Fathers and Families^® improves the lives of children and strengthens society by protecting the child’s right to the love and care of both parents after separation or divorce. We seek better lives for children through family court reform that establishes equal rights and responsibilities for fathers and mothers.
 

Our Issues/What We're Doing

Fathers and Families promotes an ambitious legislative agenda and has helped pass family court reform legislation in over two dozen states. Click the tabs to view information about Fathers and Families’ current and recent legislative projects. To learn more about our legislative and other achievements, click here.

Tragically, after divorce or separation, one parent is often driven to the margins of his or her children's lives. Fathers and Families' central mission is to protect children’s right to the love and care of both parents. To help accomplish this, we:

• Helped Pass 2011 Bills to Protect the Child Custody/Parenting Time Rights of Military Parents in Ohio, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona.
• Got 30% of MA Legislators to Sign on as Co-Sponsors of 2011 Shared Parenting Legislation
• Helped Pass CA Bill to Protect Disabled Parents’ Child Custody, Visitation Rights 
• Helped Pass CA Bill to Protect Military Parents’ Child Custody/Parenting Time Rights
• Helped Defeat MA Bill Which Would Have Marginalized Noncustodial Parents in Their Children’s Healthcare Decisions 

To learn more about Fathers and Families' achievements in this area, please see our Accomplishments.

Fathers and Families believes that children of divorce or separation need to be supported both emotionally and financially. We seek fair, reasonable child support guidelines and an end to rampant child support enforcement abuses. Our achievements in this area include:

• Helping Block Ohio Bill to Increase Child Support
• Helped with amicus brief to the Indiana Court of Appeals in an appeal of a half-million-dollar child support order
• Serving on the MA Massachusetts Child Support Task Force. MA Recently Knocked Down Interest Rates on Overdue Child Support by 50%
• Helping Pass 2010 CA Child Support Reform Bills SB 1355 and SB 580
• Helping reduce excessive child support by over $1 billion from 2001 through 2008 in Massachusetts
• Helping expand COAP to help parents unfairly saddled with inflated CS arrears

To learn more about Fathers and Families' achievements in this area, please see our Accomplishments.

Few family law cases are as heartbreaking as those involving Parental Alienation, where one parent has turned his or her children against the other parent, destroying the loving bonds the children and the target parent once enjoyed. PA is a common, well-documented phenomenon that is the subject of numerous studies and articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Sadly, Fathers and Families receives thousands of heart-wrenching calls and letters from targeted parents. Both mothers and fathers can be perpetrators of Parental Alienation, but the true victims are always the children.

To help battle against Parental Alienation, Fathers and Families has:

• Protected CA Target Parents of Parental Alienation by Helping Defeat AB 612
• Helped Defeat AB 2475, a Radical Bill from Opponents of Recognizing Parental Alienation
• Helped Lead Campaign to Ask DSM to Include Parental Alienation in Upcoming Edition 

To learn more about Fathers and Families' achievements in this area, please see our Accomplishments.

Fathers and Families believes that alimony is sometimes appropriate, such as in cases where one spouse has significantly sacrificed his or her earning ability in order to care for children. However, family courts are rife with abuses and injustices in awarding alimony/spousal support and in dividing divorcing couples' assets.

To help protect family breadwinners and high earners, we:

• Introduced Legislation to Protect High Income Earners/Business Owners from Alimony 'Double and Triple Dipping'
• Helped Pass 2010 CA Bill to Protect Alimony Obligors from Abuses
• Helped Pass Bills to Protect Disabled Parents from Family Court Financial Abuses in AZ, IN, & CA in 2009/2010

To learn more about Fathers and Families' achievements in this area, please see our Accomplishments.

Tens of thousands of men have been wrongly assigned paternity and are compelled by law to pay years of child support for children whom DNA tests have shown are not theirs. In many cases, the men have had little or no contact with the children they're required to support, and some had no idea they were "fathers" until their wages were garnished for child support. To help solve this problem, Fathers and Families:

• Helped Introduce CA SB 375 to Help Defrauded Fathers
• Helped Introduce CA SB 377 to Protect Minors from Paternity Fraud 
• Helped pass AB 252 and SB 1333 to allow CA child support obligors to use DNA evidence to set aside false paternity judgments

To learn more about Fathers and Families' achievements in this area, please see our Accomplishments.

Fathers and Families believes that all victims of abuse deserve aid and protection from our family court system. Unfortunately, as prominent members of the Family Law Executive Committee of the State Bar of California and many family law professionals have noted, false claims of abuse are frequently and effectively used as custody maneuvers in divorces by unscrupulous attorneys and litigants. To help combat this problem, Fathers and Families:

• Plans to Introduce a Bill to Remove the Innocent from Child Abuse Registries
• Plans to Introduce a Bill to Require Advisements in Restraining Order Proceedings

To learn more about Fathers and Families' achievements in this area, please see our Accomplishments.

Fathers and Families believes that all litigants should be treated fairly in family court, regardless of gender. We also oppose the adversarial nature of the family court system and support Collaborative Law and other ways to reduce unnecessary conflict and litigation. To these ends, Father and Families:

• Helped Amend CA. SB 1266 to Include Both Mothers and Fathers
• Supported CA AB 2700 to Reduce Divorce-Related Litigation for Same-Sex Couples
• Helped Pass AB 402 to Codify Collaborative Law into CA Family Law Codes

To learn more about Fathers and Families' achievements in this area, please see our Accomplishments.