Juvenile Law Commons^™

Unstable Homes Exacerbated By Unstable Courts: How Ohio's Split-Child-Custody Jurisdiction Harms Ohio's Children And Families, Philip Shipman

Et Cetera

Raising a child is very difficult. Add to the difficulty in raising a child the specter of a child custody suit, and you have a recipe that can end in disaster.

In Ohio, child custody is not fair. It is not just. It is determined by judges, whose jurisdiction is determined by whether the child’s parents were married to each other. Under this jurisdictional scheme, Ohio’s children are failed. This failure stems from Ohio courts making their own rules without care to fairness and equality. Within most of Ohio’s eighty-eight counties, juvenile and domestic relations courts can, and do, set …