel finds himself in.  The judge has yet to decide the matter finally, but has the evaluator’s report and recommendations.

Fathers have had a remarkably hard time cracking the family court system that routinely sidelines them in the lives of their children.  Back in the late 90s, they thought they’d had a breakthrough when they were successful at amending state laws to include laundry lists of considerations judges were required to weigh before deciding custody and parenting time.  Surely, the thinking went at the time, when all those factors were considered and both fathers and mothers came out well enough, judges would conclude the obvious – that equal or near-equal parenting time was appropriate.  Minnesota was one such state.

There are 12 factors evaluators must look at in determining what’s in the best interest for the child.

However, according to one of the only studies of its kind in Minnesota looking at divorce cases from seven counties, the average parenting time for dads was 36 percent.

In fact what judges tend strongly to do is to weigh the various factors and, if one parent comes out slightly ahead, then that’s the parent who gets sole or primary custody.  So, if 11 of the Minnesota factors end in a tie between Mom and Dad and one weighs slightly in Mom’s favor, then the kids lose a meaningful relationship with Dad.  Make sense? It wasn’t supposed to be that way, but that’s the way it is.  When it comes to custody and parenting time decisions, judicial discretion has a way of meaning kids lose their fathers.  One-third of the children of divorce in this country have little or no contact with their fathers.

I’ll have more to say on this tomorrow.

May 15, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

The recent Nebraska case of Dowding v. Dowding gives us a good opportunity to take a second look at our fairly invariable support for equal parenting.  This blog has always recognized that there are plenty of instances in which equal – or even shared – parenting either cannot work or isn’t in a child’s interests.  Serious child abuse is one example, parental unfitness is another and significant geographic separation of the parents is another.  None of those is present in Dowding and yet the court’s decision to grant primary custody to the father isn’t clearly wrong.  Neither is it clearly right.

Timothy and Cameo Dowding were married for about three years, but had an ongoing relationship well before that.  They had a son, Treton, in 2010, but separated in 2016.  Because they weren’t married at the time Treton was born, they both signed an Acknowledgement of Paternity to establish Timothy as his father.

So it was altogether strange that, when their divorce pleadings were filed, Cameo alleged that Timothy wasn’t Treton’s dad and demanded genetic testing.  The court refused the request because, under Nebraska law and the circumstances of the case, the only way to rescind an Acknowledgement of Paternity is to produce evidence that it was brought about by “fraud, duress or material mistake of fact.”

The question then arose how it would be possible for the child’s mother to be the victim of a material mistake of fact.  After all, as this blog has said many times, unlike men, women almost invariably know with whom they have intercourse.  That means they know who their child’s father is or, at the very least know that they can’t be sure.  In the latter instance, signing an Acknowledgement of Paternity would be inappropriate and probably illegal.

Interestingly, the Nebraska Court of Appeals made much the same point when quoting an Indiana court.

[O]nce a mother has signed a paternity affidavit, she may not use the paternity statutes to deprive the legal father of his rights, even if he is not the biological father.” The court reasoned that “a woman always has the information necessary to question paternity prior to signing the affidavit. A man, however, could easily sign an affidavit without awareness of the questionable nature of his paternity.

So Cameo’s effort to rescind the Acknowledgement rightly came to naught.

That left the issue of child custody.  The evidence adduced in court left little doubt about who was the better parent and who provided the child with the better home environment.  Cameo’s work history was unstable in the extreme and she’d chosen to remain unemployed for two years due, she said, to uncertainty about the outcome of the custody matter.

No such considerations kept Timothy from continuing his employment with the BNSF railroad.  Plus, his mother Sharon not only worked at Treton’s school, she was always available to fill in when Timothy couldn’t do hands-on dad care due to employment conflicts.

Most importantly, Treton seems to have been a happy, smart, well-adjusted little boy who had many friends.

Sally Agena testified that she is the Syracuse Public Schools’ guidance counselor for kindergarten through the eighth grade. She described Treton as happy, “spirited,” “chatty,” with a “good heart,” and “friendly.”…

Kathleen Weiler testified that she is Treton’s second grade teacher. Weiler described Treton as “a very smart little guy” who is an average to above-average student and is friendly and well-liked. She expressed no concerns regarding any behavioral issues and stated that Treton appeared to be happy.

So, living with Timothy, Treton was doing well and interrupting that arrangement could have caused problems for him.  Cameo’s living arrangements weren’t the best, but she is clearly a loving, caring parent, however hostile she’s been toward Timothy.  Under those circumstances, I’d be calling loudly for an equal parenting-time order.  As long as both parents are fit and loving, that’s the way it should be as I’ve said many times.  Yes, the two lived about 45 miles apart, but that fairly short distance shouldn’t stand in the way of a child having a full relationship with each parent.

But there was a problem.

In this case, both parties testified that they are unable to communicate effectively with each other and both parties expressed that they would be unable to share parenting time equally with Treton and effectively co-parent.

In short, neither parent wanted equal parenting time.  They did so because they couldn’t get along well enough to make such an arrangement work.  It’s similar to a parenting plan filed by two parents for unequal parenting time.  They know best what they can do and what they can’t, what their schedules permit and what they don’t.  Generally speaking, a court will rubberstamp the agreement of parents.

But, while both Nebraska courts gave sole legal and physical custody to Timothy, their reasoning suggests something a bit different.  Both courts seemed to “hang their hats” on the fact of the two being unable to make equal parenting work.  To me that suggests the assumption that equal parenting is the default position in the case of two fit parents, an assumption from which a court can deviate if necessary, but an assumption all the same. 

And of course that’s very much what the Nebraska Supreme Court did in the case of Leners v. Leners that I reported on here.  Its language there strongly suggested that it was stepping back from previous case law that presumed against shared parenting.  Higher courts never like to simply overrule previous decisions, preferring to erode their impact over time.  It may just be that the Leners wording was heard loudly and clearly by the lower courts and that all are moving, albeit slowly, toward a de facto presumption of shared parenting.

National Parents Organization wishes our readers and supporters a happy Mother’s Day. 

May 10, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Sigh.  The Guardian never seems to disappoint.  If you’re looking for a one-sided anti-father screed, The Guardian is usually happy to comply and this article is no exception (The Guardian, 5/8/19).

The subject is child support; the point of view: fathers are a sneaky lot who bend heaven and earth to avoid paying child support; this leaves custodial mothers living in poverty; and the child support bureaucracy is no help.

Needless to say, only one father is interviewed and he’s pretty happy with his situation.  That leaves all the complaining to be done by mothers and others who criticize the system.

Now, doubtless, the system needs criticism.  I’m sure the trauma described by the article of a mother trying to get some sort of action out of the massive Australian Child Support Agency is very hair-pullingly real.  I sympathize with anyone faced with that.

But guess what.  Custodial fathers have the same problems with mothers who don’t pay that mothers have with fathers who don’t.  But that reality is found nowhere in the article.  Indeed, if the article were the only information you had about child support in Australia, you’d justifiably conclude that only fathers are required to pay and only mothers are recipients.  You have to read fairly deep into the comments at the bottom of the piece to hear from fathers who’ve been stiffed by their exes.  For example:

My ex-wife kept one promise in our marriage. Just before our divorce, after I had been given sole parental responsibility, she promised I would not receive one cent of child support. She quit her job (nearly $100,000p.a as a chef). I found out all of the names she was working under and the bank accounts she was getting money into and gave that information to the Child Support Agency. Their first response was that I should be paying child support! Finally managed to convince then that the Family Law Court decision, had they read it in the first place, gave me custody and not her. Then the CSA suggested I not claim child support.

Now, I don’t have Australian data on child support at my fingertips, but if they’re anything like they are here in the U.S., non-custodial mothers there are significantly less likely to pay what they owe than are non-custodial fathers.  Here, mothers are less likely to be ordered to pay child support at all and when they are, they’re ordered to pay less than are fathers.  Even at that, they pay less of what they owe than do fathers.

Specifically, as of 2015, the Census Bureau reported that 52.7% of NC fathers were ordered to pay support versus just 39.6% of mothers.  Those fathers were ordered to pay $5,789 per year on average versus $5,600 for mothers.  And fathers paid an average of $3,491 (60.3% of what they owed) versus $3,200 (57.1%) for NC mothers.

So if there’s a problem of non-custodial parents not paying to support their children (and there is), the problem lies at least as much with mothers’ failure to pay as with fathers.  And yet the very concept is ignored by The Guardian.

Meanwhile, in order to grab readers’ sympathies, the article begins and ends with “Amanda,” a custodial mother with a daughter who’s about to start school.  We’re told that she lives at or near the poverty line and that her ex understates his income to reduce his child support obligation to her. 

But amazingly, the article that goes into his income in some detail never mentions hers.  There’s nothing to suggest she’s disabled or impaired, only that she barely makes ends meet despite receiving at least $1,500 per month in governmental housing subsidies.  The simple fact is that next to no one who’s able-bodied and reasonably well educated need live in poverty with just one child and herself to house, clothe and feed.  The article is intent on convincing readers that the fault lies with Amanda’s ex, but makes no effort to explain how or why his payment of $579 per month is the only thing that keeps the wolf from her door.

Then there’s the vital matter of access to the child.  It’s a vital matter because we know from well-established research that NC parents who don’t find their access to their children obstructed are far more willing and likely to pay than are those who do.  Is refusal of access part of the child support problem in Australia?  My guess is it is.  I do so because, as historian John Hirst has pointed out, Australian courts are uniquely unwilling to enforce orders of visitation.  Indeed, as a matter of policy and precedent, they simply don’t do it.  Alone among all the orders issued by Australian courts, those for child access are not enforced by the courts’ power of contempt.

So if there is a problem with child support payment, one obvious place to attack it would be there.  Not a word about the refusal to enforce visitation appears in The Guardian’s article.

That of course brings us to shared parenting.  By itself, a general rule giving equal time to each parent would greatly reduce the need for child support.  Parents could simply bear the costs incurred during their time with the child and equally share occasional or special expenses.  That would leave both parents with time to work and earn, neither being saddled with so much parenting time as to make it hard to work and earn enough for a decent lifestyle.  If mothers bear most of the brunt of whatever problems beset the child support system, it’s because courts hand them the lion’s share of the parenting time.  Fix the latter and we’d go a long way toward fixing the former.

Needless to say, The Guardian has never said a good word about equal parenting and of course the latest guidance offered to the Australian government is dead set against equal parenting following divorce or separation.

So there we have it: an article whose main mission is to flay fathers and complain about child support, all the while ignoring changes to the system that would make matters better for everyone.

In short, a classic Guardian piece.

May 7, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

The Alabama Senate has overwhelmingly passed a strong shared parenting bill.  SB 266 passed the Senate by a vote of 25 – 4 and now goes on to the House for consideration.

Senator Larry Stutts is the lead sponsor of SB 266.  He had this to say about it and shared parenting:

“Parental equality should be the starting point for every child custody case,” Stutts remarked. “Ultimately, it’s about the child having a right to equal time with both of his or her mother, father, and extended family, provided that both parents are responsible adults.”

As I said, SB 266 is strong.  Entitled the Children’s Equal Access Act, it seeks to provide exactly that.  First and foremost, it defines “Joint Custody” as “equal or approximately equal time with both parents.”  It then establishes a rebuttable presumption that joint custody is in the child’s best interests.

In order to rebut the presumption of joint custody, judges would have to find by clear and convincing evidence that same is not in the child’s best interests.  The “clear and convincing” standard is second in stringency only to “beyond a reasonable doubt.”  That would make deviating from joint custody a tall order for judges.

In the same way, SB 266 would require judges to consult 16 enumerated factors including the fitness of the parents, any history of abuse, each parent’s home environment, etc. in order to rebut the presumption.

SB 266 would then require judges to explain in writing their reasons for not granting joint custody when they issue such an order. 

Finally, SB 266 retains the existing policy of the state:

It is the policy of this state to assure that minor children have frequent and continuing contact with parents who have shown the ability to act in the best interest of their children and to encourage parents to share in the rights and responsibilities of rearing their children after the parents have separated or dissolved their marriage.

All that of course militates strongly in favor of joint custody.

Alabama law now states that each parent should have frequent and continuing contact with their children, so why does the law need reform?  The Alabama Family Rights Association explains:

Results of surveys administered by the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) indicate that a biased and unbalanced practice still exists throughout the State of Alabama. See the State of Children in Alabama.  Approximately 40,000 Alabama children a year experience court ordered visitation with one parent for only two to six days a month.  Statistical results confirmed by Alabama DHR reveal that children lacking meaningful contact with one of their parents are more likely to be burdened by increased youth crime, school dropout rates, drug and alcohol use, teen pregnancies, teen incarceration, and bullying.

So, despite the clear preference of existing law, judges simply use the lack of definition of frequent and continuing contact to default to the old standard of every other weekend visitation.

I’ll report back on how SB 266 fares in the Alabama House.

May 6, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Read this (The Fatherless Generation).  It’s a good compendium of many of the social, behavioral, emotional, educational, etc. deficits kids experience correlated with fatherlessness.  It’s probably nothing you haven’t seen before, at least piecemeal, but there’s a lot here and it’s well worth brushing up on.

For at least a couple of decades, this type of information has been well known.  Way back in 1994 David Blankenhorn forced the world to confront the deep-rooted problems associated with fatherlessness.  Barbara Dafoe Whitehead did much the same in her 1993 article in The Atlantic Monthly entitled “Dan Quayle Was Right.”  We should have gotten to work then fixing the problem of fatherlessness.  Instead, we did the opposite.  We ignored the problem and vilified fathers and men generally for every imaginable slight and error, whether real or not.  We still do.

But, when you go down the list of the social ills associated with fatherlessness, ask yourself “How much does all this cost, not only in dollars, but in social dysfunction?”  You won’t get an answer, because the cost is literally incalculable, but the exercise will bring home to you the gravity of the problem and the madness of our current-day society that wakes up every day as if nothing is amiss with families and kids.

After all, there are too many other problems that are more pressing, right?  Income inequality is a big one.  But wait, there’s a huge fatherlessness component to that, as single mothers with minor children in the home are the most likely of all demographic groups to live in poverty.

Health care of course is an important issue.  Ah, but fatherlessness plays a big role in poor health care and health outcomes.

Children who live absent their biological fathers are, on average, at least two to three times more likely to be poor, to use drugs, to experience educational, health, emotional and behavioral problems, to be victims of child abuse, and to engage in criminal behavior than their peers who live with their married, biological (or adoptive) parents.

Teens in single mother households are at a 30% higher risk [of smoking, alcohol and drug abuse] than those in two-parent households.

Our incarceration rate is a problem.  But again, fatherlessness is a big part of that too.

Even after controlling for income, youths in father-absent households still had significantly higher odds of incarceration than those in mother-father families. Youths who never had a father in the household experienced the highest odds. A 2002 Department of Justice survey of 7,000 inmates revealed that 39% of jail inmates lived in mother-only households.

And so it goes, on and on.  Be it suicide, homelessness, mental health problems, poor educational attainment, low employment rates, teen pregnancy, crime, becoming a victim of child abuse or neglect, the list is long.  Every one of those problems tears at the fabric of society.  Attempts to address each one draw off much-needed funds from the public purse.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: fatherlessness is the most serious social issue we face.  Courts and laws that encourage (or demand) fatherlessness are the bane of a sensible society.  Some sources of fatherlessness are hard or perhaps impossible to stanch.  But one approach is simple, the legal version of a slam-dunk – family court reform.  All that’s required for that is a slight tweak to existing laws and educating judges about the necessity of implementing those laws as intended.  We know what to do and how to do it.

As my own father used to say, “Time’s a-wasting.”

May 4, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Now it’s Virginia’s turn to fail its abused and neglected kids in foster care (Virginia Mercury, 12/11/18).  It’s not a new article, but it reports on an old, old problem.

Back in December, the state legislature received a report done at the behest of the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee.  It was, according to two lawmakers, a “devastating report.”

It was also a report that could have been written about many, many of the states in this nation.  The problems in Virginia are the usual ones.

Virginia Department of Social Services Commissioner Duke Storen said he agreed with the auditor’s findings.

“We have got a lot of things already under way because we’ve recognized these problems,” he said. “The fact is, we’ve got a retention problem, we’ve got a recruitment problem and we’ve got a training problem.”

Stated another way, Virginia doesn’t pay children’s welfare caseworkers enough and it weighs them down with too-large caseloads.  That means they don’t remain employed by the state very long and the ones who do remain have to pick up even heavier caseloads.  That all results in children not receiving the attention from the state they need and deserve.  One senator put it well:

“This is an absolutely devastating report,” said state Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax. “These are children we’ve taken from their families. They’re now our children. We have to give them the very best we can and obviously that’s not happening.”

Indeed.  When the state takes kids from their parents, they become the state’s kids.  This is how it treats them:

Among other failures, the report found 19 percent of children in foster care did not receive all their required monthly visits from caseworkers between April 2017 and March 2018, and 24 children were not visited at all. Of children ages 5 and younger, 15 percent did not receive all their required monthly visits…

There is also evidence that many children aren’t receiving basic physical, dental and mental health care. Only 10 percent of a sample of 492 foster care children in 2017 had received the recommended immunizations and 45 percent had no medical record of immunizations at any time in their life.

A 2017 federal review found that local departments did not adequately assess the mental and behavioral health needs of nine out of 34 sample foster care cases — even though “a significant proportion of children in foster care in Virginia have clinical levels of mental or behavioral health needs,” according to the report.

And even though placing children with families is considered a widely-held best practice, local departments don’t do enough to place children in foster care with relatives. Only 6 percent of Virginia’s foster care children were placed with relatives in 2016, compared to 32 percent nationwide.

And of course there aren’t enough foster parents to care for all the kids taken by the state.  Or at least Virginia doesn’t think there are.  But whatever the case, the state has no intention of dealing with the shortage, if there is one.

The state has no plans to address the shortage of foster parents, which has persisted since at least 1998, Dickinson added. It doesn’t even have a basic list of all foster parents in Virginia.

That’s right, the shortage of foster parents has been a known problem for over two decades and Virginia isn’t even thinking about how to solve it.  Amazing.

Again, all that could be said about many states.  But there’s one thing that uniquely hamstrings Virginia’s ability to deal with its foster care crisis.

Overall, the report faulted limited oversight of a far-flung system of 120 local departments of social services, which are each independently responsible for the services they provide. The state, meanwhile, has limited power to intervene when things go wrong.  

It’s hard to imagine a state system that tasks 120 sub-agencies with providing services to kids but then refuses the state sufficient power over those sub-agencies to ensure each does its job well.  Needless to say, the quality of services provided to kids is uneven at best, varying from location to location.

It’s such a common story.  Reading about state after state that frankly fails its most vulnerable residents, it’s hard to conclude anything but that children simply aren’t as important as we claim.  Too few resources to do the job properly and too many incentives to take children from families and into the adoption pipeline mean damage to kids that’s well known and documented and yet it continues.

May 2, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

It’s another case in which the law makes something hard out of something easy (Indiana Lawyer, 4/30/19).

Jessica Boyd and Jason Baugh weren’t married and had an off-again/on-again relationship.  During that time, Boyd gave birth to two children, both of whom Baugh acknowledged by affidavit to be his.  That constituted proof of paternity under Indiana law, so, when the two adults split up in 2010, the court ordered joint custody for Boyd and Baugh.

For unknown reasons, in 2017, Boyd asked Michael Litton to take a paternity test regarding the younger child.  She and Litton had had an affair during one of her breaks from Baugh.  Sure enough, DNA testing revealed Litton to have fathered the younger of the two children.

So Boyd and Litton went to court to establish him as the child’s father and to establish his parental rights.  But the trial and appellate courts said ‘No.’  Why?  Because Boyd and Baugh had already established Baugh as both children’s father and the law wouldn’t allow Boyd to attack that finding.

Now, from what I can judge, that doesn’t leave Litton out in the cold.  His mistake was filing an action with Boyd.  As I read the opinion, Litton can seek parental rights on his own and, as the biological father, probably prevail.  What that does to Baugh and his parental rights to the younger child is anyone’s guess.

But what a tangled web this all is.  If Boyd had simply told Baugh the truth about the second child’s paternity, i.e. that the father could be him or Litton, all of the subsequent years of litigation and expense would have been saved.  More importantly, both children would have known from the beginning who their respective fathers are.  As things stand, the second child will be put through the turmoil of learning that Baugh, the man the child has always thought of as “Dad” is in fact not his/her father.  Plus the child will form a new relationship with Litton, whatever form that may take.

In short, the tangled web is an emotional and financial disaster for adults and children alike.

Why is there no legal requirement that a woman simply tell the truth about paternity?  If she knows for certain who the father is, she should be required to tell him.  If she’s not sure, she should have to inform each man who may be.  Genetic testing can then sort the matter out.  In every other area of law we require the person with knowledge of material information to disclose it to the other party to a transaction.  Why not here?

Alternatively, why don’t we just test the genetics of all children at birth?  We perform dozens of other tests on them, so why not one for paternity.  At a stroke we’d untangle the web that’s caught Boyd, Baugh, Litton and one child.  Plus, we’d take a great leap toward ensuring that children can form real, meaningful relationships with their fathers from their first days.

The weird web of laws and customs by which we pretend to establish paternity, but that all too often gets the matter wrong, could be reformed in the blink of an eye and children’s best interests and adults’ emotional well-being and bank accounts would be served if we did.