To all Washington State legislators: A bipartisan majority of voters support equal shared parenting. This is a winning issue to make progress on during this next legislative session in 2024.
In August of 2021, National Parents Organization commissioned an independent poll, conducted by Researchscape International, of the attitudes of those in Washington concerning shared parenting when parents live apart.
95% of those in Washington “believe it is in the child’s best interest … to have as much time as possible with each parent;“
92% of those in Washington expressed a commitment to vote their beliefs being “more likely to vote for a candidate who supports children spending equal or nearly equal time with each parent …when both parents are fit and willing to be parents.”
The proposed Family Equality Act combines the best of previous House Bills including 2019’s HB 1050 that would provide a default presumption of equal shared parenting and 2017’s HB 1603 that would establish a residential schedule credit. The combination of these two changes would make separations and divorces in Washington State more equitable, predictable, and significantly safer due to a decrease in parental conflict.
In 2017, Kentucky enacted a legal presumption of equal shared parenting during temporary orders, the period that the case is before the court. The following year, Kentucky was the first state to enact an explicit legal presumption of equal shared parenting for final orders. Both laws passed the legislature by overwhelming margins – no negative votes against the 2017 law and only two against the 2018 law – and have been extremely popular with those in the Bluegrass State.
What the statistics show is that both domestic relations cases and domestic violence cases in Kentucky have dropped since the enactment of equal parenting presumptions. When neither parent is threatened by the loss of his or her children, conflict diminishes.
Enacting the Family Equality Act will help ensure that the time every fit and willing parent spends with their children is maximized and they share in the child support money in approximately the same percentage that they pay for each child’s housing, clothing, food, and transportation expenses. Every parent that significantly shares in the expenses of a child receives cash and/or credit for their contributions. More equitable child support orders will reduce repeat child support adjustment and modification petitions that are a drain on the court’s time and resources.
Long term, the Family Equality Act will strengthen families and reduce the costs that sole and highly unequal custodial divisions cost Washington State. The state pays in various ways to deal with the affects that alienated children and those at risk suffer from to include increased depression, poorer health outcomes, higher drug use, less educational achievement, less job achievement, higher law enforcement costs and incarceration rates, higher pregnancy, and more frequent severe family violence.
The full MS Excel spreadsheet of the polling data has 54 columns and had to be trimmed significantly even to print on legal paper. Consistently across every question and every group, shared parenting is overwhelmingly supported.