Off In Limbo

With all of the billionaire-pork-bill signing and job-creation-bill-vetoing of the last week of the legislative session, there is one curious omission,.

It’s HF 322, the bill to change Minnesota’s family court laws to provide a rebuttable presumption of joint physical custody in divorce cases.

That means that unless there is a clear, compelling reason not to – substance abuse, criminal record, gross inability to raise kids, record of abuse and so on – that the parents will be presumed competent to share custody of the children.

That is as opposed to the current system, where the presumption is that full custody will be awarded to the parent that ticks off the greatest number of evaluation criteria from a list of about a dozen that judges use; whichever parent “wins” the most of those criteria “wins” physical custody, and child support, and the whole nine yards.

If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you’ll know it’s been a hot button topic of mine forever.  Raising kids is hard enough with a functional family. The number of social ills that trace back to the huge number of single-parent households is absolutely overwhelming.

The bill was presented to the Governor on May 11, with plenty of bipartisan support.

And it’s still sitting on his desk.

Of course, two key DFL constituencies – radical feminists and lawyers – oppose the bill.  The feminists dislike the loss of child support money and the fact that joint custody puts a legal hurdle over women taking “their” children and going anywhere they want to go regardless of the kids’ relationship to a father they deem unnecessary and seemingly (to look at their rhetoric on the issue) presume to be a drunk abuser anyway.

The lawyers’ line is “if a couple can’t agree on enough to stay married,  how are they going to agree on raising kids together”.  But the current system deliberately introduces the stress of a winner-takes-all system into the dissolution of the relationship – the prospect of “losing” ones’ children – which heaps piles of emotional stress (and the billable hours they bring!) onto an already awful situation.  Lawyers oppose the presumption of joint physical custody because it trims down the cash cow of divorce.

Why won’t the governor sign this bill?

3 thoughts on “Off In Limbo

  1. Simple Mitch! He hangs out with fellow libturds like Mike Ceresi and since most “lawyas” are of the same ilk, he has a dog in the hunt.

  2. bosshoss is right – current custody law allows lawyers to “wallpaper” a case without pissing off the judge.
    The simple formula for divorce with child is:
    total combined net worth of wife & husband + 25%
    30% of total to wife’s lawyer
    30% of total to husband’s lawyer
    20% of total to wife
    20% of total to husband

    Wallpapering is a process lawyers use to strip litigants of assets.

  3. This is another case where Liberals are ahead because they won the “name game.” I expect Dayton to veto the bill and parrot “experts” just as he did with fireworks and Stand Your Ground.

    Remember when Sarah Palin mentioned Death Panels to describe how health care rationing board would operate under Obamacare? Liberals howled because the name resonated with ordinary Americans, and repelled them.

    Present Minnesota divorce law weighs factors to determine the “best interests of the children.” Any move away from that system is automatically working AGAINST the “best interests of the children.” Who could possibly want that? Only deadbeat Dads wanting to escape child support, right?

    Except the factors don’t weigh “best interest,” they weigh “primary caretaker.” It’s presumed to be in the children’s best interests to remain with the person who taught them their numbers and colors, but there’s no actual proof of that in sociological research or in divorce law. Maybe Mom is better at teaching primary skills, but Dad is better at teaching adolescent social skills (why Bad Boys are Bad for You; and You are Too Doing your Homework, Dammit). Read Judith Wallerstein for heartbreaking evidence of long-term harm from losing a parent to divorce.

    Too long to explain. Not pithy. “Best Interests of the Children.” Veto. That’s about as long as we can expect to hold voters’ attention.

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