Justice committee  It would be a legal presumption that's rebuttable. It would not supplant evidence of mental health problems, violence or any of those factors that are already in the law. That's the way that we thought about it in Arizona. It would communicate importantly to parents that the cour

Justice committee  Yes. The wording of the law said that the court shall maximize the parenting time between both parents, and we defined children's best interests as frequent, substantial, meaningful and continuing parenting time. We found that the courts are implementing it, and they're implement

Justice committee  I just have to stand by our data. We polled the state family law community, and overall, they said there was no change in legal conflict or parent conflict leading up to it. That's based on a statewide poll of people involved in the legal community rather than an opinion.

Justice committee  I worked with a committee of people including one of our state judges, one of our family law attorneys, the director of one our conciliation courts—which is the court mechanism in each county that provides services—and also one of our state mental health providers, who is involve

Justice committee  I don't know exactly what it looked like. As I said, it was a number of years ago, but my best understanding is that it was a law that directed the courts to consider shared parenting time, but it fell short of a legal presumption of shared parenting time. There may be other peop

Justice committee  I can't tell you the rate in Canada or anywhere else, but of course it happens. I'm sure it's a minority of cases because most divorces are settled by the parents outside the court system. I know that's true in America, and I assume it's true in Canada. Perhaps 90% are decided by

Justice committee  First of all, Australia did not institute anything like an equal parenting time legal presumption, their reforms basically said that courts should consider it, but it was not anything like an equal parenting time presumption. In Arizona, we passed a law that directed the courts

Justice committee  That's hard to answer. Every legislative session...quite a number of them, but I can't tell you an exact number. It's probably one or two dozen.

Justice committee  Yes, I think Professor Kruk, Professor Paul Millar and Professor Nicholas Bala have all done research on that.

Justice committee  Thank you very much for inviting me. I'll say a couple of words about my background. I have a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Michigan, obtained in 1984. I'm an associate professor of psychology at Arizona State University, as you mentioned, and I've ta