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In 2012, I was contacted by a graduate student who was looking for stories about single fathers. It's so interesting to listen to the interview she recorded with me so many years later. After a little reflection, I realize that very little has changed with my relationship with my kids. My views on marriage/divorce and family court are close to what they were before, but I can articulate why I feel so strongly about equality in family court this many years later.
During the early 2000s, I was still reeling from a highly contentious divorce process. My ex-wife and I were arguing over the silliest of things. I knew those arguments wouldn't matter in the long run. What I did know was our children needed and wanted both of us in their lives. They still do. Why on earth my ex-wife wanted to cut me out of our children's lives, I'll never quite understand.
Am I a single father? I guess so, but the reality is that we are co-parenting. We share our children equally. Shared parenting works.
I often wonder why people today still feel mothers should have more time with children post-separation or divorce than fathers. What makes a mother any more worthy than a father? Who should be the custodial parent when there are two mothers? What if there were two dads raising kids? If both parents are working 10 hours a day and a nanny is caring for the kids all day, who should get custody if the parents want to split?
Why must kids miss out on certain family relationships when parents separate? It's cruel for children, who love both parents, to suddenly lose access to everything they once knew when their parents no longer want to live together. Does a child's love and need for both parents suddenly end when parents decide to separate?
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When parents separate, even if it's amicable, it's a traumatic event. It's hard for the parents, relatives, friends, and especially children. Barring exceptional circumstances, a child's right to both loving, fit parents should not be allowed to be used as leverage against the other while personal differences are ironed out in a settlement or family court.
It's time to stop seeing one parent as the default and the other as just a visitor. These assumptions are often sexist and outdated. If the parents can no longer live together, the next best thing is to have equal time with their children.
Absent extenuating circumstances such as abuse, addiction, instability, neglect, or abandonment, courts should start from the idea that children should have equal time and access to both parents. Setting a rebuttable presumption of shared parenting for temporary orders, with room for exceptions if one parent is demonstrably unfit, will shift the starting point to what's best for children. It will also free a judge's time to review and consider more challenging matters.
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Courts should allow parents to retain joint legal and physical custody unless presented with clear and convincing evidence that this arrangement is not in the child's best interest. The bar should be extremely high to allow any court to take away custody from loving, fit parents. There shouldn't be an incentive for a winner-takes-all, adversarial system that encourages bad behavior.
In New York State, one parent is the custodial parent, and the other is relegated to "visitor" status. The way you win and become the custodial parent is to play a horrible game and make an accusation so that the court can award one parent the children. The incentives to 'win' are enticing. The losers are the children in the long run.
If I didn't fight to retain the status I always had as a parent, I would have been that every other weekend parent. That never made sense to me. It's why we share our children equally, and neither one of us pays child support. We support our children by supporting them. Why should the state tell either of us how to spend our hard-earned money on our children?
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO AND PODCAST HERE
Let's do what's right for our children and update domestic relations law in every state in our nation. Children mustn't lose significant contact with loving parents.
When parents separate, the family doesn't end; it just gets rearranged.
Clayton Craddock is an independent thinker, father of two beautiful children in New York City. He is the drummer of the hit broadway musical Ain't Too Proud. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University's School of Business and is a 29 year veteran of the fast-paced New York City music scene. He has played drums in several hit broadway and off-broadway musicals, including "Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical, and Lady Day At Emerson's Bar and Grill. Also, Clayton has worked on: Footloose, Motown, The Color Purple, Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Spongebob Squarepants, The Musical, Evita, Cats, and Avenue Q.