“Mom, why are you only setting one place for dinner tonight?”
“Because your dinner’s at Dad’s house tonight. It’s your night with him tonight, and I know he’s got dinner ready. He’ll pick you up or I’ll drive you over there. I’m not going to ignore the custody and parent-time orders while I expect Dad to follow them. Among other reasons, my budget is built around you being with me half the time, not every night you’d rather be here. You don’t get to decide at which house you stay.”
(The parents in that scene can be reversed. The principle doesn’t care whose house it is.)
Nothing in that exchange is harsh. The kids are fed. The other parent is ready, willing, and able to care for them. The mother in this scenario (who could be the father, if the shoe were on the other foot) is doing what the court’s order requires, refusing to treat the order as optional for a parent or child but binding on the other parent, and telling her children the truth: they are not a law unto themselves. She is also being honest about money in the way any household is honest with children about what it can afford.
The scene is a metaphor for a principle, and it is the principle this post defends. When two fit parents have a defiant child, neither parent should gain or lose in custody or child support because of what the child decides to do.
The Problem
A court order sets the schedule. The schedule determines, among other things, the child support worksheet the court uses and the numbers that go into it. Then a fifteen-year-old decides she would rather be at Mom’s, and the schedule stops describing and prescribing what happens.
Nothing in the law tells us what should follow. But the incentives are easy to see. The parent the child favors can point to a new status quo. The parent the child avoids can be cast as disengaged. If the drift continues, one of them is in a position to ask for more custody, more support, or both. Neither did anything to earn or deserve that result. A child made a choice, and the adults absorbed the consequences.
That is a bad system for the parent who insists on the schedule, because it punishes the parent who honors the order. It is a worse system for the parent tempted not to insist, because tolerating the drift pays. And it is worst for the children, who learn that the schedule is whatever they can get away with.
The Strongest Objections
Equal time is not right for every family, and I’m not arguing that it is (although that should be the rebuttable presumption in Utah, as is the case in a growing number of jurisdictions, but I digress). Utah decides custody on best interest under § 81-9-204. It presumes joint legal custody under § 81-9-205(2)(a), but joint physical custody is not presumed (yet, but it will be—mark my words, but I digress again) and requires findings. Parents who live far apart, cannot communicate, or are not both fit present different questions. This post is about two fit parents.
The second objection is that equal time cannot make a defiant teenager get in the car and does not justify trying to manhandle a defiant child out of the house and/or into the car. That is correct. An order that awards 50/50 does not produce a child who shows up at Dad’s on his nights, and a parent who ends up hosting the children full-time still bears the costs.
Both objections are right, and neither answers the argument. The argument was never that equal time cures defiance. It is that the law should not let defiance become a source of advantage, and an equal-time baseline is the arrangement least likely to reward it.
Why Equal Time Does This
There is no hierarchy to disturb. In an equal-time arrangement both parents already have full standing as custodians. When a teenager drifts toward one house, the drift does not upset a ranking, because the order doesn’t establish one. The parent the child prefers gains no claim to be the “real” custodial parent, and the parent the child avoids does not lose one.
The thresholds stop mattering. Child support in Utah is calculated on different worksheets depending on whether each parent has the minimum number of overnights for joint physical custody (111 a year). A parent near that line has a lot riding on a few dozen nights. A parent at equal time is far from it. A few months of drift does not reclassify anyone.
The parents’ incentives line up. Under a lopsided order, one parent’s enforcement is often the other’s loss, so cooperation is expensive. Under an equal order, neither parent benefits from a child’s refusal, and both have the same reason to hold the line. That’s a better foundation for a working co-parenting relationship than one where each parent is quietly counting nights.
The rule is one that children can understand. Half the time here, half the time there, and neither house is where you go when you don’t like the other one’s rules. Teenagers test rules. A rule this simple is hard to argue with.
What It Does Not Do
It doesn’t eliminate the problem. Support is still calculated from overnights, so an equal order paired with a 70/30 reality leaves a gap between paper and life. What an equal time order does is shrink the stakes of that gap and remove the head start one parent would otherwise get.
Crucially, it prevents a child’s defiance from becoming a self-executing veto over legal custody. Equal time establishes a firm legal baseline that obligates both parents and the court to address refusal head-on—through required counseling, court-enforced boundaries, and clear behavioral consequences—rather than passively rewarding the child’s refusal. If defiance remains sustained despite active remediation efforts, any formal change must go through a judge based on facts and accountability, ensuring a child’s unwillingness to comply never quietly rewrites a legal order by attrition.
Equal time also assumes two parents who both enforce (to the best of their ability). A parent who does nothing about a defiant teenager raises the question I addressed in my earlier post, “‘I Can’t Make Them’ Is Where the Inquiry Starts”: what did you actually try? Equal time is a baseline for parents who take the order seriously, and it does not shield those who don’t.
What This Looks Like in Practice
For parents: Follow the order and say why, out loud, to the children and to the other parent. Don’t quietly collect evidence of the drift. If the arrangement stops working—or if a parent has become unfit to exercise the joint or equal custody schedule—ask the court to change it directly. Don’t wait for informal facts on the ground to do the legal work for you.
For lawyers: When you represent two fit parents and the teenager is already showing resistance, consider proposing equal time in the parenting plan. Consider adding a provision that neither parent will seek a change in custody or support based solely on the child’s refusal to follow the schedule, unless that parent has first tried enforcement, brought the refusal to the court, or demonstrated that the other parent has become unfit to exercise joint custody. Whether a court will enforce that clause as written is uncertain, since child support is never wholly the parents’ to bargain away, but it sets clear expectations and creates a firm record.
For judges: When a child refuses to follow the court-ordered custody and parent-time schedule, ask what each parent did about it—and evaluate whether the breakdown stems from child defiance or genuine parental unfitness—before deciding who has gained or lost position.
The Larger Principle
A child’s stubbornness should not decide who wins in family court. A parent who correctly says “your dinner’s at Dad’s house tonight” is not neglecting anyone. She is behaving as a responsible, law-abiding, tough-loving parent should, refusing to let a child’s preference rewrite a court order, refusing to profit from the rewrite, refusing to undermine the other parent’s relationship with the children, and telling her children that their father is a full parent whose home is not optional. The law should be built to make that the easy thing to do.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277