Building on the ground-breaking, unanimous adoption by the U.S. House of Representatives of 2018 H.Con.Res.72 on Child Safety in the Family Courts, the Center's Legislative Clearinghouse supports advocates and lawmakers at the state and federal levels seeking to strengthen custody laws to better protect children. The Clearinghouse helps centralize legislative efforts across the country, develops and disseminates best-practice templates for custody statutes, and provides research and technical assistance to support policy changes.

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The United Kingdom has been grappling with the same problems and has commissioned a series of reports and recommendations to change how family courts respond to cases involving abuse allegations.  In response to searing critiques of UK child parenting proceedings, a series of reports were solicited by the Ministry of Justice (see assessing risk of harm to children and parents in private law children cases).  Many of these recommendations are now being implemented by the courts or incorporated into legislation. 

 

 

The NFVLC's collaboration with the UK and other nations' professionals ensures we can learn from their advances as we design templates for model state custody laws to protect at-risk children in custody litigation.

 

Recently, NFVLC's Director presented to a Maryland legislative group considering recommendations for strengthening custody laws to better protect children. Read more about the research data to the Maryland Child Custody Workgroup that put the recommendations together or watch the proceedings, Child Custody Workgroup's findings at a joint briefing before the House Judiciary and Senate Judicial Proceedings Committees. Read the Child Custody Workgroup Proceedings here​.

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