As a mother who lived through 13 years of psychological, emotional, economic, and spiritual abuse, I need to bring another perspective. If a blanket 50/50 custody law had applied in my case, my children would have been grossly neglected. Their father once told me outright, “the children are your problem,” and for all those years he refused to provide financially or practically. Without the law and church accountability, he would have walked away completely.
You also point out that “mothers have their own problems” — and yes, that is true. But if you want to speak honestly about fairness, then the reality of the men-child father also needs to be acknowledged: men who want a wife to uphold their Christian image but refuse to step up as husbands or fathers. Equal custody on paper does not mean equal responsibility in practice.
I am not a feminist, but I know from hard experience that psychological abuse is real (here in the UK it is recognised in law). A man can appear respectable, even religious, while being neglectful, manipulative, and unsafe for his own children.
A one-size-fits-all presumption of 50/50 custody may sound “fair,” but unless it accounts for abuse, neglect, and parental immaturity, it risks sacrificing the wellbeing of children for the sake of adult appearances.
How many divorces involve minor children? Some couples do not have children, other may divorce later in life when the children are adults. I tried searching for this online but came up with nothing.
Aaron, credit for bringing in Wilcox and making sure to point out the dangers of mom's new boyfriend. An old friend of my mother's reports having been raped at a very tender age by her mom's then-boyfriend, so this danger has been top of mind for me for a long time.
And it was a classic case where her mother was a significantly worse person than her father, but mom gatekept access under the old system and she didn't get to know dad until she was an adult.
Never let the feminists off the hook. They need to admit that this is a real thing that happens.
I'm skeptical that a statutory presumption of equal custody would really change that much. There is already a developing cultural, informal bias towards equal custody for various reasons even when it's not in a statute: declining middle class budgets reducing the pot of assets to fight over, feminism on the bench, feminism in the legal profession, and a culture of more involved fathers.
The Kentucky statute in question is drafted with some precision: https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=51299. KRS § 403.270(2) lists a multi-factor Best Interests of the Child considerations not that far off what most states have. By creating a presumption it just shifts the burden of evidence a little bit more to the party moving for a deviation from equal custody. Is that enough for it to cause the 25% drop in divorces compared with the 18% decline nationwide or is there some other data that can explain it? Beats me, but I do not think it's a clear case.
In my view larger cultural changes have a much more substantial impact on divorce than any minor tweaks in how the law works. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how spiteful one is) many women are being put through many divorce wringers that men stereotypically have complained about in the past, from ruinous asset splits to extremely humiliating and reputation-annihilating hearings to routine long-term alienation from children. Due to residual cultural respect for women, previous generations were often spared this sort of thing.
It seems we are drifting towards the inevitable situation where there is basically no real consequences to marriage and divorce.
I'm a child of two generations of divorce, and of course they system is rigged against the Fathers, but it feels like rather than fixing the system all were doing is dissolving it
What barriers existed under the previous system? If the only barrier is that one party is guaranteed to get hosed, and we know with some certainty which party that is (the man), then what kind of barrier is that? Leveling the playing field then seems to be a barrier of sorts. Now it's harder to say which party will come out on top, and it logically follows that that makes conflict less likely.
I thought the barrier you were describing was undone with no-fault divorce. Which began in the 1970s. Though I read somewhere that NY state didn't repeal its no-fault divorce law until 2010, but something tells me there's an asterisk on that.
And it's a dilemma. Not enough people are marrying and not enough, married or otherwise, are having children. Children have become accessories competing with other priorities such as job, vacations, new cars, etc.
Yet more marriages will inevitably lead to more divorces and more divorces will lead to more children in in the middle.
My ex refused to see his children (for which one my children blamed me because she couldn't face her father's lack of caring. She is 50 years old, still hurting, still blaming me and now he has died and she blames me that she never really got to know him).
But at least we can change the divorce laws so that they favor the children over the adults.
One needs to make the distinction between joint custody and joint placement.
Joint legal custody has been the presumption in Wisconsin for about 20 years. It means that both parents share equal decision-making authority regarding a child's major life decisions, such as healthcare, education, and religious upbringing. Joint custody can be denied only if a parent is determined to be unfit. I think a number oof states have joint legal custody laws.
But the game changer in Kentucky and the other states is the presumption not only of joint legal custody but joint placement as well.
In Wisconsin some judges in some counties also presume joint placement, but others use a standard of best interest of the child, which is much more subjective.
In any case, this is a victory for fathers and children.
I know in my family it has kept two warring parents together, though there was a time of pretty much open warfare when i feared for the emotional well-being of the child. But they have gone to counseling and I can say it is now in the child's benefit since she suffered a great deal from an earlier separation.
I would also like to clarify one point--or at least my opinion on it.
Before DNA testing (and for some time after as well) a child born into a marriage was legally considered a child **of** the marriage no matter who the biological father was. This was for the benefit of the child so that even if the parents divorced or one of them died, the welfare of the child was paramount.
A good part of me believes that should still be the case but, of course, in practical terms it will never fly.
When my father was in a nursing home and I sat with him for hours, we would have junky TV on. The Jerry Springer show used to do paternity tests for men who believed a child wasn't theirs. I was disgusted at some of these who whooped and hollered in joy when they discovered a 4 or 5 year old child that called him daddy was not his child and he no longer had to pay child support. Of course, this was Jerry Springer who probably screened for these creeps (or it wasn't real in the first place).
I knew a couple who went on Jerry Springer. Nothing to do with divorce, it was something a lot weirder. Anyway they told us afterward that Springer's people deliberately coached them on how to act during the filming. There are no real "surprises" and everything is scripted ahead of time.
Purely as a moral matter, I think this is valid. There's a principle here of "Speak now, or forever hold your peace." If you doubt that kid is yours: find out fast. Once that kid believes with all his heart that you're his daddy, that's not something you can undo. I couldn't imagine doing that to my children if somehow they turned out not to be biologically mine.
Though I still tend to think, as a legal matter and as a matter of justice, the husband should be heavily favored in divorce situations where his supposed children turn out to be the product of cuckoldry. Though I can't say exactly what that should look like.
Of course, I doubt those Jerry Springer situations ever involve a child born to an intact nuclear family, so you're really referring to a whole other can of worms.
Good points. But I suspect that in many of these cases, women look for guys who can be conned into thinking they're the father. And so these guys, being rather gullible, are not likely to be thinking ahead enough to quickly contest whether they're the father, let alone realize other downstream ramifications.
I know, for example, of one such case, and the supposed father later married (IIRC the first woman was just a short-term girlfriend, but sued and won for child support). He and his wife have their own children now, and his wife is very opposed to him paying that child support, so that he's now quite behind and it's difficult to get a job, etc.
Sure, that makes sense to me. That’s why I said in my original comment that these Springeresque situations are a “whole other can of worms” from a child produced by cuckoldry in a marriage that isn’t discovered until a later second-guess.
In the situation you describe, I imagine that guy never had much relationship with the kid.
It's perhaps best that we not legislate such situations. You could also have dueling fathers, both of whom want the child.
It does nothing to wish for the good old days, mainly because there were no good old days, but there were simpler days and I don't know what the trade-offs should be.
As a mother who lived through 13 years of psychological, emotional, economic, and spiritual abuse, I need to bring another perspective. If a blanket 50/50 custody law had applied in my case, my children would have been grossly neglected. Their father once told me outright, “the children are your problem,” and for all those years he refused to provide financially or practically. Without the law and church accountability, he would have walked away completely.
You also point out that “mothers have their own problems” — and yes, that is true. But if you want to speak honestly about fairness, then the reality of the men-child father also needs to be acknowledged: men who want a wife to uphold their Christian image but refuse to step up as husbands or fathers. Equal custody on paper does not mean equal responsibility in practice.
I am not a feminist, but I know from hard experience that psychological abuse is real (here in the UK it is recognised in law). A man can appear respectable, even religious, while being neglectful, manipulative, and unsafe for his own children.
A one-size-fits-all presumption of 50/50 custody may sound “fair,” but unless it accounts for abuse, neglect, and parental immaturity, it risks sacrificing the wellbeing of children for the sake of adult appearances.
How many divorces involve minor children? Some couples do not have children, other may divorce later in life when the children are adults. I tried searching for this online but came up with nothing.
Aaron, credit for bringing in Wilcox and making sure to point out the dangers of mom's new boyfriend. An old friend of my mother's reports having been raped at a very tender age by her mom's then-boyfriend, so this danger has been top of mind for me for a long time.
And it was a classic case where her mother was a significantly worse person than her father, but mom gatekept access under the old system and she didn't get to know dad until she was an adult.
Never let the feminists off the hook. They need to admit that this is a real thing that happens.
I'm skeptical that a statutory presumption of equal custody would really change that much. There is already a developing cultural, informal bias towards equal custody for various reasons even when it's not in a statute: declining middle class budgets reducing the pot of assets to fight over, feminism on the bench, feminism in the legal profession, and a culture of more involved fathers.
The Kentucky statute in question is drafted with some precision: https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=51299. KRS § 403.270(2) lists a multi-factor Best Interests of the Child considerations not that far off what most states have. By creating a presumption it just shifts the burden of evidence a little bit more to the party moving for a deviation from equal custody. Is that enough for it to cause the 25% drop in divorces compared with the 18% decline nationwide or is there some other data that can explain it? Beats me, but I do not think it's a clear case.
In my view larger cultural changes have a much more substantial impact on divorce than any minor tweaks in how the law works. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how spiteful one is) many women are being put through many divorce wringers that men stereotypically have complained about in the past, from ruinous asset splits to extremely humiliating and reputation-annihilating hearings to routine long-term alienation from children. Due to residual cultural respect for women, previous generations were often spared this sort of thing.
It seems we are drifting towards the inevitable situation where there is basically no real consequences to marriage and divorce.
I'm a child of two generations of divorce, and of course they system is rigged against the Fathers, but it feels like rather than fixing the system all were doing is dissolving it
What barriers existed under the previous system? If the only barrier is that one party is guaranteed to get hosed, and we know with some certainty which party that is (the man), then what kind of barrier is that? Leveling the playing field then seems to be a barrier of sorts. Now it's harder to say which party will come out on top, and it logically follows that that makes conflict less likely.
I thought the barrier you were describing was undone with no-fault divorce. Which began in the 1970s. Though I read somewhere that NY state didn't repeal its no-fault divorce law until 2010, but something tells me there's an asterisk on that.
Some bells can't be un-rung.
And it's a dilemma. Not enough people are marrying and not enough, married or otherwise, are having children. Children have become accessories competing with other priorities such as job, vacations, new cars, etc.
Yet more marriages will inevitably lead to more divorces and more divorces will lead to more children in in the middle.
My ex refused to see his children (for which one my children blamed me because she couldn't face her father's lack of caring. She is 50 years old, still hurting, still blaming me and now he has died and she blames me that she never really got to know him).
But at least we can change the divorce laws so that they favor the children over the adults.
One needs to make the distinction between joint custody and joint placement.
Joint legal custody has been the presumption in Wisconsin for about 20 years. It means that both parents share equal decision-making authority regarding a child's major life decisions, such as healthcare, education, and religious upbringing. Joint custody can be denied only if a parent is determined to be unfit. I think a number oof states have joint legal custody laws.
But the game changer in Kentucky and the other states is the presumption not only of joint legal custody but joint placement as well.
In Wisconsin some judges in some counties also presume joint placement, but others use a standard of best interest of the child, which is much more subjective.
In any case, this is a victory for fathers and children.
I know in my family it has kept two warring parents together, though there was a time of pretty much open warfare when i feared for the emotional well-being of the child. But they have gone to counseling and I can say it is now in the child's benefit since she suffered a great deal from an earlier separation.
Thanks for the clarification.
I would also like to clarify one point--or at least my opinion on it.
Before DNA testing (and for some time after as well) a child born into a marriage was legally considered a child **of** the marriage no matter who the biological father was. This was for the benefit of the child so that even if the parents divorced or one of them died, the welfare of the child was paramount.
A good part of me believes that should still be the case but, of course, in practical terms it will never fly.
When my father was in a nursing home and I sat with him for hours, we would have junky TV on. The Jerry Springer show used to do paternity tests for men who believed a child wasn't theirs. I was disgusted at some of these who whooped and hollered in joy when they discovered a 4 or 5 year old child that called him daddy was not his child and he no longer had to pay child support. Of course, this was Jerry Springer who probably screened for these creeps (or it wasn't real in the first place).
I knew a couple who went on Jerry Springer. Nothing to do with divorce, it was something a lot weirder. Anyway they told us afterward that Springer's people deliberately coached them on how to act during the filming. There are no real "surprises" and everything is scripted ahead of time.
Purely as a moral matter, I think this is valid. There's a principle here of "Speak now, or forever hold your peace." If you doubt that kid is yours: find out fast. Once that kid believes with all his heart that you're his daddy, that's not something you can undo. I couldn't imagine doing that to my children if somehow they turned out not to be biologically mine.
Though I still tend to think, as a legal matter and as a matter of justice, the husband should be heavily favored in divorce situations where his supposed children turn out to be the product of cuckoldry. Though I can't say exactly what that should look like.
Of course, I doubt those Jerry Springer situations ever involve a child born to an intact nuclear family, so you're really referring to a whole other can of worms.
Good points. But I suspect that in many of these cases, women look for guys who can be conned into thinking they're the father. And so these guys, being rather gullible, are not likely to be thinking ahead enough to quickly contest whether they're the father, let alone realize other downstream ramifications.
I know, for example, of one such case, and the supposed father later married (IIRC the first woman was just a short-term girlfriend, but sued and won for child support). He and his wife have their own children now, and his wife is very opposed to him paying that child support, so that he's now quite behind and it's difficult to get a job, etc.
Sure, that makes sense to me. That’s why I said in my original comment that these Springeresque situations are a “whole other can of worms” from a child produced by cuckoldry in a marriage that isn’t discovered until a later second-guess.
In the situation you describe, I imagine that guy never had much relationship with the kid.
So true.
It's perhaps best that we not legislate such situations. You could also have dueling fathers, both of whom want the child.
It does nothing to wish for the good old days, mainly because there were no good old days, but there were simpler days and I don't know what the trade-offs should be.