I commend the Family Law Task Force, New Hampshire legislature, and all the contributors for forging the Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act, now adopted as RSA 461-A.  It has been heralded as a groundbreaking change in the dynamics of family law that will reduce litigation, acrimony, and the suffering of countless children in the state of New Hampshire.  This looks great on paper, but then so did communism.

The most success that I have had in settling and mediating family law cases, and the most equitable agreements regarding custody... (oh, sorry—parental rights and responsibilities) that I have obtained, have been due to the reciprocal courtesy and reasonableness of opposing counsel.  When opposing counsel and I have brought our embittered clients to heel, refused to tolerate any “monkey business” from the parties, like interfering with visitation or failure to pay child support and have refused to condone unwarranted harassment of the other party, we have achieved equitable results with a minimum of costs.  The wording of the law has little to do with this. 

Although the new law solves a lot of perceived inequities in the law between custodial and non-custodial parents (antiquated terms in this day and age), it cannot do anything to remedy the real reason that family law is so difficult: angry litigants and their unreasonable counsel.  I’ve had colleagues from Grafton and Belknap counties come to Hillsborough to attend hearings and they have remarked that the practice of law in southern New Hampshire has become (in their words) “absolutely barbaric.”  I am afraid that I have to agree with them.  In reality, the law is only as good as the litigants and attorneys who implement it.

Regardless of this new law, I am skeptical about it having a profound effect on the state of marital law today.  Whether you call the arrangement “custody” or “rights and responsibilities,” litigants are still going to try to frustrate the custody arrangement/parenting plan if they are angry at the other party and their attorneys do not dissuade them from such action with kind words and a firm guiding hand.  In the highly charged emotional field of family law, it is essential that members of the bar maintain their roles as counselors, and not merely advocates.  

But please, disregard my skepticism!  I would like to call on all my brothers and sisters in the New Hampshire Bar to make the ideals and visions behind the Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act a reality, and not just another section in some dusty book.

Todd H. Prevett

Amherst, NH

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