Ever since the switch to a “No-fault” divorce system made kids’ chances of being raised by both parents a 50/50 proposition, child support collection has been a major growth industry for state and local government.
More than 2,100 people now work full-time in or with Friend of the Court offices in all 83 counties as referees, counselors, clerks, and support staff. In addition, many employees of the criminal justice system devote a major portion of their workday to this last vestige of Debtor’s Prison, including judges, assistant prosecutors, sheriff’s deputies, guards, and all their supporting personnel.
So it is no surprise that there is consternation in Lansing over the new, federal Deficit Reduction Act that cuts approximately $150 million dollars in Michigan subsidies for child-support enforcement.
But one state legislator, Rep. Leslie Mortimer (R-Horton), has introduced a bill that could dramatically reduce the need for devoting so many resources to child support enforcement in the first place.
HB 5267 would simply amend the Child Custody Act of 1970 to create a presumption that parents who divorce maintain joint custody of their minor children. Both would retain the legal right to authorize medical treatment, have access to school records, and so forth. Both would have physical custody of their child(ren) for alternating and substantially equal periods of time.
Although the current standard for determining custody includes consideration of a dozen criteria, putatively based on “the best interests of the child,” the listed factors are so subjective that nearly all custody decisions end up turning on a few, unwritten suppositions:
- Children’s sense of stability and security is enhanced by having as little disruption of their routine as possible, especially in continuity of residence.
- The non-custodial parent can effectively contribute to a child’s upbringing during “visitation” – generally alternating weekends, holidays and vacations (that is, half of what is labeled “quality time”).
- Children generally have greater need of their mother’s nurturance and their father’s earning capacity.
- Temporary custody of children must be granted while a divorce action is pending – often via what is called an “Ex Parte Order” (Latin for “From one side,” meaning that there is no hearing or other legal proceeding, the defendant is simply served notice along with the complaint for divorce that a court order has already been issued giving the plaintiff legal and physical custody of their child(ren) until a final decree is made).
When divorce proceedings have finally concluded return to supposition #1 and the vicious circle is complete.
Although the court rules are nominally gender-neutral, in effect a wife/mother can always get a divorce – citing no specific grounds – and almost always take the husband/father’s children, home, and half of all other property acquired during the marriage.
Then the courts force him to subsidize the breakup of his family by ordering him to hand over a huge portion of his income to his ex until the last of his children has reached legal age. He is, incidentally, not entitled to any accounting of what becomes of the money.
Legal forces come together in a perfect storm – a tsunami that sweeps away his entire life. Is it any surprise that more than a few fathers who find themselves in such circumstances are less than enthusiastic about also financing the whole thing?
Apologists for the status quo are quick to condescendingly charge that these are “Deadbeat Dads” trying to evade their responsibilities. In point of fact, fathers are rarely given the option of assuming them.
And that is what Rep. Mortimer’s “Equal Parenting” bill would change.
The legislation, of course, makes provision for rebutting the presumption of joint custody – if a parent is either “unfit, unwilling, or unable,” or moves residence so far away as to preclude maintaining established school schedules. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, it will simply give defendants back some say over their own fate.
It is difficult to predict how many divorcing parents will choose to share parenting responsibilities equally should HB 5267 actually be enacted into law. Many, daunted by the obvious impracticalities of maintaining two households with redundant child care necessities, may redouble their efforts to preserve the family – if only until the children are of legal age.
Those who are genuinely unable to live together will, at least, be compelled to negotiate a more balanced, post-divorce, parenting arrangement.
What is virtually certain, though, is that both parties will have felt sufficiently empowered in the process as to avoid the poisonous resentment – and, too often, open hostility – that currently makes child support collection so problematic that the federal government is subsidizing it.
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More on social policy:
- National service
- The War on the Poor
- Homelessness: Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
- Drug Wars
- Freedom of speech
- Earth Day
- Sex and the Single-minded State
- Prohibition — no nobler the second time around
- Affirmative Action
- Finding middle ground on abortion
- Child support and responsibility
- The changing face of racism
- Brave new diversity
- The high cost when life is priceless
