Protecting children, shielding parents, and restoring balance through common-sense custody reform.
Balanced Co-Parenting Initiative is a nonprofit dedicated to reforming the child custody industrial complex. We believe children thrive when the legal, academic, therapeutic and civic systems that are designed to protect children, operate as they are intended, consistently and efficiently.
Our mission is to advance common-sense solutions that protect parents and children from harmful tactics. Too often, one parent—driven by control, instability, or hostility—uses false accusations, procedural delays, costly evaluations, or coercive control to push the other parent out of a child’s life. These behaviors not only harm the targeted parent but also undermine the child’s long-term well-being, and yet they remain largely unaddressed by the family court ecosystem.
We focus on three pillars:
- Research & Storytelling – Collecting surveys, data, and lived experiences of parents, and publishing these stories to expose systemic failures.
- Professional Insights – Partnering with family lawyers, child psychologists, custody evaluators, parent coordinators, high-conflict therapists, social workers, former judges, and supervised monitors to highlight patterns of misuse and propose practical reforms.
- Policy & Advocacy – Working with lawmakers, judicial councils, and advocacy groups to establish transparent, consistent rules, hold bad actors accountable, and prevent children from being weaponized in custody and child support disputes.
Our vision is a balanced system where children thrive because parents are shielded from manipulation, common-sense solutions are implemented swiftly, and public trust is restored in the child custody framework.
Our vision is a balanced system where children thrive because parents are shielded from manipulation, common-sense solutions are implemented swiftly, and public trust is restored in the child custody framework.
Advancing Fair Custody Through Evidence
The first pillar: Research and Storytelling
There is very limited data on how ineffective the legal family court system is in dealing with child custody. Statistics on custody arrangements, root causes and impact are also extremely limited. Furthermore, court orders limit parents from being able to tell their stories. Judges, lawyers, child psychologists, therapists, parent coordinators, social works, etc all seem exempt from scrutiny and accountability. In our current phase, we are collective empirical evidence through data collection as well as gathering stories to highlight the failure of the current child custody industrial complex to support the best interest of the children they are designed to protect.