Wednesday, March 29, 2006

NY getting too many faxes

Glenn Sacks writes:
James Hays of the Coalition of Fathers and Families New York, which is sponsoring the New York Shared Parenting Bill, informed me yesterday that your faxes have completely shut down the fax machines of the 16 members of the Assembly's Children & Families Committee. The committee members have asked us to stop, and we complied immediately.

Five thousand of you have faxed or emailed the committee members in support of A330, the shared parenting bill.
He has info on how you can still support the NY bill with email and letters.

He has links to opposing views published in an Albany newspaper op-ed page, if you want to get both sides. The NY chapter of NOW is against sharing parenting. Perhaps its best argument is:
Let us learn from the experience of others. In California, a report prepared 15 years after divorce reform legislation, found that one-third of joint-physical custody arrangements were indistinguishable in practice from the sole-custody visitation arrangements.
There is no citation for that "report", but it is not clear how it helps her argument anyway. Shared parenting custody orders give the parents the flexibility to negotiate what will be best for them and the kids. If it is true that a substantial number of parents were awarded 50-50 custody by the court but later negotiated some other time-sharing arrangement out of court, then why is that a bad thing? The purpose of shared parenting is to give opportunities, rights, and responsibilities to both parents, not to force them into a rigid schedule.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Has anyone heard yet whether the bill got out of committee this week?