Last December I wrote about an initiative underway in Aragón to modify Spain’s 2005 Divorce law in favor of shared custody. According to an article in today’s El País, Aragón voted this afternoon to make shared custody the prefered option whenever separating or divorcing couples cannot agree on how they will care for their children.
Parents will now be obliged to present a plan “de relaciones familiares” that not only spells out which parent will be with the children when but also details how other close family members will be involved. This should help the hundreds of grandparents in Spain, usually paternal grandparents, who lose contact with their grandchildren after a divorce. However, shared custody will not be possible where the judge suspects domestic violence.
Other comunidades such as Cataluña, País Vasco and Valencia are considering similar measures.
“Spanish society is changing little by little” commented Isidro Niñerola, president of the Asociación Española de Abogados de Familia, one of the organisations that have been calling for changes to the divorce law. Still, most experts agree change will be slow in a country where only about 5% of the current custody arrangements involve sharing parenting responsibilities equally.
Interesting opinion piece in “El Mundo” today – “Salomón y los niños-maleta” by Isabel San Sebastián – which says ‘it’ll be the kids who suffer’ – innocent victims “que no votan ¿A quién le importa lo que sufran?” (text only seems to be online here: http://e-pesimo.blogspot.com/2010/05/firmas-federico-jimenes-losantos-isabel_22.html )
I’m not sure what she thinks would be a better solution: possibly that one of the parents should voluntarily give up all custodial rights like the true mother of the baby King Solomon threatened to have cut in two.
Looking for the article on-line, I found a number of other negative reactions to Aragón’s new law.
Shared custody (custodia compartida) aims to provide some continuity in the relationship between child and parent after divorce. As such, it is guided by what is in the best interests of the child, and is not, as the author of the piece in El Mundo suggests, a division of the “goods” to satisfy warring parents. Under no circumstances do children constantly switch schools as that would obviously be disruptive. If parents live close enough to one another, their child might change households every couple of days, every week or every month, depending on what seems to work best for her. If parents live farther apart, one parent may have custody during the school year and the other during the summer holidays. San Sebastian would do well to find out how shared custody has worked in California, where it has been in practice for over a generation. Sure, it would be better if the kids did not have to move households. It would be better if the parents could work things out and avoid divorce altogether. However, given the situation, it is preferable for a chid to have a continuing relationship with both parents than to risk losing contact with one of them, which is what often occurs under current custody arrangements in Spain. Most children seem to cope well with shared custody, and adjust quickly to the changes of household. What children have trouble recovering from, however, is a truncated or severed relationship with a loved one.
[...] option when it comes to settling custody disputes. The decision comes just two months after Aragón decided to favor shared custody in divorce [...]