Shared parenting benefits children, but the law inadequately encourages it.  Neither marriage nor custody law sufficiently guides parents to select good parenting partners, to engage in shared parenting during the romantic relationship, or to act as supportive parenting partners at the romantic relationship’s end.  Joint custody is not, and cannot substitute for, shared parenting. This chapter argues that children would benefit from a legal structure that governed their parents’ relationships from the outset, conveying social expectations about shared parenting.  This new “parent-partner status” should increase the amount of shared parenting and thereby increase the amount of agreed-upon joint custody.  At a time of easy divorce and significant non-marital childbearing, fueled in part by the movement of individuals away from organized religion, children would benefit from such a new structure.  Given faith communities power to influence people’s experience of family, faith communities will be important partners in any attempt to achieve legal and social change.