Penn. abolishes parenting coordinators

One of the worst ideas to come out of the family court was to appoint some expert to micro-manage parenting decisions, without recourse to the courts. It sounds appealing to have some neutral objective child psychologist in charge because dumb parents don't know how to raise kids and might be influenced by antagonism towards the other parent. The idea would be a horrible nightmare even if it did work. But it has not worked wherever it has been tried.

National Parents Organization. reports:

Pennsylvania just eliminated the Parenting Coordinator role that it began five years ago. According to The Legal Intelligencer, its demise is related to a couple of high profile cases.

Pennsylvania was one of eleven states with legislation governing parenting coordinators. The other ten states that still have legislated parenting coordinator programs are: Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Massachusetts, and Texas. As with other areas of family law, the laws and regulations vary by state.

Effective May 23^rd this year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court adopted Pennsylvania Rule of Civil Procedure 1915.11-1, Elimination of Parenting Coordination. It states:

“Only judges may make decisions in child custody cases. Masters and hearing officers may make recommendations to the court. Courts shall not appoint any other individual to make decisions or recommendations or alter a custody order in child custody cases. Any order appointing a parenting coordinator shall be deemed vacated on the date this rule becomes effective. Local rules and administrative orders authorizing the appointment of parenting coordinators also shall be deemed vacated on the date this rule becomes effective.” Read more...

I had a $28,000 evaluation from psychologist Ken Perlmutter, and his main recommendation was for the ocurt to appoint a parenting coordinator who would have the authority to make all parenting decisions until the kids turn 18 years old, with no recourse or appeal if he is making bad decisions. This was in spite of the fact that he had evaluated our 4 years of joint custody, and could not find a single bad decision that we had made.

The kind of people who do these evaluations and become parenting coordinators are the worst sort of creeps. You would never want anyone like Perlmutter near your kids. I don't know who ever decided that psychologists were good for this sort of thing. There has never been a study showing that psychologist rear kids any better than anyone else.