Children are generally indifferent to their parents' marital status. They want their mother and father to be together. If this is no longer possible, they usually want to maintain a close relationship with both parents.
Joint parental responsibility (JR) is a further development of joint parental custody (JC). The term "responsibility" emphasizes that parents have a number of rights and obligations towards their children that they can neither relinquish nor have taken away from them – not even in the case of separation or divorce.
While the legal equality of fathers and mothers is limited to the legal equality of fathers and mothers, the concept of equal rights and obligations also encompasses the concrete, everyday equality of parents in the child's life. Fathers and mothers have fundamentally the same rights and obligations towards their children – regardless of their marital status.
However, the equality of mothers and fathers is not a rigid dogma, but rather the starting point for the development of individual solutions that address the issues surrounding the care of children during and especially after the parents' cohabitation.
Separations are often accompanied by strong emotions that make objective discussions difficult or even impossible. Therefore, parents in separation situations should be supported by competent third parties. With their help, parents should develop sustainable solutions for childcare and maintenance after a separation and learn to cooperate again in the best interests of their children, despite the separation.
Our draft law is based on these principles: complete equality of mothers and fathers in law and in everyday life – this as a starting point for individual solutions tailored to the circumstances of those affected. Those affected should receive support from experts. Experience has shown (e.g., in Germany) that joint custody does not truly resolve the tensions surrounding post-separation relationships, but rather often shifts the problems to the custody level.
The principles of joint parental responsibility are simple and allow for tailored solutions even in difficult situations. They have already proven highly successful abroad (e.g., California, Germany). For example, the Cochem practice, which handles divorce cases through interdisciplinary collaboration, has achieved a success rate of virtually 100 percent in its more than ten years of operation.
The geV is simple, practical, and tailored to the needs of those affected. A successful model!