Shared Parenting Victories in Ohio!

October 21, 2020 by Don Hubin, Ph.D., Chair, National Board of Directors

National Parents Organization is committed to reforming the norms of separated parenting to make equal shared parenting the typical outcome when parents live apart. This is a battle that is fought on multiple fronts.

The legislative reform front is one that often receives the most attention. And statutory changes can be impressive, as NPO proved in Kentucky when it spurred the most dramatic improvement in a state’s child custody laws in the country, catapulting Kentucky from a ‘D-’ state in the 2014 NPO Shared Parenting Report Card to a ‘A’ in the 2019 report.

Changing custody laws to protect children’s relationship with both parents is, quite rightly, a central focus of NPO. Unfortunately, legislatures can be frustratingly slow to absorb the research on child well-being that supports a presumption of shared parenting and, then, to update legislation to create such a presumption.

Is there another path to changing court behavior?

In Ohio, we’ve demonstrated that there is!

Ohio law requires all family law courts to have a local rule that established a parenting time schedule. When NPO-Ohio analyzed and evaluated these rules in 2018, 64 of Ohio’s 88 counties had the antiquated every-other-weekend-and-one-evening-a-week schedule--or worse! Only three counties had parenting schedules that allowed the children equal, or almost equal, time with each of their parents.

As I reported earlier, the publication of the 2018 NPO Ohio Parenting Time Report prompted some Ohio counties to review and update their rules. The Ohio team has just completed and published the 2020 NPO Ohio Parenting Time Rules Report. And, while progress has been limited to just eight Ohio counties, it is nevertheless gratifying.

Every one of the eight county courts that changed their parenting time rules improved them. Three created equal parenting rules and four others followed a multiple-schedule strategy offering at least one option that is an equal parenting option. As a result of these changes, more than a quarter million additional Ohioans are now subject to equal parenting rules and more than a half million Ohioans are subject to rules that offer equal parenting as an option.

We in Ohio will continue to work for legislative changes to promote shared parenting. But we will also continue to prod Ohio courts to change their local rule. We’ve proven that this is another way to help ensure children’s right to a continued full relationship with both of their parents.