NATIONAL PARENTS ORGANIZATION
PRESS RELEASE
March 24, 2016
National Parents Organization applauds Colorado legislators who are acting on numerous U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have established parenting as a fundamental right and liberty interest.
Colorado legislators joined the national movement to reform the family courts and support shared parenting – a flexible arrangement in which children spend as close to equal time as possible with each parent after separation or divorce – with the filing of the Parent’s Bill of Rights, HB16-1110. The bill establishes parental rights as a fundamental liberty interest and a fundamental right, which encourages family courts to make shared parenting the norm when parents divorce or separate. The move could be a significant change, considering shared parenting occurs less than 20 percent of the time after separation or divorce, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“Thank you, Colorado legislators, for standing up for the crucial yet all-too-often violated rights of parents. No loving and fit parent should ever lose the inherent right to spend significant, meaningful time with his or her child, as research, and common sense have told us many times over,” said Dr. Ned Holstein, MD, Founder and Board Chair of National Parents Organization.
While shared parenting is unusual, efforts to turn it from the exception to the norm within family courts are growing. For instance, The Wall Street Journal recently revealed that nearly 20 states have proposed shared parenting laws. At least three states have recently implemented reform, and numerous states are currently considering shared parenting legislation. Additionally, shared parenting has received high-profile endorsements, including support from the Catholic Church as well as the 2015 International Conference on Shared Parenting and the Council of Europe.
The Parent’s Bill of Rights falls in line with the 14 decisions in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Parental Rights Doctrine. For instance, the most recent opinion, Troxel v. Granville in 2000, states that the interest of parents in “the care, custody, and control of their children” is “perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court.”
Importantly, the bill also aligns with a growing body of research concluding shared parenting is in the best interest of children when parents divorce or separate. As just one recent example, a 150,000-person study published in The Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health last year concluded shared parenting is in the best interest of children’s health.
“Millions of American children are suffering from the outmoded practices of the family courts of awarding custody to just one parent, with only a few days per month of parenting time with the other parent. This custody model is not in the best interest of most children. It causes heartache for children, who ardently desire the love and guidance of both parents. And such children do more poorly in school, have higher rates of substance abuse, drop out more frequently, and have higher rates of delinquency, gang activity and trouble with the law,” Dr. Holstein said.
Gilbert Tso, Co-Chair of National Parents Organization of Colorado, asked, “How can we square the language of Troxel v. Granville, and numerous other similar Supreme Court decisions, with the slashing of the parenting time of a fit, loving and involved parent far below the mathematically necessary 50 percent? Yet the family courts do this hundreds of times every day. In the process they are damaging the best interest of the children, according to the consensus of child development experts who have researched the issue. It’s time to right this wrong, and the path begins with passage of the Parent’s Bill of Rights in Colorado.”
ABOUT NATIONAL PARENTS ORGANIZATION
National Parents Organization, a charitable and educational 501 (c)(3) organization, seeks better lives for children through family law reform that establishes equal rights and responsibilities for fathers and mothers after divorce or separation. The organization is focused on promoting shared parenting and preserving a child’s strong bond with both parents, which is critically important to their emotional, mental, and physical health. In 2014, National Parents Organization released the Shared Parenting Report Card, the first study to rank the states on child custody laws. Visit the National Parents Organization website at www.nationalparentsorganization.org.