When equal custody is law, who gains?

Ever since Armin Brott of Oakland, Calif., was divorced seven years ago, he and his former wife have shared equally in the care of their two daughters.

One week the girls, now 10 and 14, spend Monday and Tuesday with him, then Wednesday and Thursday with their mother in nearby Berkeley. On Friday they return to Dad's for the weekend, followed by Monday and Tuesday at Mom's. And so it goes through a two-week cycle.

This kind of postdivorce sharing remains relatively rare. But beginning July 1, it will become more common in Iowa. That's the day the state institutes what some family experts are calling the country's first true shared-parenting law. It gives judges power to award joint legal and physical custody if a parent requests it. Judges who refuse must explain their reasons.

Although not everyone agrees that joint custody is best in all cases, some fathers in Britain are hoping for a law similar to Iowa's. Last Friday, nearly a thousand members of a radical fathers' group, Fathers 4 Justice, paraded through London to call attention to what they say is unfair treatment of fathers in custody issues. Members also prepared a document for Parliament calling for family-law reform. Their proposals include a presumption that parenting time will be shared 50-50.

Some joint physical-care arrangements, like Mr. Brott's, are 50-50. Other parents work out 60-40 time splits, or even 70-30. Currently, most children live with their mother after a divorce and see their father on weekends. In 2 million families, the father is the custodial parent.

But what sounds good in theory in this new domestic landscape can become challenging in practice for some families. Critics charge that constantly shuttling children back and forth between two homes can create instability.

"It's destructive of discipline," says Diane Dornburg, chair of the Iowa State Bar Association's family-law section. "It can generate the feeling that the child doesn't belong to either parent."

One member of the Iowa bar, she notes, calls the practice "making the child into a calendar." Her own critical term is "equitable distribution of children." Although parents get equal time with the child, she says, "you're treating the child as a possession to be shared equally. How does that affect the child?"

Trial judges also dislike joint physical custody, Ms. Dornburg finds, because the arrangement is not permanent. If one parent has a new spouse, a new job, or a new house, "that can throw off the balance that created the arrangement in the first place."

Yet such schedules can succeed, Dornburg acknowledges, when parents get along and when both focus on what's best for their children. They must communicate, cooperate, and maintain day-to-day routines.

Some psychologists also caution against rigid 50-50 splits between households. Brenda Payne, a child psychologist in Iowa City, Iowa, emphasizes the need to consider what is developmentally appropriate for a child. She tells of one couple who divorced when their baby was very young. The parents lived in different states but worked out a 50-50 time split.

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