NPO News

The National Parent Organization (NPO), whose main mission is to promote shared parenting, has become bigger thorough the merging in of the mainly Florida focused Family Law Reform which now operates as NPO Florida.

In April of 2016, Florida Governor Rick Scott vetoed an alimony reform bill because he objected to a provision in the proposed legislation that would have required the court to presume shared parenting was in the best interest of the children.

Although I disagree with Governor Scott on shared parenting, I do believe it is a mistake to combine alimony reform with shared parenting legislation. The reality is that alimony itself is often the reason many couples fight over shared parenting in the first place. It is simply harder to argue you deserve alimony if you don't want primary custody of the children. The result is that children often become tools to maximize income for a parent that really does not want, or should not have, the responsibility. Mixing alimony reform and shared parenting just makes it all the harder to make progress as the Florida situation demonstrates. Take alimony out of the picture and battles over parenting become much less contentious. This clearly benefits children.

Although I ended up with joint custody of the kids, Spring fought it every step of the way. I have no doubt she would have readily agreed to joint custody, or even me having primary custody, if alimony was not in the picture. After all in practice we have both been quite content with me being the primary parent.