EQUAL ACCESS ISN’T A FATHERS' RIGHTS ISSUE
IT’S A KIDS' RIGHTS ISSUE

     Egos and emotion often get the best of parents going through a divorce. The natural tendency to want to win, whatever winning means in this context, drives ordinarily rational folks to do very irrational things such as fighting over who can consent to elective surgical procedures, or whether Dad can pick up the children from school or if it has to be at Mom’s front door. Family law attorneys, like me, have built their business around these types of disagreements, which are mostly petty feuds with one parent gaming to have more. More time. More control. More money. The problem I see is that giving one parent more makes the other parent less – and the key here is that the kids see that and believe that one parent is less than or cares less than or wants to spend less time with them. This less and more tug of war is one of the things that bothers me most about family law cases.

     When a marriage is beyond repair, couples get a divorce. But what about the family? Was the family broken too? Probably not. What I generally see in my practice are parents who both love their children and who have genuine fears about how the divorce will affect their little lives. Often my clients praise the other parent for their love and dedication to the children. So the question remains… why are we dissolving the family and not just the marriage? Why are we perpetuating this less and more tug of war? Who’s looking out for the kid’s rights in the divorce?

     I like to think of a divorce in terms of restructuring the family. We all used to live in one home, now we have 2! What adult wouldn’t like to have 2 homes (e.g. a lake house, a condo in Aspen, etc.)? Fighting to get the custody trophy is antithetical to good co-parenting. Mother’s rights… Father’s rights… I don’t get it. What about kid’s rights? I firmly believe the presumption in the state of Texas should be that children are allowed to spend equal amounts of time with both parents who have shown a genuine interest in putting the kid’s needs first. Certainly there will be instances where that presumption will be rebutted because one parent is unavailable, unwilling, or unfit for that level of care, but what I see every day are parents who can’t believe that could actually be an option. Why should that shock the system? Children are taught (by their parents by the way) about fairness. Right and wrong. What could be fairer than evenly sharing time with both parents? There are no sides to take here. No preference for one parent over the other.

     The problem with the Texas Family Code’s Standard Possession Order is that it’s weighted so heavily toward the end of the week and weekends. A parent who has that schedule will never see his/her children on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday night during the school year unless it’s a holiday. So the parent who does have the kids on those nights becomes the taskmaster, the real parent. The parent who oversees homework, insists on chores, makes doctor’s appointments, enforces bed times, etc. And the parent who sees the children on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights becomes the “fun” parent. The one who lets the kids stay up late, takes them out to dinner, to see a movie, goes to soccer games, the park, you name it. It is inevitable that the children will come to see the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday parent as the steady, reliable, conscientious parent, while the weekend parent is the fun-loving, easy going parent.

     I suggest that both parents should be Monday-Sunday parents with an opportunity to experience both sides of parenting. I believe children should see both Mom and Dad as reliable, conscientious, and fun. But most of all, I believe children should be given the chance to equally love both parents and share similar experiences at both houses. Is that so radical? Equal access is not about either parent’s rights. It’s about a kid’s right to love both of their parents in a way that is not threatening to anyone’s sense of fairness. Now that’s a presumption I can get behind.

- Jennifer L. Wiggins