Area lawmakers seek joint child custody as default setting for couples

Paige Seabaugh stood apart from the dozen dads who testified in front of the Seniors, Family and Children’s Committee in Jefferson City, Missouri.

The 15-year-old Cape Girardeau native told the Missouri Senate committee her father should not have had to provide evidence he deserved to spend more time with her. Mike Seabaugh has full custody of Paige and her sister, but it took years for him to gain joint custody.

“A lot of people, when they think about this, they think about the adults. What they don’t think about is how it affects the kids,” Paige Seabaugh said. “The main thing, for me, I wanted them to hear from a kid who went through it. It’s us who are affected the most.”

State Rep. Kathy Swan, R-Cape Girardeau, and state Sen. Wayne Wallingford, R-Cape Girardeau, have near-identical bills in the Missouri Legislature that would attempt to make joint custody the default setting when a couple goes to court.

“It’s often that the father gets far less than 50 percent,” Swan said of custody. “Considering if you have fit and willing parents, it makes common sense for children to maximize their time with both parents.”

Wallingford referred to statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice showing single-parent homes account for 63 percent of teen suicides, 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions, 71 percent of high-school dropouts and 85 percent of children in prison.

“Most fatherlessness is not caused by abandonment; it’s created by an outdated court system,” Wallingford said. “Kids need both parents, and this is in the best interest of the child.”

Swan and Wallingford’s bills would change Missouri statutes to encourage decisions for joint custody.

One such change is striking the phrase “significant but not necessarily equal” in the joint-custody definition and replacing it with “approximate and reasonably equal periods of time.”

The statutes also would require the default parenting plan to be alternating weeks with each parent, although Wallingford said this will be modified to accept other plans with equal time.

Mike Seabaugh was assigned in 2003 to a custody plan in which he would receive Wednesdays and every other weekend with his children.

He said it took four trips to court and nine years to resolve the situation.

With the money he spent in court, he said he could have sent his daughters to college and paid for a wedding.

“I think this bill helps a lot. It’s been the perception for years down here that automatically when they go to court, schedule J is what they say,” Mike Seabaugh said, referring to his previous custody schedule. “This bill is not just for dads. I’m sure there’s situations where mothers have been on the other side.”

Judge Benjamin Lewis said he admires what Swan and Wallingford have done, but he does not know whether the bill will make any difference on court decisions.

“Domestic cases are always tough,” Lewis said. “There’s not a clear good side or bad side. Sometimes you have two good parents. ... There’s a million different factors at play.”

Some of those factors include how much each parent works, what is the prospect for the parents to get along and to determine who is the primary caregiver, such as which parent is taking children to school or the doctor’s office more often.

“The law is clear — neither party is supposed to have an advantage based on sex,” Lewis said. “On the other hand, a lot of people make adjustments in their lives in part based on their sex.”

Lewis brought up situations in which joint custody would not be in the best interest of the child, such as when one parent has to be away for work for weeks or more at a time or when one parent moves to a different city.

Lewis gave an example of the commute between Cape Girardeau and Kansas City, Missouri.

“There’s no mathematical formula to make things work out every time,” Lewis said. “It’s hard to make people happy when they both don’t have the kids all the time.”

Cape Girardeau family lawyer John Heisserer said judges already favor joint custody because it’s in the best interest of the child.

“I can tell you its not so much gender-based as it is employment,” Heisserer said.

Heisserer also said judges are considering changing family dynamics in custody decisions, and parents being granted equal custody is much more common.

“I’ve been doing this 35 years. There’s a huge difference in the roles of fathers now than there used to be,” Heisserer said. “I think the courts have done a very good job at looking at each individual case ... and determining what’s in the best interest of a child.”

Paige Seabaugh, however, said she feels she was betrayed by the system.

“A kid deserves a mom and a dad in their life,” she said.

bkleine@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3644