Robert Muchnick
January 25, 2002
In the midst of another of this country's weird, undeclared wars we are endeavoring to rid the world of terrorists and tyrants who threaten America's health and safety. While that cause is just, it has, yet again, distracted the United States -- and the individual states in particular -- from another, ongoing form of domestic terror and tyranny practiced by our very own judiciary: the extirpation of one parent from a child's life via the excuse of divorce coupled with the "child's best interest," in the process of which many lives are destroyed at once.
Divorce affects approximately one million children each year in the U.S. Here in Colorado, for example, Arapahoe County District Court alone handles about 7,000 dissolution of marriage cases annually, half of which contain litigable disputes between the parties.
The nearly ubiquitous result of these disputed parental rights and responsibilities cases -- where each parent is forced to "prove" to the court that he or she is the "better" parent -- is that one parent is awarded much or all of the parental rights and the other is granted less parenting time and less parental authority than an aunt, uncle or teacher has. The "losing" parent is usually stripped of any say at all in determining his child's upbringing.
The deleterious effects on children of losing a parent are well documented, and the lost parent in divorce is most often the father. Children from fatherless homes account for 63% of youth suicides and 71% of pregnant teenagers, according to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. These children comprise a heavily disproportionate share of youth in state institutions and those exhibiting behavioral disorders (U.S. Dept. of Justice and Centers for Disease Control, respectively).
The routine divestiture of one parent's role in his child's life permits, in all too many instances, the other parent to become a tyrant and oppressor with artificial power bestowed by a court ruling in conflict with the Constitutional guarantee of equal protection to both parents. The child inevitably is caught, to great detriment, in the crossfire.
One attempt to remedy this appalling situation is now in the Colorado House of Representatives. House Bill 1190, introduced January 15 by Rep. Bill Sinclair (R-Colo. Springs), declares as a matter of legislative determination that it is presumptively in the best interests of a child to have a relationship with both parents, and that that goal is best accomplished by imposing shared parenting in most situations, to include "a substantial amount of time with each parent." Presumably, this declaration stands in stark opposition to the typical arrangement of every other weekend and Wednesday evening dinners dictated by family court judges for the "non-custodial" parent.
There was a poster during the hippie era that stated, "War is not healthy for children and other living things." If there was the ineluctable grain of truth in that cloying motto, there is a boulder of truth in the fact that the current legislative and judicial war against the children of divorce and their targeted parents is not healthy for them, either.
Robert Muchnick is executive director of the Denver-based Center for Children's Justice, Inc. He can be reached at director@childrensjustice.org or (303)722-3098.
Copyright © 2002-2004 Robert Muchnick. All Rights Reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce the foregoing article for non-commercial purposes only provided it is reproduced in full, unedited, and this copyright notice including the source URL http://www.childrensjustice.org is included.