Belgium - good news - presumably reliable

[Bolivar]

FYI
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Historic news from Belgium:
Fifty-fifty shared co-parenting legislation has passed by majority voting!

Last evening the Belgian Commons has passed presumptive 50/50 joint physical care and custody legislation by majority vote of 90 votes in favor no votes against it and 36 votes abstained. This gives Belgium the primary for being the first country worldwide in introducing true presumptive co-parenting legislation on the national scale.

The presumptive co-parenting legislation will now be forwarded to the Senate where voting's will be a formality and will then come into effect 21 days after the has been published in the states journal, which is now expected before the coming summer starts.

After that the standard starting point for all Belgian court ordered post divorce parenting arrangements will be that the children will be cared for one week by one parent and the next week by the other parent
Alternating, etc. etc.

Congratulations Belgium!

More reports will follow later.

Peter Tromp
FatherCare Knowledge Centre Europe

[Kent]

This is exactly my situation.

And it works well - IF both parents continue to live close to each other (not that difficult in Belgium, it's a small country).

With only a small distance between parents, it can become a very difficult situation though.

PBFH lives 20 miles from me, which is approx. 40 minutes. While in her care, our son needs to get up 40 minutes earlier. He comes home 40 minutes later. PBFH doesn't cooperate with sports - school or league; It is too much driving for her and her toddler.
When he's sick, she takes him to a different doctor.

Then again, she would cause similar problems if we lived nextdoor, I guess it just makes her feel good.

Also, he has two sets of friends.

All in all he deals well with it, but the situation promotes compartimentalization, which can easily turn into split personality.

The clue to this really is that you need to live within the same school district, and then it can work beatifully.

Kent!

[MixedBag]

Kent -- what day of the week do you two switch on?

[Kent]

We switch on Mondays - The parting parent brings him to school, and the receiving parent picks him up from school. When there is no school on Monday, we either trade at 2:30 (end of schoolday), or we extend until Tuesday, and do the same the following week, so nobody has to give up a day.


Kent!