> The research was conducted over a four month period by talking to legal professionals in every state to find out what the most commonly awarded schedule is for their state.

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.

> 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...

> 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

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.

I agree that re-adjudicating cases would be costly and would not be perceived as fair even if it were righting a wrong.

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.

> I agree that re-adjudicating cases would be costly and would not be perceived as fair even if it were righting a wrong.

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.

What do you propose doing then?

I've heard people say a couple things about this that I don't know are true. One is that fathers don't get custody because they don't ask for it. The other is that most custody arrangements are worked out before anyone ever steps into a courtroom.

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.

If you read some of the synopsis at the bottom it explains it. It's a mix of laws and societal attitudes.

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's a lot of outright misinformation out there - one of the commoner misleading claims is that 50% of fathers who seek custody get it, usually used to trick people into thinking that actually both parents are treated equally and all the complaints are just from men thinking "equality" should mean they get better treatment. The thing is, that 50% figure includes joint custody which can be as little as one weekend a fortnight with the kids in some juristictions, and I think also cases in which the kids' mother isn't actually seeking custody. So a better framing of the same stat is that amongst a self-selected sample of those fathers who think they stand the best chance of obtaining custody, half fail to even get joint custody (which could well mean never seeing their kids again, especially in juristictions where visitation isn't well enforced). That's probably a good explaination for why few fight for it.