A bill has once again been filed seeking to make joint custody the norm in divorce cases.
House Bill 19 by Rep. Patrick Sellers, D-Birmingham, would create a rebuttable presumption that joint custody is in the best case of the child and would require a judge who rules against joint custody to outline determining factors in that decision.
Supporters of the bill have said that requirement would leave a paper trail for parents who lose custody of their children to appeal a ruling.
But critics of the bill have noted that the requirement would amount to airing individual’s dirty laundry in a public record that could be viewed by anyone including the child.
“It puts parents’ rights before children’s needs,” Mobile County Circuit Judge Michael Sherman told lawmakers during a public hearing on a similar bill last year. “This bill would treat nursing infants the same as a 6-year-old child with Asperger’s Syndrome the same as an 18-year-old that’s in college. It would presume for each of those people that they should have joint physical custody with their parents.”
Sherman also criticized that version of the legislation for disregarding the past caretaking relationships and emotional bonds the children have with each parent; this version of the bill adds language to factor in the child’s emotional bonds.
There is an exception to the presumption if the case involves domestic or family violence, but Sherman warned there could be unintended consequences of that exception.
“The exception is if there’s domestic violence; so what we already see is false claims of domestic violence being used to gain advantage in custody cases,” Sherman said. “If we now make it that the exception to joint custody is domestic violence, those false claims will go up.”
The bill is similar to legislation that has been carried by Rep. Kenneth Paschal, R-Pelham, and backed by the Alabama Republican Party. Hunter Weathers of the College Republican Federation of Alabama opposed the bill during the public hearing last year only because “it didn’t go far enough.”
