When Angeliek Green sang lullabies to her baby girls, she
caressed their foreheads and told them "mommy will always be
there for her little angels. Always."
She was wrong.
"I cry every night over my children," she says. "Every time I
see kids in a park with their parents, or playing in a yard as I
drive home from work, the wound is opened all over again."
Fifteen years ago, under pressure because of finances and
personal problems, Green ceded custody of her two daughters to
her ex-husband. She says:
"I thought that as a noncustodial parent [NCP] I would still
have the right to be a part of their lives. It was the worst
mistake of my life."
The last decade and a half has been a nightmare for Green as
she has been at the mercy of an ex-husband who has disappeared
with the girls for years at a time, and a vindictive stepmother
who has successfully turned the girls against their mother.
Green's anguish is experienced by hundreds of thousands of
NCPs across the country. Their grievances include: blocked
visitation and unenforced visitation orders; "move away" spouses
who use geography as a method of driving NCPs out of their
children's lives; acceptance by the courts of false and/or
uncorroborated accusations as a basis for denying custody or
even contact between parent and child; rigid, excessive, and
often punitive child support awards; a "win/lose" system which
pits ex-spouses against one another by designating a custodial
and a noncustodial parent; courts which in determining custody
tilt heavily towards the parent who initiates the divorce, thus
encouraging each parent to "strike first"; burdensome legal
costs; and judicial preference for mothers over fathers as
custodial parents.
The solution to the problem now lies before the Tennessee
State legislature. Tennessee HB2338 / SB2406, known as the
"Shared Parenting Bill," abolishes the concept of child custody
and gives equal standing to both parents in a divorce. In the
event that divorcing parents are unable to agree on a shared
parenting plan, the bill would instruct the courts to "order a
custody arrangement with the primary residential designation
alternating between parents" and would require that the
residential designation "reflect a substantially equal schedule"
between the mother and the father. The legislation, sponsored
by sponsored by state Rep. Kathryn Bowers (D-Memphis) and state
Sen. Ron Ramsey (R-Blountville), allows judges to deviate from
this equal arrangement only if one of the parents has committed
acts which render he or she unfit, such as child abuse or
domestic violence.
According to Dianna Thompson, Executive Director of the
American Coalition for Fathers and Children (ACFC), the bill
"will ensure that children continue to have an ongoing
emotional, physical, and financial relationship with both of
their parents following a divorce or separation." She says:
"Currently, we have a very adversarial court system, and
destructive custody battles are largely driven by the parents'
fear that they will be expelled from their children's lives. By
replacing winners and losers with equals, the Shared Parenting
legislation takes a lot of the anger and conflict out of
divorce."
Advocates of the bill emphasize that it will lower the
divorce rate, since parents won't be rewarded by the courts for
being the first one to terminate a struggling relationship. In
addition, they say, it encourages cooperation and even
reconciliation because each parent knows that, barring proof of
abuse, they will not be able to drive the other parent out of
their children's lives. In fact, studies have shown that states
with egalitarian custody laws have lower divorce rates than
"win/lose" states like Tennessee. And because the bill leaves
few legal issues for parents to fight over, instead of spending
thousands of dollars on court and legal fees, divorcing parents
can spend the money on their children.
Melanie Mays, a Memphis mother of two and a member of Child's
Best Interest, the nonprofit group which sponsored the
legislation, believes that Tennessee's children need the Shared
Parenting Bill. She says:
"It's shameful what our current system is doing to our
children. I see good, decent parents, usually fathers, being
locked out of their children's lives. It's as if they are being
thrown away. I see children who love and need both parents and
can't understand why they can't see the noncustodial parent.
It's a horror, and it needs to be changed."
Glenn Sacks' columns have appeared in the San Diego
Union-Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles
Times, the Salt Lake City Tribune, the Los Angeles Daily News,
and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He invites readers to visit his
website at www.GlennJSacks.com.
