A lot of fathers in Texas do not feel that custody battles are fair, saying that they are overlooked in the process and they don’t always get to be around their children as much as they’d like to be. They feel that mothers are given preference in custody battles.
This was especially true for one man who said that his daughter kept requesting to live with him, rather than with her mother. However, he said that his wife wanted to “play hardball” and that it made the whole processes far more difficult on many levels. For this reason, he supports a new bill that has been gaining traction lately, a bill that he thinks would give people like him more leverage.
The bill is often called the Equal Parenting Law, though its official name is House Bill 2363. It was put forward by Gilbert Pena, and fathers’ rights groups have been getting behind it. They think that it could help to level the playing field so that a father who wants to spend time with his children would be able to do so.
Essentially, the bill asks the courts to simply start out with equal custody, splitting things 50/50 between the mother and the father. The court would still have the ability to alter this if it was deemed necessary — if it was in the child’s best interests to do so, for example. However, it would ensure that things always started on equal ground.
All parents in Texas should follow the progress of this bill to see how it could change their rights if it is passed into law.
Source: KVUE.com, “Single dad supports proposed equal parenting bill,” Olivia LaBorde, KCEN, May. 06, 2015
