This is incredibly sad.

Edit:

I was curious and I shouldn't have been: https://www.custodyxchange.com/topics/research/dads-custody-...

So, they didn't study actual custody awards, but lawyers opinions about what was “most common”.

So, it's not really a study of what the reality of custody time is, but a study of expert opinion is of what that actual study of the ground truth would find if someone bothered to do it.

I didn't notice that bit, so good find. I was bummed to see that most studies don't actually try to ascertain who usually wins when both parents want custody and there are no extenuating circumstances. That seems like an obvious metric to track the health of custody laws.

This is the only government data I found: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

The problem is that if there is a custody dispute, then probably at least one, and usually both, sides will be pleading circumstances which pull one way or the other. And any court is likely to issue fact findings that lean the same direction as the custody order. So, if you are going to find what bias exists in the court system you can't look at just custody orders and legally determined facts, you've got to separately readjudicate the fact disputes with an unbiased process. Which is...problematic.

That said, instead of changing individual decisions you can punish the state for outcomes whether they be intended or unintended. Disparate impact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact) is one such tool the courts are already familiar with. There's more nuance to that which can't be ignored - a person can sue an entity for disparate impact but disparate impact is also calculated regularly with respect to lending. The same could be done for custody.

No, I mean the study would have to readjudicate the cases (not change the legal outcome, but redivining the actual facts from the trial record) to identify differing treatment in different factual circumstances between states.

Does anybody know if these things are fact or fiction? If either or both of those are true, it seems like you can't really blame "the system" for these results.

This data is also further simplified:

> The percentages in the study reflect cases in which both parents want custody and no complicating circumstances exist ― such as criminal convictions or long-distance separation. It demonstrates the most commonly awarded visitation schedules given to a noncustodial parent by state.

There was definitely no court bias for the mother, which was a surprise given that this is the popular culture stereotype. And child support was purely formula based.

The most annoying thing was domiciliary parent designation, even with 50/50 joint custody, as the domiciliary parent had more decision power which allowed for unnecessary drama.

One thing to note is that all of this is state (and country) specific and states might vary significantly.