Washington State has a shared parenting crisis that the Washington State Legislature could help solve this upcoming session. Approximately 75% of Washington families have unequal custody arrangements against the wishes of many fit, willing, and able parents. Unequal custody plans have extremely harmful and costly impacts as Drs. Farrell and Gray document in their book, The Boy Crisis. Their summary in Appendix A lists 55 documented ways that children and families are hurt by parental separation and alienation.
In so many ways, the state ends up picking up the tab for unequal shared parenting with all the costs related to drug use, pregnancy, law enforcement, incarceration, lower educational achievement, reduced professional achievement, depression, suicide, unemployment, domestic violence, rape, and generally poorer mental and physical health.
The first part of the problem is that Washington State does not have a default presumption of equal shared parenting when parents separate and/or divorce. Children are too often fought over and unequal custody orders created. Previous legislation like 2019’s HB 1050 would have created a default presumption but it never made it through committee.
Even when parents significantly share child custody and related expenses, there is no sharing of the child support money. It is all or nothing for the majority of Washington families. Although child support money is based on the combined net income of both parents, one parent gets everything and the other parent nothing in a “winner-take-all” legal battle. Children need to be equally supported financially at both parents homes because equal shared parents split costs approximately equally.
Residential credit needs to be an automatic adjustment to the Child Support Schedule Worksheet instead of a discretionary deviation of the court. Previous legislation such as the original version of 2017’s HB 1603 would have implemented the primary recommendation of the 2007, 2011, and 2015 WA State Child Support Schedule Workgroups to make residential credit an automatic adjustment (like prior to 1991) but the residential credit provisions were stripped from the final bill.
Here at NPO, we combined the best of HB 1050’s default presumption of equal shared parenting with the residential credit provisions of HB 1603 to equally financially support both parents homes. The result is what we named the Family Equality Act.
Passage of the Family Equality Act would transform Washington into of the most equitable, predictable, and safest states to get separated/divorced in. Yes, safest because domestic violence rates decreased in Kentucky when parental rights to equal shared parenting were protected. When parents cooperate in the best interest of the kids instead of fight over custody and money, families are better off and the state is financially better off.
This legislative session, we are providing Washington State Legislators with copies of The Boy Crisis. We hope that educating our policy makers will help motivate them to act on and complete previous legislative efforts to make shared parenting the default arrangement for families.