Joint custody bill fails

Kirsten Searer

Monday, May 23, 2005 | 11:03 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- When he first started his testimony on Senate Bill 109, Sen. Maurice Washington acknowledged that the bill would be difficult.

The measure would give both parents presumptive joint custody of their children, an idea now used in 12 states and embraced by a growing contingent of angry fathers' rights groups.

Washington and supporters argue that the Family Court system has turned too ugly, forcing parents to pay thousands in legal fees and children to endure ongoing conflict.

The solution, Washington said, is to automatically split custody 50-50, unless one parent has a history of felonies or domestic violence.

"In the course of deciding custody, alimony and support, we lose sight of the children," Washington said in a March legislative hearing. "We seldom hear what children think is best or how they feel about a situation.

"We use the courts to get at each other, become vindictive, vengeful and ping-pong children."

The bill died quietly on Friday, when it missed a crucial legislative deadline in the Assembly. While it did pass out of the Senate, Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairman Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks, said he didn't have time this session to truly evaluate the issue.

Plus, by then the bill had been amended to the point where neither side liked it.

"Like any family law matter, there was not many folks in the middle," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Mark Amodei, R-Carson City.

Opposition to the bill largely came from Family Court judges, who argued that presumptive joint custody puts the rights of parents before the needs of children. Family Court Judge Frances Doherty of Washoe County represented the Judicial Council of Nevada, saying Family Court judges strive to look through the eyes of a child by investigating the family situation.

"I sympathize with every parent who is going to spend one less minute with their child than they otherwise expected when they became a parent," Doherty said.

Still, she said, it isn't any more fair to give presumptive joint custody as it would be to give presumptive primary custody -- either way, you take the child out of the discussion, she said.

"There's nothing clear cut about custody cases, which is why the judges have such a terrific responsibility to ensure the evidence is developed so you can make the best interest in the child," she said.

Around the country, and especially in Great Britain, groups that advocate equal parenting have been gaining steam.

"One day you can wake up and say, 'he's a jerk, I'm going to divorce him, take his money and his kids,' "said Garret Idle, a Reno father who is actively involved in Nevadans for Equal Parenting.

Fathers 4 Justice is especially notorious in Great Britain, where fathers often camp out in public places such as Buckingham Palace in superhero suits to block traffic and attract attention.

"It's the Civil Rights Movement of the New Age," Idle said.

The dialogue can get extreme. Al DiCicco, a longtime equal parenting advocate, calls the current Family Court system "the divorce industry."

Family Court, he said, purposefully pits mothers against fathers, sparking thousands in legal fees and encouraging untrue accusations of abuse and neglect. It also, he said, contributes to personal bankruptcies after people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on attorneys.

"I call it destruction of families for profit," he said. "I also call it kidnapping and extortion."

Las Vegas father Doug Remeta said he's a typical example of what's wrong with the system. The pilot for SkyWest Airlines said he has no history of violence or crime, yet has had to go to court 16 times in eight years just to spend three days a week with his child.

Joint legal custody is basically meaningless, Remeta argues, saying it only gives him access to medical and school records of his 9-year-old son.

The real prize is joint physical custody, Remeta said. He said he recently had to go to court just so he could pick up his son from day care when his mother is at work.

"I can't even take my son up on a small airplane," he said. "I can take anybody else's kid up on a small airplane."

Finally, Remeta said, he has started representing himself in court.

"I had to fight for it all," he said. "There was no agreement any time. If I wanted more time with my son, I had to go to court."

Family Court Judge Gerald Hardcastle of Las Vegas argued during extensive hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee that studies show there is no clear benefit to children in joint custody situations.

Studies show that 25 to 33 percent of children in joint custody experience loyalty conflicts or were confused or otherwise unhappy over the arrangement, Hardcastle said.

But the studies aren't so clear. Fathers cite one from the Department of Health and Human Services that showed 63 percent of youth suicides came from single-parent homes.

A Justice Department report found that 71 percent of pregnant teenagers, 90 percent of homeless runaway children and 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions all came from fatherless homes.

The final version passed out by the Senate Judiciary Committee of SB109 gave judges things to look for when deciding whether to grant joint physical custody.

It includes the level of conflict between the parents, the mental and physical health of the parents, the emotional needs of the child, the nature of the child's relationship with each parent, any history of parental abuse and the ability of the parent to prioritize the child's needs.

Anderson said he partly didn't get into the bill because he thinks it's important to put a child's needs at a priority. The retired high school teacher said he's heard stories from elementary school teachers about children shuffled between two houses.

"That 50-50 split leaves the child in a quandary about where their roots are," he said.

DiCicco and others are involved in a class action lawsuit in 40 states claiming their constitutional rights have been violated because they were denied access to their children. They are asking for trillions in damages.

DiCicco said it's too late for his family. After years of court struggles, he said his three teenage children have little interest in seeing him.

"What it ended up doing was making people very poor, very bankrupt and separated from their kids," he said. "I didn't get to raise my kids, and it's horrible."