July 30, 2015
By Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization
Here’s a petition to the White House urging the Obama Administration to throw its weight behind shared parenting. Here’s how it reads:
Too many children of divorced parents are currently harmed by the existing divorce laws. The current laws are heavily biased, in words and in practice, toward assigning custody to only ONE of the parents. The other parent is left with little to no parenting time at all and yet they are burdened with the obligation to pay excessive and disproportionate amount of child support. These parents are often forced by the court to enter a spiral of bankruptcy and jail time. The victims of these outdated and harmful divorce laws are the CHILDREN who lost the support of one of their loving parents. While divorce laws are mostly state matters, the President has the bully pulpit that he can use to bring this into national highlight and I am pleading with him to help right this wrong.
Will President Obama take this to heart? That’s doubtful, but possible. He’s a lame-duck president who can no longer be harmed at the ballot box by any stand he takes now. So it’s possible that he may take up the gauntlet thrown down by shared parenting advocates.
And even if he doesn’t, every effort like this is worthwhile. It raises the issue at the highest levels of government and the more policy-makers who see our arguments, the better.
So please sign the petition.