A bill being heard this week by a Missouri legislative committee promotes shared parenting. According to Saint Louis Today, this bill is a flexible arrangement in which children spend as close to equal time as possible with each parent after separation or divorce. The legislation proposes adding language to the state's child custody law to emphasize that the best interest of the child is equal access to both parents. A change that would encourage judges to pay more attention to research on the best interest of children.
A handful of states have benefited from laws supportive of the arrangement for several years. In the past couple of years, a few more states including Utah, South Dakota and Minnesota, have added laws that encourage shared parenting. As the Wall Street Journal revealed, nearly 20 more states have considered similar proposals over the past eight months.
Missouri's HB 1550 works to move shared parenting from the exception to the norm in multiple ways, including that the bill
1. It creates guidelines for parenting plans that "maximize to the highest degree the amount of time the ----child may spend with each parent;"
2. It requires courts to disclose why shared parenting wasn't awarded if another arrangement is ordered;
It requires courts to provide written findings and conclusions in a custody case, which makes the case appealable if a party disagrees with judgement.
3.Specifies that courts can't "presume that a parent, solely because of his or her sex, is more qualified than the other parent;"
4.Prohibits local courts from establishing their own rules, such as having a default parenting plan.
Additionally, the legislation stands to significantly reduce the animosity that can occur between divorcing parents, and all too often, the tension reaches the children and many others close to the family, creating a great deal of unnecessary pain. Under the state's current law, parents enter child custody discussions on unequal footing. The sole custody model, pigeonholing one parent in the sole custody role and the other in the "visitor" position, persists.
Fortunately, if enacted into law, this legislation would promote parental equality by starting, rather than ending, the conversation at shared parenting. And, of course, when parents are unfit, judges could and should move the outcome away from shared parenting.
