Family court judges are misguidedly harming children by granting sole
custody to one parent - usually the mother - in bitter divorce battles,
says a comprehensive new report.*

http://www.thestar.com/article/612728

The Toronto Star
3 April 2009

Children harmed by sole custody, report says

Canadian judges rarely use voluntary arrangements in which kids live with
each parent roughly equally

By Susan Pigg, Living Reporter

Family court judges are misguidedly harming children by granting sole
custody to one parent - usually the mother - in bitter divorce battles,
says a comprehensive new report.*

Too many children are being "robbed of the love of one parent" by a legal
system that is out of touch with the needs of children and treats them like
property to be won or lost, says Edward Kruk, an expert on child custody
issues.

"The system is set up to polarize parents, to make them enemies, to set up
fights over custody and exacerbate conflict rather than reduce it," says
Kruk, an associate professor of social work at the University of British
Columbia, whose three-year study is now in the hands of Canada's justice
minister.

He calls what's happening in Canada's divorce courts "a national shame"
that leaves families bankrupt from legal fees and pushing parents,
especially fathers, to suicide.

Especially devastating are the long-term effects of court orders that
essentially cut one parent out of children's lives - usually the dad - in a
misguided effort to foster peace between warring parents, the report says.

Citing a host of North American studies, Kruk's report points to the
long-term dangers: Some 85 per cent of youth in prison are fatherless; 71
per cent of high school dropouts grew up without fathers, as did 90 per
cent of runaway children. Fatherless youth are also more prone to
depression, suicide, delinquency, promiscuity, drug abuse, behavioural
problems and teen pregnancy, warns the 84-page report, a compilation of
dozens of studies around divorce and custody, including some of his own
research over the past 20 years.

"Parent-child bonds are formed through daily routines - preparing
breakfast, taking the child to school, having dinner, getting ready for
bed. Without that, it's very difficult for parents to have any real
connection with their kids," Kruk said in a telephone interview from B.C.
"It's so destructive for children to have a loving parent removed from
their lives."

The effects of divorce on kids are now so well documented, significantly
more couples separating today are opting for "equal shared parenting" -
voluntary custody arrangements in which the children live with each parent
roughly half the time, says Kruk. While a landmark federal study, For the
Sake of the Children, recommended that approach back in 1998 and it has
since been adopted by other countries, including Australia, it's still
rarely used by Canadian judges and needs to be made law, except where there
are extenuating circumstances, such as domestic violence or mental health
issues that make one parent unfit, says Kruk.

Instead, most judges still rely on a "winner takes all" approach in custody
battles. In some three-quarters of cases, judges grant sole custody to
mothers, believing that it's impossible for warring parents to make shared
custody work, Kruk's report finds. That's despite a growing body of
research that shows animosity and even physical violence can increase
"significantly" when one parent has sole control, says the report, Child
Custody, Access and Parental Responsibility: The Search for a Just and
Equitable Standard.

Even court-ordered "joint custody" is really a misnomer, Kruk's report
shows. In fact, the non-custodial parent - usually the father - ends up
with just a few days a month (typically every second weekend and every
Wednesday) with the children. While research shows even that minimal
sharing of time actually forces warring parents to lay down their arms and
work together on "parenting plans" that work best for each of them and
their kids, says Kruk, it makes it far more difficult for the non-custodial
parent to develop a strong bond with their kids.

Research has shown that women and men work comparable amounts of time
outside the home and now devote almost the exact amount of time - 11.1
hours a week and 10.5 hours a week respectively - to child care, with men
playing a key role in their children's upbringing, says Kruk. Yet divorce
lawyers openly tell fathers not to waste their time and money seeking equal
custody, unless they can prove the mother is unfit.

All of which gives one parent a huge psychological advantage over the
other, and incentive to fight to the death - in some cases actually
alienating the kids from the other spouse - to win what comes to be seen as
their "property," says Kruk.

But there are signs even mothers are at risk, Kruk warns. He's now studying
14 Vancouver-area women who have lost custody of their kids to their
ex-husbands, in some cases because fathers argued that demanding careers
kept the women away from home too much. Surprisingly, those women are now
teaming up with fathers' right groups to push for legislation making equal,
shared parenting the norm.

"No court order can make people get along," says Justice Harvey Brownstone
who wrote the book Tug of War on divorce in Canada. He has seen cases over
the past 14 years in which courts imposed shared parenting, only to have
one parent refuse to take the child to his hockey game or administer
medication as a way to make their viewpoint known to the ex-spouse.

"Parents who are hell-bent on undermining each other's relationship with
the child will inevitably find a way to create conflict, which most often
results in further litigation, which in turn prolongs the child's exposure
to a parental tug of war."

More:

Parental alienation syndrome leaves bruises deep inside
http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/article/610751

How to deal with 'toxic' parents
http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/article/602350

Patience of Job and wisdom of Solomon
http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/article/585812

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* Shared Parenting: Child Custody, Access, and Parental Responsibility
<http://www.familylawwebguide.com.au/forum/pg/topicview/findpost/22593#post_22593>

- The full paper (101 pages with over a 100 references)
http://www.fira.ca/cms/documents/181/ChildCustody.Kruk.Fullpdf.pdf

- The Executive Summary (9 pages, text in the box below)
http://www.fira.ca/cms/documents/179/ChildCustody-ExecSummary.pdf

- Paternal Responsibility and Parenting After Divorce (PPT, 93kb)
http://fira.ca/cms/documents/149/KRUK.ppt

Father Involvement Research Alliance (FIRA)
http://www.fira.ca/

All FIRA downloadable resources
http://fira.ca/resources.php