Welcome to the online consultation forum for the Law Commission's Tenth Programme of Law Reform.

Family Law

This discussion concerns the law as it relates to the family. Previous posts can be found in the archive thread. In summary, they discuss:

•Court Orders in relation to child contact and access
•Child contact; protection of children in domestic violence cases
•Child support and maintenance
•Application of the Children’s Act 1989; publishing orders, appeal of orders, “leave to remove”, interviewing children.
•The allocation of Child Benefit and its impact on future entitlements
•The rights granted to Civil Partnerships

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Residence and contact orders

Posted by cj04 on 26/03/2007 - 19:43

After filing for divorce from my now ex- husband, I offered unlimed and staying contact with our children.

Despite this fact, he was still able to use the law to take me to court and fight for contact (through and order) and shared residence (he wanted 50% of the equity in our property and the only way that he could get this was through residence). Up until now I still cannot see how this happened to us - I was treated in the courts as if I was a crimianl 'stopping contact' - it was horrific

meetings with Cafcass were fruitless - my or my childrens voices were not heard.

My husband abused me - this was not taken into consideration by either the judges or by cafcass - in fact I had to sit in the same room as the man who abused me.

The whole has system left me broken - emotionally and finacially (indeed lawyers are the only winners) children have no rights in this system my children are emotionally damaged - forced to stay with their father and be parted from their mother.

The courts need to be opened up to the public - what is happening in private law cases needs to be made public - children are suffering under this system

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