Don Hubin of the Ohio chapter of the National Parents Organization, which advocates for shared parenting, said the bill gets some things right and some things wrong.
Hubin praised the bill for changing how child support is calculated. “When you institute an impossible order, you encourage non-compliance and . and the child ends up getting nothing,” he said.
But Hubin said Ohio and SB125 fail to treat both parents equally and give a proper accounting for duplicated expenses incurred by both, such as having beds in two households for when kids spend time with each parent. The bill doesn’t give the non-primary custody parent a break for shared parenting until a child spends 90 or more nights in that parent’s household, he said. These elements make it more difficult for separated or divorced couples to do shared parenting, Hubin said.