The Backlash! - April 1995

Organization News - Wisconsin Fathers for Equal Justice P.O. Box 1742 Madison, WI 53701-1742

When parents don't agree and the decision must be made, society has no choice but to give that fateful decision to the courts. An enlightened society provides its courts with adequate tools of law to make such an important decision reliably and reasonably.

Many believe our courts don't yet have those adequate tools. The purpose of this proposal is to improve upon existing tools to take care of situations where parents who disagree are both fit and competent, and the child's right to a relationship with each must be externally implemented.

Fundamental to this proposal is that children need and have a right to their two natural parents. Also, that parents are much better than government or courts in deciding what is best for their child. And that a fundamentally best interest of a child is served by providing that child with a maximal, ongoing relationship with both of its parents when the parents live apart.

Accordingly, the proposal starts with a rebuttable presumption that the child will have a clear opportunity to develop analogous relationships with both its separated parents. No matter what existed before married parents were separated or if there never was a marriage. It's in the child's best interest to have amble opportunity to develop the necessary relationships.

If the custody presumption is rebutted, we want to avoid contamination of the required judicial decision by improper factors such as ignorance or gender bias. We need a good set of rules. And since the child's right is not claimed by the child itself but rather on behalf of the child, we commonly look to a concept known as the child's best interest. Unfortunately, that concept is ill-defined in the law and consequently subject to the very contamination we try to avoid.

This proposal, therefore, defines best interest of the child in terms of the child's right to a full and analogous relationship with both parents. And it assumes that the best solution possible for a child is the one that places both parents on a completely equal footing. When equality for the parents won't work because of the circumstances of the case, something as close to it as possible must be found. The ten rules listed in last month's issue are provided to reach that decision in terms of a shared parenting approach to the best interest of the child.