CHILD CUSTODY AND SUPPORT

AUGUST 2000

RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association Encourages:

1. States, territories, and local governments to enact legislation requiring courts to consider the safety risks to victims of domestic violence and their children when drafting orders containing visitation and visitation exchange provisions;

2. Courts to provide or identify and make use of locations in which supervised visitation and visitation exchanges can safely occur;

3. Courts to inquire about domestic violence when addressing visitation issues in child custody matters, and in every case in which the court determines there is a risk to the safety of a parent or child, to craft orders of visitation that create safe visitation and safe visitation exchanges for victims and their children, including provisions that are explicit as to time, date, and place;

4. Attorneys to advocate for safe visitation and visitation exchanges.

FEBRUARY 1987

BE IT RESOLVED, that the American Bar Association supports efforts to ensure adequate and fair child support awards and to improve the enforcement of child support orders.

The Association recommends the following:

(a) Development of effective and efficient procedures for enforcement of child and spousal supports orders, including the use of income withholding from a wide range of sources of income and other procedures required by the Child Support Enforcement Amendments of 1984 and including having support payments become judgements as they fall due, not subject to retroactive modification.

(b) Development of innovative techniques for collection from self-employed delinquent obligors. (More...)

AUGUST 1989

BE IT RESOLVED, that the American Bar Association approves, and urges state legislatures to adopt, the Model Joint Custody Statute dated August, 1989 which makes joint custody an explicit option for families which have experienced separation or divorce.

(1) Policy
It is the policy of this state to assure minor children of frequent and continuing contact with parents who have shown the ability to act in the best interest of the child and to encourage parents to share in the rights and responsibilities of raising their children after the parents have separated or dissolved their marriage. Joint custody is inappropriate in cases in which spouse abuse, child abuse, or parental kidnapping is likely to occur. (More...)

FEBRUARY 1987

BE IT RESOLVED, that the American Bar Association urge the Congress of the United States to confirm that Federal District Courts have the power to resolve the issue of conflicting state claims concerning jurisdiction over child custody disputes, based on the Federal Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act, and title III of the Constitution.