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My solution? Mandated joint residential child custody between all biological mothers and fathers not proven criminally unfit. Then child support issues disappear, because each parent pays the bills that arise during their equal parenting time. Of course, medical bills and such might require mediation to divide.

Okay, but mind if I pick this one apart a bit? ;-) How would you mandate joint custody on abandonment? That doesn't fall into criminally unfit...it's just someone who's unavailable. Or shall we make abandonment a criminal charge? That would be ok by me BTW. ;-) How would you handle JC between two parents constantly battling one another and hurting the kids even more because the court forces them to work out something they refuse to work out? How would you handle JC that is ordered but not adhered to because one parent either won't take their time with the child or won't give up the child and you don't have the money to run back to court everytime? There are more instances I could toss out, but this shows you I would never settle on any mandate for all or even most. Case-by-case is the only way something like this could work. Might I start with my suggestion? Don't have a single solitary judge making the ruling, but more like a jury or panel to hear divorce cases. You stand a better chance of a fair ruling when you have an equally matched panel of jurors than one possibly biased individual.

Abandonment constitutes a willful disavowal of the right to joint custody.

And rather than address every possible failing that joint custody situations could have, I would simply note that the current situation, essentially default maternal custody, has a laundry list of problems as well.

Given that, joint custody is better for the kids and more fair to the parents. Would many situations be flawed? Sure.

Like now.

Don't have a single solitary judge making the ruling, but more like a jury or panel to hear divorce cases. You stand a better chance of a fair ruling when you have an equally matched panel of jurors than one possibly biased individual.

You would still need formal, written guidelines as to who would get what parenting time and why. What would such guidelines say if you wrote them?

I have no faith in anyone deciding what should be what based purely upon their own biases. There must be set, public standards and accountability for being held thereto.