Strong Opposition to Ohio Shared Parenting Law
Kellie Elliott was one of many who opposed to proposed legislation
Earlier this week, I covered a misleading tweet from an Ohio NPR station.
The tweet suggested that currently courts grant sole custody to women “often.”
The tweet in question read, “Currently, courts will often default to granting sole custody to the mother.”
The station manager at WOSU called it accurate, but he did not provide any data to back up this claim.
Inside the family court reform movement, equal/shared or 50/50 parenting legislation becomes very partisan.
Rather than Republicans and Democrats, this mostly falls between men and women.
The Father’s Rights Movement champions this sort of legislation.
They will claim all sorts of supposed studies that say shared parenting is best; they will argue that it reduces litigation.
They have 50/50 custody in Missouri, but that state is among the most corrupt in the nation- the father’s rights people say that legislation was poorly crafted.
Meanwhile, feminists and others aligned with women argue it makes abuse allegations even more difficult to prove and that it is a one size fits all model.
Check out an Australian Member of Parliament, where they have a fifty/fifty presumption, making this argument.
In Ohio, a group of protective moms was one of over ninety organizations, according to the National Family Violence Law Center.
One of those was Kellie Elliott; Elliott’s children were killed by her ex-husband who then killed himself in January 2022.
Shane Elliott, 40, and his children, Caleb Elliott, 13, and Grace Elliott, 10, were found dead Monday by deputies after the children’s mother called 911 to check on them at the house in the 9200 block of Greenbush Road in Gratis Twp.
All three suffered gunshot wounds and were found in the living room, Simpson said. There was no sign of a struggle, he said. A handgun was found at the scene and it appears the father shot his children and then killed himself.
The bodies were taken to the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office, where autopsies were expected to be performed Tuesday. Simpson declined to say how many times or where on their bodies the trio had been shot.
Shane Elliott had 50/50 custody at the time. As Kellie explained, she went to court actors, including the Guardian ad litem, but no one believed her.
“Both of my children were shot four times in the face,” Kellie stated in her testimony, “This bill wouldn’t have protected them.”
She continued, “Police records, hospital records, photographs. Everything was submitted to a Guardian ad Litem and nothing- absolutely nothing- for my children was brought to justice.”
Kellie’s story is far too common; I have covered hundreds of stories- here and elsewhere- of parents bringing forward evidence of abuse and nothing happening.
In fact, the Center for Judicial Excellence identified over eight hundred children killed during a child custody battle. Here is part of their presentation in favor of Kayden’s Law.
Kayden's preventable killing is sadly not an isolated incident. Nationally,researchers have identified over 800 children across the U.S.to have suffered this horrific fate at the hands of a divorcing or separating parent or caregiver since 2008, and at least 27 of them were Pennsylvania children (see graphic). Nationwide,over 100 of these were cases in which a court failed to take seriously the dangers reported by a safe parent, as in Kayden's case. ' We do not have specific data about re-abuse of children ordered into unsupervised care of an abusive parent, but we hear about this frequently from protective parents.
These deaths receive scant media attention; the death of Thomas Valva is one notable exception.
I was the first person to report on Kara Witkowski’s son dying; she is still forced to share custody 50/50 with her ex-boyfriend, who almost certainly killed their son, of their other child.
When the local CBS affiliate covered her story, it referred to her son’s death- he was two at the time he died- as unexplained and didn’t even talk about the child custody battle which set the stage for his death.
Shared parenting doesn’t address the problem of child safety because it is not trying to solve that problem.
Shared parenting is favored by fathers because fathers generally get less than 50% custody.
While shared parenting laws are popping up in states around the country, safe parents laws- laws designed to protect against abuse- are also emerging.
One of those- Kayden’s Law- was passed inside the reauthorization of the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which then Senator Joe Biden sponsored.
Check out my debate from last year about shared parenting.
There are so many personality disorders out there who cannot coparent.