Our Impact

Equal Shared Parenting

Change

A Force For Change

The aim of The Fathers’ Rights Movement is, in a word, change. We want to change thinking. We want to change behavior. And we want to change the legal and societal assumptions about fathers that have been prevalent for more than half a century.

Fixing Legislation

Appealing to individual participants in the Family Court system is not nearly enough. Judges, lawyers, GAL’s, court psychologists, court investigators, court mediators, and social workers all have their own self-interested axes to grind.  The leverage must come from legislation. As a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) corporation, The Fathers’ Rights Movement is very limited in the amount and kind of lobbying we can do ourselves. But we can and do support other organizations who can lobby more effectively than us. We can raise money as well as awareness. Your tax-deductible contribution to TFRM can help us support the legal, legislative lobbying efforts of other 501(c)(4) organizations aligned with our goals. Your voice can be heard, and laws can be changed. And when they are, the courts will have to follow them.

In criminal law PRESUMED INNOCENT is the phrase that protects everyone. Similarly, in family law, we believe the phrase PRESUMED 50/50 SHARED CUSTODY is a vital concept to protecting the interests of all parties involved. As law, this concept would automatically diminish a judge’s discretion and would redefine what most judges consider shared parenting today — a 30/70 custodial/non-custodial split, which is neither the co-parenting nor parallel parenting many experts believe serve the best interests of the child.

Helping Individuals

Ultimately, what we do is meant to help fathers like you and their children. Simply making fathers aware of their rights has already proved to be a dramatic step in our continuing effort to enable men to stand up for themselves and their relationships with their children. More and more fathers are sharing their personal experiences in divorce or custody battles to inspire, caution, and aid other movement members. 

We’ve helped fathers successfully fight for greater (i.e., equal) parenting time, overcome interference with parenting time from an uncooperative spouse, and be protected at their job when they exercise their right to paternity leave. We’ve helped teach men how to fight against false charges of abuse. Our mission is so compelling and makes so much sense that membership has come to include many women, such as second wives of divorced fathers and those that were alienated from their father as children.

As a community of fathers (and father supporters), The Fathers’ Right Movement is committed to becoming a unified social force aimed at restoring society’s ideal of the father and reestablishing the connection each father has to his children. 

It is our plan to stoke political activism and pressure legislatures around the country to rethink family law in the context of 50/50 shared parenting.