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Thursday, February 24, 2011
Put Kids' Welfare Ahead of a Streamlined Law
By Gretchen M. Walther
Walther Family Law
Since when have "the best interests of the child" been found to be irrelevant? Because that is exactly what Senate Bill 396 is attempting to make them.
Senate Bill 396 would forcibly limit the visitation a child may receive from those who have cared for and loved the child and with whom the child has a significant child-parent bond. By excluding these parental figures from consideration by the courts, this bill would force judges into a "one-size-fits-all" approach to custody and visitation decisions.
In reality, these custody decisions require anything but this cookie-cutter approach.
It's a cheap and easy shot to paint all lawyers as money hungry. If Joline Gutierrez Krueger had done her homework for her UpFront column "Battle Brews Over Child Custody Bill," she would have discovered that most of the lawyers who signed the letter in opposition to Senate Bill 396 have worked numerous unpaid hours to ensure the welfare of New Mexico's children.
Far from being driven by purely financial interests, it is because we often have front-row seats at the most heart-rending custody cases. As a result we can unequivocally state that forcing judges into a one-size-fits-all response does a disservice to the unique needs of each individual family.
Streamlining the court system is all for the good. But let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. We need to make sure our laws and our courts allow judges to consider the impact of custody decisions on the children involved.
What about the likes of Heather, an 8-year-old raised by her mother and stepfather. Her mother died a tragic death and the only other adult she was bonded with was her stepfather. Her biological father, recently released from prison, now wants sole legal custody with no visitation to stepfather.
How would this bill serve her?
Children are often raised by uncles, aunts, step-parents, grandparents and their parent's significant others.
When parents make the decision to integrally include other adults in their children's lives, they should share some responsibility in the difficult task of untangling those decisions.
Should every child be deprived of loving adults because one parent has since changed his or her mind? How is that in a child's best interests?
At best, support for this bill is based on a misguided confusion between what constitutes a "legal loophole" versus the importance of judicial discretion in complicated and delicate custody cases. At worst, we fear there may be some political haymaking at play — a rallying of the base against nontraditional family structures or a fundamental opposition to the notion of evolving family structures, rather than an informed concern for the welfare of the children actually living in them.
Let's let judges continue to be able to make individual decisions based on individual circumstances, putting the welfare of the children first.
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