Ohio Courts Continue to Make Progress But Much Too Slowly
In 2018 and then again in 2020, National Parents Organization undertook a review of the local parenting time rules adopted by each of Ohio’s 88 county domestic relations courts and published the results of those reviews, grading the county courts on the degree to which their rules promote equal shared parenting. NPO has just completed the 2023 NPO Ohio Parenting Time Rules Report, which updates these earlier reports. These reports show significant changes in court parenting time schedules.
There is good news and bad news to report.
The good news is that every change that has been made in any Ohio court since 2018 has been an improvement—sometimes a very significant improvement! In 2018, only three counties had rules that presumed equal or nearly equal parenting time for the children. The 2023 study found seven counties had adopted such rules, resulting in nearly 300,000 more Ohioans being subject to presumptions of equal or nearly equal parenting time when parents divorce.
In 2023, 17 Ohio counties present parents with multiple options for parenting time schedules. This is up from just 7 in 2018 and 11 in 2020. Of the 17 counties currently offering parents multiple options, 11 have at least one option for equal parenting time. Some counties with multiple schedules strongly encourage the equal parenting time schedule while others seem to tack it on as an afterthought. But, even in the latter cases, at least parents are presented with this as an option—something that didn’t used to be true.
The number of counties that present parents with only the “every other weekend and one evening a week” schedule has dropped from 64 in 2018 to 56 in 2020 and, now, to 45, resulting in almost 2 million fewer Ohioans being subject to this the old, scientifically unsupported presumptive schedule.
Now for the bad news. While all of the above is progress—and progress that we know that NPO has helped to foster—the progress has been far too slow. The majority of Ohio courts still rely on the outdated “every other weekend” schedules—a few of which don’t even have the midweek parenting time for nonresidential parents. Almost 4 million Ohioans are subject to these default schedules. In 2023, after more than 40 years of research on child well-being that strongly supports presumptions of shared parenting, this is just unacceptable!
NPO publishes these reports to prompt courts to update their rules in light of the scientific evidence of the benefits of equal shared parenting. We know we’re making a difference for Ohio families. Several courts have improved their local parenting time rules in direct response to the NPO reports.
