By Barbara Ellen Handschu

Few children ask to be divorced from their parents.

Divorce has been described as the most unsettling and disruptive event in an adult’s life. Psychologists and other professionals suggest that the level of stress and upheaval with divorce is similar in impact to the death of a spouse. What the adult sees as dissolution of a family may well be a million times worse for a child. Children feel guilty; they often believe they are responsible for the disruption of their former home. Children fear that they may be left behind, similar to the left-behind adults.

When parents fight, especially about the children, the children suffer. Imagine what it must feel like to be a child with a school play who is dreading possible confrontations when both parents who are litigating custody attend the play. Think about how a child feels when celebrating a bas mitzvah or a communion, and that child’s parents are not talking because there is new litigation over increased child support.

How does a child feel who has grown up with two “mothers,” whose biological mother has prevented the other mother from having access. These are but a few of the issues confronting children whose parents do not live together. These are real issues for children removed from significant nonbiological third parties.

For too long custody cases have centered on the rights of parents. When deciding what is in the “best interests of the child,” courts consider the parent’s relative home environment and ability to provide for the child, the parent’s addiction to drugs or alcohol, or the parent’s ability to promote and not interfere with a relationship between the other parent and the child. These are not child-centered concerns.

Custody decisions should focus on the real needs of the child. The process of custody decision making should focus on the needs of the child even more than on the rights of the parents.

No two custody cases are the same. The children rarely have a direct voice in the decision, and often are not even provided much of an indirect one. Children do not generally have their own attorneys, and when they do, those attorneys are required to advocate for their “best interest” rather than follow the directions and requests of the child clients.

Aunts, uncles, cousins, and nonblood relatives are important in children’s lives. However, these significant third parties generally have no standing to seek access to the child or to participate in the custody determination. In many jurisdictions, a court has no power to grant these persons access to a child in the face of a parental veto.

Custody disputes always require courts to balance conflicting rights. The child’s right to have his needs met, and even just to be a kid, often comes in far behind the parent’s rights in the field of combat. To begin the process of trying to shift the focus from what the parent needs to what the kids should have as minimal rights, the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers has adopted a Children’s Bill of Rights. This statement, which appears on the facing page, describes the basic rights all children should have when their parents are living apart and the child is thus forced to either be a “shuttle kid” or adapt to a single-parent life.

The Children’s Bill of Rights should be read carefully—or maybe even memorized—by all responsible adults who think about asking a court to solve their dispute relating to a child.