Chairman Dutton and Members of the Committee, my name is Alan Phillips.  I am a member of an organization called People for Equal Parenting – which I’ll call “PEP” for the remainder of my testimony.  Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. 

PEP is a nonprofit organization that works primarily to educate people about issues connected to family law.  It was set up in 2004 and since then over 1,000 members have joined via the website at www.pepintexas.org.

One of the things I’ve learned as a member of PEP is that as many as 2 out of 3 divorces between parents are filed because the person who files believes he or she will be awarded a larger share of the custody of the children – as well as a monthly forced income transfer from the other spouse.[1]  The written summary of my testimony today cites the Brinig and Allen study of over 40 thousand divorcing couples that supports this observation.  The study suggests that our Family Law system itself is now the principal culprit in the destruction of the Traditional American Family because of a perverse set of incentives it provides.[2]  Today the Attorney General’s Office is asking for that set of incentives to be increased.  This, of course, will be very good for helping the Attorney General’s bureaucracy grow.  It will be very bad for the families of Texas, however, if the issue is looked at in isolation.  

It is both common sense and mere honesty to set out that society will always get more of whatever its legal system incentivizes.  This is just as true regarding divorces involving children, as it was true of the unintended consequences of Great Society programs.  The question of whether or not to raise the cap is a secondary question that can only be answered correctly in the light of correctly answering the primary question.  The primary question concerns the justice of state laws that force unequal time of child custody on one fit parent who prefers to support his or her child by exercising equal custody.  It’s hard to see much justification for recurrent forced asset transfers in that scenario.  On the other hand, in scenarios in which the so-called Noncustodial Parent doesn’t want equal custody it’s hard to see much justification for a cap of any kind.   

Destroying traditional families is bad public policy when we consider that – compared to children from traditional families – children from nontraditional families[3] are:

·       Between 2-1/2 and nearly 6 times as likely to experience poverty;[4]

·       2-3 times as likely to exhibit significant emotional or behavioral difficulties;[5]

·       77% more likely to be physically abused;[6]

·       87% more likely to be harmed by neglect;[7]

·       74% more likely to suffer emotional neglect;[8]

·       80% more likely to be seriously injured as a result of abuse;[9] and

·       More than twice as likely to be committed to a state reform institution.[10]

As an individual, and as member of People for Equal Parenting, I have confidence that the Texas legislature as a whole, and this Committee in particular, will move expeditiously to take the requisite steps implicated by available information, which is to enact a legal presumption of equal physical child custody when fit parents divorce.  As soon as post-divorce Equal Parental Responsibility becomes the legal presumption in Texas, the issues raised today by the OAG will be rendered moot in the majority of the dramatically shrunken number of divorces involving children that unfortunately happen thereafter. Nothing we can do as a government would do so much, so fast, to slow down our divorce rate and the resulting damage to the children, citizens, businesses, educational aspirations, and public coffers of the state of Texas.

Thank you, for your kind attention.

[1] See, Brinig, Margaret F. and Allen, Douglas W., "'These Boots are Made for Walking': Why Most Divorce Filers are Women" ( 2000). American Law and Economics Review, Vol. 2, pp. 126-169, 2000.

[2] By “traditional” I mean a family consisting of biological mother and father living in the same household with their offspring.

[3] By “nontraditional” I mean a family not consisting of a biological mother and father living in the same household with their offspring.

[4] See, Kids Count Data Book 2000. Baltimore, MD; The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2000: 12; and Rank, Mark R., and Hirschl, Thomas A., “The Economic Risk of Childhood in America: Estimating the Probability of Poverty Across the Formative Years”.  Journal of Marriage and the Family 61 (November 1999): 1058-1067; and Dalaker, J. and Proctor, B., “Poverty in the United States: 1999”, Current Population Reports, P60-210. Table B-3. Washinton, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau, 2000.

[5] Zill, N. and Shoenborn, C. “Child Development, Learning and Emotional Problems: Health of Our Nation’s Children”. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, Advance Data 1990.  Washington, D.C.: GPO, November 16, 1990.

[6] Sedlak, A. and Broadhurst, D. “The Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect: Final Report”, U.S .Department of Health and Human Services.  National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect.  Washington, D.C., September, 1996.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Beck, Allen, Susan Kline, and Lawrence Greenfield.  “Survey of Youth in Custody, 1987”.  U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Washington, D.C.: GPO, September 1988.