Nonmarital children account for two fifths of births in the US, and close to two thirds of these children do not live with their fathers by age five. Although nonmarital children primarily live with ...their mothers, joint legal custody has emerged as an option for their parents. Parents with joint legal custody are expected to make major decisions for their child together, regardless of their prior marital status. This study investigates whether joint legal custody increases child support payments in the first year of a child support order among fathers of nonmarital children who live with their mothers, using a unique sample of court records in 2000–2009 in Wisconsin. It finds consistent and statistically significant positive associations across different methods; joint legal custody is associated with higher child support payments by about $170 a year and a higher compliance ratio by 5 percentage points. Paying child support is only one way nonresident parents can contribute to their children. Therefore, more studies are needed to understand whether and how joint legal custody affects other aspects of parenting and conditions under which it should be encouraged.
•In the U.S., children born to unmarried women are economically vulnerable.•We examine child support in the first year among those who live with their mothers.•Joint legal custody is associated with higher child support payments by about $170.•It is associated with a higher compliance ratio by 5 percentage points.
Using the Wisconsin Court Record Data, I show that among nonmarital cases joint legal custody increased from 2% in 1988–93 to 20% in the late 90s, jumping further in 2000 and staying relatively high ...at around 70% in the 2000s. I hypothesize that an increasing preference for joint legal custody, a policy change that made joint legal custody presumptive, a change in the demographic composition of never-married parents, or a combination of these influences explains this trend. Logit models and Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition analyses both suggest that the difference in joint legal custody is mostly explained by the process (the coefficients) rather than the changes in parental characteristics (the independent variables). The patterns of the data suggest that an increasing parental or societal preference for joint legal custody, encouraged by the policy change, is the primary drive for the recent rise in joint legal custody among nonmarital cases.
•The prevalence of joint legal custody increased abruptly around 2000 among nonmarital cases in Wisconsin.•Joint legal custody was made presumptive by law in Wisconsin in 1999.•The welfare reforms and the expansion of child support enforcement may also change unmarried parents who went to court.•I examine the driving forces of this trend using court data with logit models and the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition.•This trend is mostly explained by a social change and a policy change rather than changes in parental characteristics.
This article examines the legal operation and impact of legal custody presumptions. We compare the nature of joint legal and joint physical custody and explore common misunderstandings about how ...presumptions work and their practical repercussions for children and parents.We conclude that legal custody presumptions are not suited to the task of promoting quality decision making and healthy parent-child relationships and they recommend alternative approaches.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) typically manifests as inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity among children, resulting in stimulant drug therapy. Children exposed to high-stress ...situations, such as divorcing parents, are twice as likely to present with ADHD symptoms. Often these symptoms are a result of the stress and not truly ADHD. Additionally, parents in conflict frequently disagree about the appropriate diagnosis and treatment for their child, which leads to court disputes. Thus, this Note proposes a policy be implemented setting forth alternatives that must be exhausted for a period of time prior to administering stimulants to a child of divorce.
The current study was designed to test a family systems-based model of fathers' involvement in coparental interaction during the first year postdivorce (n = 62 fathers). A multiple regression ...strategy was employed to test the proposed model. Support from the former spouse and fathers' satisfaction with their own parenting performance emerged as significant predictors of coparental interaction. Secondary moderation analyses were conducted to investigate the role that legal custody status played in the proposed model.
As of October 9, 2009, 463,000 children were receiving care in the public foster care system (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2009). Parental rights to 75,000 (16%) had been terminated. ...Parents with serious mental illness (SMI) are confronted with increased risk of involvement with the child welfare system and of having their children placed in out-of-home care (Park, Solomon, & Mandell, 2006; Sands, Koppelman, & Solomon, 2004). In fact, five states (Alaska, Arizona, California, Kentucky, and North Dakota) and Puerto Rico list mental illness or disability as grounds for not providing reasonable efforts toward reunification (Kaplan, Kottsieper, Scott, Salzer, & Solomon, 2009). The reality of threats to the parenting status of people with mental illness, particularly the influence of stigma on policy and services decisions, makes this an important area for social work research. Because much of the research on custody loss among women with SMI is dependent on self-reports, valid measures are imperative. In the present study, we were interested in discovering whether a Life History Calendar (LHC) would provide a valid measure of custody loss. Using a sample from a longitudinal study of women with SMI who were parents, we compared their responses on an LHC with their responses to a standard structured interview questionnaire. Adapted from the source document.
Findings from comparisons of joint and sole custody families that do not control for predivorce differences in demographic and family process variables (factors that may predispose families to choose ...or be awarded joint custody) are of limited generalizability, since obtained group differences may be attributable to predisposing (self-selection) factors, custody, or both. This study compared a random sample of 254 recently separated, not-yet-divorced families on 71 predivorce variables that might plausibly differentiate between families awarded joint legal versus sole maternal custody. Twenty such factors were identified and controlled for in subsequent comparisons of 52 sole maternal and 26 joint legal custody families 2 years postdivorce. Families with joint custody had more frequent father-child visitation, lower maternal satisfaction with custody arrangements, more rapid maternal repartnering, and fewer child adjustment problems (net of predivorce selection factors). Moreover, these effects did not appear to be moderated by level of predecree parental conflict. No association between custody and fathers' compliance with child support orders was obtained.
We use data from a sample of divorced parents in Wisconsin (N = 1,392) to examine how parents describe their children's living arrangements. When the children spend substantial time in both parents' ...homes, both parents are less likely to use the phrase live with to describe living arrangements. When children spend most nights with their mother, mothers are more likely than fathers to state that the children live with their mother. Together, these findings suggest that family researchers no longer can rely on simple questions to capture complex living arrangements. We need clearer and more careful question wording and, in some instances, follow-up questions to accurately describe where children live.
Family membership and household composition do not always coincide. Joint legal custody after divorce formalizes the relationship between fathers and children who live apart. Policymakers hope that ...explicit acknowledgment of nonresident fathers' rights and responsibilities will increase their involvement with their children. I use prospective data from the National Survey of Families and Households to examine the association between joint legal custody and two aspects of nonresident fathers' contributions to their children-the frequency of visits between fathers and children and child-support payments. The analysis examines approximately 160 families in which parents divorced between interviews conducted for Wave 1 (1987-1988) and Wave 2 (1992-1994) of the survey. I investigate the effects of joint legal custody holding constant physical custody or placement by restricting the analysis to children who live with their mothers most of the year. Controlling for socioeconomic status and the quality of family relationships before separation, fathers with joint legal custody see their children more frequently and have more overnight visits than do other fathers. The positive effect of joint legal custody on frequency of visits persists once unobserved differences among families are taken into account. Although fathers with joint legal custody pay more child support than those without joint legal custody, this difference lacks statistical significance when other family characteristics are taken into account. These findings support the view that joint legal custody may encourage some aspects of paternal involvement after divorce.
The current study examined several demographic and psychosocial predictors of mothers' legal custody preference early in the divorce process. Simple logistic regressions between these predictors and ...custody preference were completed. Variables that had a significant or marginally significant simple relation with legal custody preference were included in a simultaneous regression predicting custody preference. Only mother's perceptions of her ex-husband's parenting competence uniquely predicted legal custody preference.
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