North Dakota group petitions against child custody laws

By Julia Spalding

Published on April 06, 2006

Proponents such as Dean Clark, who went from sharing his two sons seven days a week and every other weekend to seeing the boys 4 ½ hours on Tuesday evenings and every other weekend, hope they can obtain the 12,884 signatures NDSPI needs to get the measure on the November ballot.

The Lidgerwood man feels the N.D. Supreme Court treated his child custody case unfairly. After spending $146,690 over the course of a 1 ½-year custody battle in which he tried to maintain equal parenting responsibilities, Clark says he was given essentially the same visitation rights as a deadbeat dad. In addition, he pays $3,487 a month for child support.

The initiative's opponents note that the geographic separation of divorced parents will make it difficult to enforce shared parenting arrangement as laid out by NDSPI.

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