There will be a meeting of the Indiana Child Custody and Support Advisor Committee at 10:00am on Friday, August 21, 2001. It will be held in room 233 of the Statehouse.

This committee suggests and reviews possible legislative changes to the Indiana Code for the upcoming session of the General Assembly. You can get a list of the committee members, not all of whom are legislators, via the General Assembly web site. The noncustodial representative is attorney Bruce

Pennamped and the custodial representative is Carol Branham. Note that Senator Bray, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee (through which pass most of the Family Law changes), is also a member of the ICCSAC committee.

the committee can sign up at arrival. I do not yet have an agenda for this meeting, but some potential changes to the Indiana Code were briefly discussed at the Domestic Relations Committee meeting last Friday. They were fairly docile, such as replacing the "custodial/noncustodial" language with something like the "parenting" and "parenting time" terms used in the newly adopted Indiana Parenting Time Guidelines. Several states are changing this type of language, so while it is a positive step, it certainly isn't "ground-breaking". They will be making some recommendations to ICCSAC, but they will not include such "controversial" changes as the presumption of joint legal custody!

While ICCSAC has initiated substantial changes in years past, I'd have to say that little has come from this committee since David Dinn and Dr. David Garrod were replaced as committee members (the committee at that time went under another name, but served the same function). This was also about the time that the members of PACE and other such groups ceased attending the meetings in large numbers. Remember that while there has been substantial improvement, it was not initiated by the elected officials without input!

This will probably be the ONLY meeting of the committee prior to the next legislative session. Please attend this meeting if you can do so, taking the time to speak with your committee representatives!

Bob Monday
Parents and Children's Equality
Children's Rights Council of Indiana