Aunt B on a lawmaker’s quest to make presumed shared custody law in Tennessee:

First, if the best interest of the child is always in mind, how easy is
it to work “equal time”?  Is it really in the best interest of the
child to spend 26 weeks one place and 26 weeks another, divvied up in
smaller portions throughout the year?  What if one parent gets a better
job in another town?  Isn’t it in the child’s best interest for the
parent to take that job?  Would the other parent have to move there as
well?  Would the courts forbid the first parent from accepting the job
if it interfered with the custody arrangement?

B has a lot of good points about this, but the thing I really can speak to is how hard it can be to fairly divide time. Shuffling kids back and forth between houses is hard. It’s hard on the parents, it’s hard on the children. Children need to have a place that is stable, steady, and constant.

I know of a couple who has it set up that the kids live in the same house all the time- it’s the parents that move in and out of the house every other week. And while that sounds ideal for the kids, it has to be ridiculously expensive, not to mention hard on the parents.

Sure, we want to make the transition easy for the kids in divorce situations, but does it has to be at the expense of the parents?

The biggest problem is, no matter what happens, it’s not going to be fair. My ex husband gets less time with my son than I do, technically, but when you factor in all the time he spends at school and his activities, my ex husband has more free time with him. I’m not the type of person to religiously follow the "schedule"- I allow them to spend plenty of time with him.

Is it fair that he spends less time with our son? No. Is it fair that he gets more free time with him? No. There’s nothing fair about divorce, but there’s nothing fair about life, either. Presumed shared custody grates on me. Someone has to be able to make the decisions instead of always having to come to a consensus.