Hofstra Law Review tackles NCP rights

Article here. Excerpt:

'The topic is also timely. Non-custodial parents are in the news as never before. Frustrated parents are seen scaling the walls of Buckingham Palace and other monuments, dressed as superheroes. They stare out angry and stone-faced from the front cover of The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Their grievances against a family law they see as stacked against them are splashed across billboards and newspaper advertisements. And they are said to be coming soon to a theater near you: Miramax recently bought the movie rights to the life story of the founder of Fathers 4 Justice, the British group responsible for much of the surging media attention.

It is easy to dismiss the antics of some of these activists as loopy or, in some darker cases, just plain depraved. Fathers 4 Justice, for instance, temporarily disbanded in January 2006 after an “extremist splinter group” was accused of plotting to kidnap British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s five-year-old son, Leo, to dramatize their feelings of parental powerlessness. But, beyond the stunts and costumes, it is clear that the sense of injury expressed by these activists resonates with a broader circle of non-custodial parents. Because non-custodial parents are overwhelmingly men, the clash over custody is often seen as a front in the so-called “gender wars.” Certainly, it is true that the cause of non- custodial parents is championed most visibly by a newly energized Fathers’ Rights movement, and that a distressing share of the internet polemics on the topic crackles with misogynistic invective. The gender implications of the topic are real, but the issue is not solely about the rights of fathers. There are smaller numbers of women, too—both non-custodial mothers and the new partners of non-custodial fathers—who are agitating for greater empowerment of non-custodial parents.
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Significantly, the push for non-custodial parents’ rights is doing much more than generating headlines; it has already spurred significant changes to family law in some states and, indeed, around the world. The movement’s influence can be seen in laws affecting custody, visitation, child support, and paternity, not only in the United States but also in Australia, Canada, and Europe. Non-custodial parents have gained new rights to enforce visitation, limit their support obligations based on additional time caring for the child, and even to “disestablish” their parental status (and obligations) altogether based on DNA proof of non- paternity later in the child’s life.'