The Law Offices of Woodrow Wilson Ware, LLC

03/10/2022

Florida is one signature away from being a shared parenting state. A presumption of 50-50 parenting time was included in alimony reform legislation, which has passed both the senate and the house. The bill now heads to Governor Ron DeSantis for final signature.

04/03/2021

To all who have followed the Tyler Perry case, all materials to the Court of Appeals for the second appeal have now been submitted. All materials, including an update to the story so far, can be found at https://warelegal.com/tyler-perry-appeal.

We hope that the constitutional issues are addressed this time around. There is a glaring absence of case law explaining why constitutional strict scrutiny either does or does not apply to trial court's actions in limiting the rights of parents and children. These rights have long been recognized as fundamental rights under the United States Constitution, and it is long past time that the government either recognize the limits of its own power, or properly explains why it believes it has the right to interfere with these rights absent compelling justification.

Tyler Perry and Kaitlyn Jenkins welcomed their son, Carson Perry, into the world in 2015.  Although they were not married, the couple lived together and raised Carson together until their split in March of 2017.  After this, Carson lived primarily with Kaitlyn, but, according to Kaitlyn, Tyler con...

03/27/2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20HDmRbYefw

This continues to be a major problem for Georgians. Shared parenting is a bipartisan solution to not only the epidemic of fatherlessness, but also to other problems created when women are required to assume more than their fair share of the burdens of childrearing.

Kentucky's implementation of this law has also resulted in dramatic drops in both caseloads in family court and in claims of domestic violence. For the domestic violence claims that were made, the court system's resources were freed up to give these claims more careful attention. https://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/2019/08/30/kentuckys-joint-custody-law-leads-decline-family-court-cases/2158216001/

For those who are opposed to this legislation, the question is why?
I hope that this law receives the undivided attention it deserves next year. Chair Mandi Ballinger, Speaker David Ralston, Tucker says get it done!

'Men in America': Having a father at home is a sign of affluence. But it is also a cause of affluence, especially for boys. Boys who grow up with a father at...

03/17/2021

How is formally tasking mothers with all the responsibilities of childcare any sort of victory for women?

12/17/2020

I was privileged to speak before the House Judiciary Subcommittee yesterday on the proposed bill for shared parenting in Georgia. By the time I spoke, we were under time constraints and so many other speakers had covered the advantages of shared parenting so well. I limited my comments on how I believe it will also improve the performance of our child support system.

406 CLOB by GA House Mobile Streaming on Livestream - Livestream.com

03/13/2020

This right here pretty much sums up the dissonance between leading research and what goes on in our courtrooms.

“I was asked to give a half-hour talk on basic child development. I started my talk by saying that developmental psychologists had known since the early 1980s that infants become attached to their fathers as much as they do their mothers,” Fabricius said. “They stopped me in my tracks, and I could not get past that point.”

The talk inspired him to change the fact that the people in charge of child custody decisions were unaware of findings in developmental psychology.

“Developmental psychologists should offer to provide training in current research to the family law communities in their states,” he said.

Determining custody arrangements after divorce can be one of the most important decisions made for a child. Arizona’s child custody law is the first of its kind in the United States to abolish the traditional idea of “visitation” and replace it with a presumption of equal parenting time. Resea...

03/13/2020

Amid all of this chaos, look at what is happening! To my knowledge, the first shared parenting bill in the State of Georgia!

A BILL to be entitled an Act to amend Article 1 of Chapter 9 of Title 19 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to general provisions regarding child custody proceedings, so as to revise the presumption in cases in which the custody of any child is at issue; to revise certain requiremen...

02/28/2020

Dr. Richard Warshak’s consensus paper is not new, but his identification of John Bowlby as a primary source of the misinformation that led to our dysfunctional family court system is very interesting.

Bowlby was a British psychologist who was raised by a nanny and other nonparent caregivers. At that time, it was believed that too much parental time and affection had a negative effect on children. Unsurprisingly, much of Bowlby’s research focused on the negative effects of parental deprivation. His focus on maternal deprivation was probably the product of the then-popular “tender years” doctrine and theory, which was long ago discredited.

However, it is important to note that much of Bowlby’s work, though heavily criticized at the time, turned out to be spot on. Of particular note, he identified significant correlations between parental deprivation during childhood and criminal and other deviant behavior during adulthood.

Bowlby did fail initially to recognize the importance of multiple attachments. In his defense, I would note that he constructed his attachment theory entirely from scratch. His ideas caused him to be ostracized by his colleagues at the time, but those ideas later became widely accepted. As noted by Warshak, Bowlby himself evolved his attachment theory in recognition of the importance of multiple attachments.

However, it appears that the family court system was off to the races before getting (or accepting) the whole story. Eager to supply the public with no-fault divorce on demand, the family court system embraced with open arms the idea that a child would be fine with a single primary caregiver, and that attachments with other caregivers could be severed without serious consequences.

Of course, Bowlby would have been the first to point out the serious flaws in this logic once his theory was fully developed. He would point to the never ending calendar calls of criminal courts as being the direct result of the carelessness of the family courts in refusing to acknowledge the damage done by the state in causing or allowing the severing of these attachment relationships.

It will be very interesting to watch the statistics coming out of the State of Kentucky, where shared parenting was made the law two years ago. Already, that state is seeing a dramatic decrease in the number of divorce cases being filed and in criminal complaints of family violence. I predict that we will eventually see a significant improvement in all aspects of Kentucky’s criminal court system as the children of that state begin to grow up in an environment in which the state protects their attachment relationships, rather than acting as an accomplice in their destruction.

If we value dad's involvement while the parents are living together, why withdraw our support and deprive the child just because the parents no longer live together?

10/29/2019

We are pleased to announce that Tyler Perry has won his appeal before the Court of Appeals of Georgia. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the case back to the trial court, finding that the trial court failed to give due consideration for Tyler's request for joint physical custody. Because this failure required reversal, the Court of Appeals did not need to reach Tyler's other arguments.

Congratulations to Ginny Morris, Kayla Haney, and everyone else who worked so hard on this case! The decision is available at https://warelegal.com/tyler-perry-appeal.

This case is a reminder to all trial courts that when both parents are fit and proper, the trial court MUST give due consideration to joint physical custody. In fact, this is the only custody arrangement option for which due consideration is required under the law.

There is good reason for this. Science has clearly demonstrated that, absent unusual circumstances, this is also the custody arrangement most highly correlated with best outcomes for children. Public opinion is overwhelmingly in favor of shared parenting and joint physical custody. The momentum of legislation across the custody is in the direction of shared parenting.

Let us keep this momentum going!

Tyler Perry and Kaitlyn Jenkins welcomed their son, Carson Perry, into the world in 2015.  Although they were not married, the couple lived together and raised Carson together until their split in March of 2017.  After this, Carson lived primarily with Kaitlyn, but, according to Kaitlyn, Tyler con...

09/02/2019

Kentucky's first-in-the-nation shared-parenting law has led to a decline in domestic violence claims and family court cases.

08/16/2019

Shout out to another organization that supports ! Moms for Shared Parenting was started by Emma Johnson, TV pundit and founder of Wealthy Single Mommy. Moms for Shared Parenting is an activist organization, lead by women.

"Our mission is to promote equally shared parenting, with a focus on what is best for children, while simultaneously closing the gender pay gap. This effort includes:
-Pass shared-parenting laws in each of the 50 states in the United States (and the world!)
-Educate the public about shared parenting research and best practices.

Emma says:

I have interacted with millions of single moms since starting Wealthysinglemommy.com in 2012, and see how deeply women have been affected by sexist messages that hold us back in how we approach family, relationships and work. I have also become acutely aware of the absentee father issue in this country, and how deeply that affects children, women — and society as a whole.

These issues are connected.

Despite the overwhelming research that finds that equally shared parenting time in the event of separation or divorce is what is best for kids, the majority of unpartnered moms are tasked with being sole caregiver and sole financial provider for our children.

This makes it infinitely harder to not only to raise children, but build a career, take care of ourselves, and ultimately, collectively, close the gender wage gap.

This hurts women, children, men, the economy, innovation, and our culture in countless ways.

I hear every day from women desperate for more equality in their parenting arrangements, but are often shamed and discouraged by messages from loved ones, lawyers, and quite suggestions from the culture all around them that says:

Good moms are the primary caregiver of children
Moms are selfish / lazy / bad moms if we expect dads to share equally in child care
Mothers are greedy and selfish if we prioritize career and earning (or anything but sacrifice for children)
There is something wrong with a woman if she does not want her children with her all the time

While my media work helps women break through these gender stereotypes, and embrace their passion and need to work and earn, I there are systematic problems that need fixing.

Mainly: Family courts, and the laws that inform them are stuck in the 1960s and 1970s. Courts overwhelmingly reinforce gender stereotypes by perpetuating the generations’-old standard:

Kids stay with mom, dads see kids ever-other-weekend and Wednesday evenings. Dad pays mom child support (and maybe alimony).

This model is not only laughably gender-stereotypical, it is also bad for children as it destroys their relationship with their father, and infantilizes women by institutionalizing financial dependence on men.