To the Vermont General Assembly:

We support practical, balanced and child-centered reform of Vermont family law.

Vermont already recognizes that children should have the opportunity for continuing physical and emotional relationships with both parents when those relationships are safe. We urge lawmakers to put that principle into practice by adopting legislation that:

• Preserves Vermont’s existing protections involving abuse, domestic violence and other serious safety risks.
• Establishes a rebuttable presumption favoring shared legal responsibility, shared physical responsibility and substantially equal parent-child contact, while allowing courts to depart from that starting point when the evidence and the needs of the individual child require it.
• Requires courts to consider whether safety concerns can be adequately addressed through a less restrictive order before substantially limiting an important parent-child relationship.
• Considers children’s actual caregiving history, stability and established relationships with parents, siblings, grandparents and extended family.
• Produces clear, workable parenting orders that address the same practical issues Vermont already expects parents to address in agreed parenting plans.
• Prevents parental conflict, strategic noncooperation, unilateral conduct or litigation delay from improperly determining a child’s relationship with either parent.
• Protects family continuity following the death or loss of a parent when severing an established grandparent relationship would cause significant harm to the child, while giving special weight to the decisions of a fit parent.
• Requires significant restrictions on important family relationships to be supported by evidence and specific findings.

Children should not unnecessarily lose safe, capable and loving parents, grandparents, siblings or extended family members during separation, divorce, parental death, relocation or other major family transitions.

Vermont can preserve its existing safety protections while also protecting the relationships that support children’s stability, identity and sense of belonging.