Good afternoon, Senators and Representatives,

I am Barbara C. Johnson. I come from Andover by way of Newton, I'm a practicing attorney, a former member of NOW, I have five grandchildren, and I may go two minutes long.
 

This bill -- S813 -- is a SAVE THE CHILDREN bill.

A child needs two parents. 

It is imperative that we rescue the child from a parentectomy, a parentectomy performed under the guise that it is in the best interests of the child not to see, touch, hear, love and laugh with one of its parents.

This bill is but a baby-step, a critical step, in that direction.

With it, the legislature will instruct the court loudly and clearly 
that it is not in the best interest of any child to have either of its 
parents cut out of its life except under extraordinary circumstances.

This bill contains three essential life-saving ingredients:

(1) a rebuttable presumption that shared legal and shared physical custody are in the best interests of the child,

(2) written findings of fact by the judge, and 

(3) a standardized parenting plan . . . setting forth the details of what a child's physical custody, education, and health care should be.

The mandatory written findings will inform the parents and their counsel as to why the court did whatever it did. It is not always known to us under the present law. We are supposed to accept that whatever a judge do is in the best interest of the child. And that, we know, is not always true. This sprinkle of accountability will do wonders to lessen the existing tension between the judiciary and the public as well as between all divorce counsel and the bench.

The standardized parenting plan will reduce the time consumed by each case before the court. 

The plan will not only decrease the ugly ugly acrimony between the parties -- which is commonplace under existing law -- it will prevent that acrimony. 

It will reduce the growing and startling number of bogus 209As. 

It will reduce the number of contempts crowding the dockets of the family courts.

And very important, it will save each family's financial resources, which are now being squandered on humungous legal fees and costs, the fees of G.A.L.s -- about whom there is much consternation -- and assorted programs that are simply unwarranted. 

It will also leave money in the state's coffers, because there will be fewer children in need of state support.

And given that the child-support guidelines haven't changed, it might also give parents a better shot at economic survival after divorce: their financial and emotional resources being left somewhat intact and available to the upbringing of their children. 

False allegations and gamesmanship, too, the twin plagues of the family courts, would be less tempting, for there would be, with the presumption, less incentive for the unscrupulous amongst us.

Of course, it would be even better were this bill to have required the standard of clear and convincing evidence to overcome the presumption, but even with that shortcoming, this bill -- because of the presumption -- would be better able to withstand the incessant hammering at it by other laws.

In sum, this bill would be a bulletproof vehicle -- not bomb-proof ... 
that would require the clear and convincing standard -- but at least a bulletproof vehicle both against false claims and against the hundred-billion-dollar divorce industry which together encourage -- without any doubt in my mind -- the pernicious falsity abounding in these custody and visitation cases. 

So find in favor of S813. Our children deserve it. It lets them keep both of their parents. Don't parentectomize them. Don't destroy their self-esteem by destroying one of their parents. We see many of them now thinking, If he's not worthy, I'm not worthy. We must not let that phenomenon continue.