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Study that shared custody is positive

SEAN BROGAN is ”enormously proud” of what he and his ex-wife, Ayela Thilo, have achieved for their family.

Divorced for nine years, they share custody of their three children, Arielle, 17, Sienna, 13, and Oliver, 11, in a ”week on week off” arrangement.

Mr Brogan agreed with the findings of the Shared Care Parenting Arrangements study that shared custody is positive for both parental satisfaction and children’s wellbeing.

”In a funny kind of way it has given the kids a sense of stability,” he said. ”They know where they’ll be at any given time, if they’ve got something coming up they see whether they’ll be with mum or dad and talk to that person about it.”

Read more…Sharing is caring: everyone wins in this split family

Equal time with parents children do well

CHILDREN who spend roughly equal time with both parents after a divorce or separation are doing well, though no better or worse than children who spend most time with their mothers, a study shows.

Providing parents hold no fears for their children’s safety or for their own, most are happy with shared care, and make it work. Many mothers like the break and many children think the arrangement is ”fair.”

The study, commissioned by the federal Attorney-General’s Department, is based on the responses of 1028 parents and 136 children, and other data.

Conducted by a team under the leadership of the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of NSW with academics from the University of Sydney and the Australian Institute of Family Studies, it is part of a government-funded investigation into the impact of reforms to the Family Law Act made in 2006.

”On the whole the more contact a child has with both parents the better for the child,” said Professor Ilan Katz, the chief investigator. ”But if you impose shared care on situations where parents live far apart, where there is conflict, and the child doesn’t like it and wants stability, it can be damaging.”

Read more…Mothers find relief in equal custody deals

Become drug free or lose custody

A magistrate cited Harry Potter’s entanglement with evil in his warning to a marijuana-smoking mother, writes Kim Arlington.

Harry Potter and Ron Weasley had Hermione Granger to help them out of trouble; a mother with a weakness for marijuana has the prospect of losing custody of her child to keep her on the straight and narrow.

A federal magistrate drew parallels between the fictional characters and the mother’s marijuana use when ruling on the child’s care.

Known by the pseudonym Ms Cannon, the woman has a five-year-old son with her estranged husband. She admitted smoking marijuana occasionally, when the child was not in her care. But the boy’s father, Mr Cannon, was concerned by her drug use and supposed lack of attention to their son’s welfare. He wanted his son to move in with him.

The magistrate, Warwick Neville, last week ruled the boy should live with his mother – but she must undergo drug testing. If she returns two positive tests three times within three months, the boy will live with his father, and have supervised visits with Ms Cannon until she remains drug-free for 12 months.

Conceding it was an imperfect analogy, Mr Neville likened Ms Cannon to Harry and Ron, the boy wizards who, in the first of J. K. Rowling’s bestselling books, get caught in a twisting vine called the Devil’s Snare.

“The harder they struggle, the more tightly they are ensnared,” Mr Neville said. Their rescue, ”courtesy of their valiant friend, Hermione Granger, comes via the shedding of light on the treacherous vine. Like these characters and their plight, it seems to me that Ms Cannon requires some assistance to ‘kick this habit’ and break free of the ensnarement of this different form of vegetation.”

Help for Ms Cannon was ”not provided by a spell from Miss Granger, but the requirement to undertake monthly drug testing for 18 months” – including urine and hair follicle tests.

While accepting Ms Cannon was a committed mother, Mr Neville said her responsibility as a parent ”must take precedence over any fleeting enjoyment or escape provided by her sometime use of marijuana”.

There was no evidence the boy had suffered any harm in his mother’s care. However, Mr Neville was concerned by Mr Cannon’s hyper-vigilant, “almost obsessive parenting”, saying it risked smothering the boy. “What might be described as over-protective or claustrophobic parenting can cause as many problems as it seeks to prevent.”

The Federal Magistrates Court in Canberra heard Mr Cannon only wanted the best for his son, moving from Sydney to Canberra to be closer to him. But “his intensity, together with his ongoing mistrust of Ms Cannon, makes for a rather potent parenting cocktail”, Mr Neville said.

Believing Ms Cannon was using drugs, Mr Cannon had their son drug-tested without her knowledge. He also complained about her giving the boy food with artificial colouring.

Read more…Marijuana smoking mother risks losing custody of child