Digital Dialogues - Law Commission Forum - Family Law - Comments

Legally defying a Court order for contact - simple

Clifton Moore — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:12:52 +0100

Breaking a contact court order without recourse is both simple and cruel. When the parent with care has so alienated/encouraged a child to say it does not wish to see the other parent what action is taken? Time out for a further CAFCASS or Legal Guardian report allows for more emotional abuse towards a childs entrechment. For things to have festered into the need for multiple trips to court the chemistry is in place for the alienation of the parent without care. The current legal process fails to address this issue at a point when it can be effectively prevented and is guilty of aiding the emotional abuse / distress of children in such a position. Legal Aid supports this. The entire issue of Family Law must be re-addressed.

I beleive its not the Parent

jrps — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:11:37 +0100

I beleive its not the Parent with care thats at fault all the time, but the information given to people by their legal representatives. If the courts were to make both sides have more aggrements before it gets to the court stage, and not allow solicitors to push the system all the way, then alot more would get resolved.

Family Law to recognise Emotional Abuse

Clifton Moore — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 07:50:13 +0100

Parents should be allowed to work things out between themselves but failing that there should be a mandatory immediate and effective structure of social services intervention with help and professional counselling for parents and children similar to that offered by The Centre for Separated Families.. The current legal process fails to protect our children and only serves to amplify 'bad feeling' between parents and is a bad use of public resources. Change could be self financed by the savings on Legal Aid and the existing legal process. It will create jobs losses in the field of 'Family Law' and job gains in Social Services.... it will undoubtedly benefit the children. The positive effect on the moral of an estranged parent would be rolled over into their productivity at work and their willingness to contribute (more) to their childrens welfare financially.... as a Nation we could see long term benefits to more than just the social structure of our society...

Family Court openness

rufus — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 17:07:19 +0100

The excuses given by the authorities to oppose openness are pathetic, and, hence, untenable. It is quite clear that the current situation is in place to protect the 'experts', social services and the judges etc. It deeply offends my sense of what is right and just that decisions that destroy families are done in secret. It is exactly as a very famous person stated: "men have loved the darkness rather than the light, for their works were wicked. For he that practices vile things hates the light and does not come to the light, in order that his works may not be reproved". Full and honest Family Courts openness now !

Family Law

doozy — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 12:50:54 +0100

•Court Orders in relation to child contact and access Once a Court Order is made, that order should be upheld if breached, and sanctions should be actively used to address anyone found to be flouting order without good reason. •Child contact; protection of children in domestic violence cases Full risk assessment of cases reporting DV should be carried out as fast as possible but with adequate resources and full investigation into the nature, and relevance to any abuse with the matter before the court. False and malicious claims should be treated as a criminal act of perjury with effective sanctions to deter such claims. It is well recognized within the Family Courts that the majority of DV claims are unfounded, and are a product of the hostile litigation environment created in adversarial winner takes all Residence and Contact disputes. •Child support and maintenance Child Support should not be calculated on the number of overnights a child spends with either parent. This calculation and associated discounts acts as a disincentive for controlling Resident parents to deny the Non-Resident parent reasonable parental involvement, including overnight stays. •Application of the Children’s Act 1989; publishing orders, appeal of orders, “leave to remove”, interviewing children. The Family Courts need to be open to scrutiny by the public and professional peers to those who work within the system. Children and parents should be afforded anonymity by not exposing their names unless to do so would be in the public interest. Cases of perjury and false and malicious claims of Rape, DV and abuse should expose the culprit, as they have the potential to go on and commit the same crimes in other relationship, without ever being found out. “Leave to remove” should be only accepted in exceptional circumstances. Ideally parents would be educated in the early stages of separation of the benefits of establishing a Shared Parenting arrangement and the disadvantages of Sole residence Vs Non-Resident Parent status. It is currently rare for a Resident Parent to be denied removal, and the NRP often fights a futile and costly battle to prevent the move. The problems typically stem form the imbalance in parental care, power and control, which is associated with the titles attracted by the legal definitions of Resident Parents and Non-Resident Parent. Removals would be a far less common occurrence or more fairly contested when both parents are Shared Resident Parents at the start. •The allocation of Child Benefit and its impact on future entitlements In a Shared Residence arrangement Child Benefit should be split between the parents equally. No calculation on number of nights should be included, as this would just compound the current problem created by the CSA penalty to Resident Parents who allow overnights, or reward for Non-Resident Parents granted overnights. Where there is clearly a case of imbalance parenting and duty of care, the first assessment should be to determine if hostility by a parent is preventing a more equal care arrangement or if one parent is clearly abdicating their role. If hostility is the problem, that needs to be resolved first, to avoid rewarding an abusive controlling parent with 100% benefit entitlement. If the case involves an absent parent by choice, their irresponsibility should attract financial penalties. Early Education and awareness services: Gender neutral approach I believe that the root cause of many of the problems relating to hostility and parental litigation stem from the imbalance in control and power relating to parental roles, and the effect that has on a parents ability to fulfil their duty of care. When a family go through the trauma of parental separation they have few support services to turn too, and far too many end up seeking legal advice, and get direct to the Family Courts. The starting advice for mothers (mainly) is to contest and gain Residence. For fathers (mainly) they get advice to apply for Contact Order. Few legal professionals go through the ins and outs of what Residence and Contact actually do to a parent natural status, and role. The new C1A Domestic Violence forms are being used in a very gendered way as well. Leading to legal professionals to encourage of extract information form female clients, but not doing the same from male clients based on the own assumptions and preconceptions of the prevalence and nature of gendered DV. This leads to several unjust and badly argued cases, and also is the breading ground for malicious claims. Men typically will not be asked and will also not recognise their status as a victim of Domestic Violence (typically emotional and psychological for men) at the hands of the controlling ex partner they are being forced to take to court due to withholding their joint child. This abuse goes unrecorded and worse unrecognised in most case. A woman suffering the same abuse will be actively engaged to recognised and report the abuse within the court paperwork and process. When the statistics and count of cases involving reported DV are available, it will clearly show skewed and inaccurate results due to this unequal gendered approach. If less fathers where told to go for contact and instead applied for Shared Residence, we would start to see the model that matches many fathers real expectations. If mothers were educated to know that fathers were no longer optional peripheral roles in the new family model, they wouldn’t contest his ongoing involvement. Add to this the incentives to win all, and to not lose, the battle ground today is fierce. We need to encapsulate early parental roles and duty educations and back those up with incentives and systems that support both parents mutual care and financial support for the their joint child. Today’s approach is fundamentally flawed in that it clearly deals with each gender of parent differently based on old models and out

Residence and contact orders

cj04 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 20:43:39 +0100

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

Family Law

dpr100 — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 17:37:19 +0000

I consider it would be prudent to open up the Family Division of the High Court to more scrutiny. At present it is truly the preserve of lawyers, anyone else, in my experience is not welcome. Whilst I do not deny that it is lawyers traditional territory,with the increasing cost of fees and the corresponding cut backs in Legal Aid, people are more likely to want to put the case themselves. This is most difficult to accomplish without having preveiously set foot inside of the Family Division. Consequently litigants in person are at times doubly disadvanataged: opposed by a professional lawyer and unaware of the court protocols. This is perculiar to the Family Division. There are of course good reasons for this, nevertheless, an opening up of the court's activities short of allowing unfettered reporting would allow the layman to witness what actually occurs. This would give the litigant in person and their McKensie friends' more confidence in such matters and I consider would in the long run ensure that better justice is done. At present many people cannot afford professional help, but they still have something to say. Nevertheless because they do not know, or find it difficult to find out how the court operates they are intimidated into either not attending a hearing or keeping silent at that hearing. Silence on a large scale perpetuates injusice. This can be easily be remedied by greater transparency and openness.

Court Orders

happydadtoo — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 06:05:46 +0000

I whole-heartedly agree. This MUST be the only area of law where breaking a Court Order is completely disregarded and so anarchy reigns. Fines (pay all of father's costs) or jailing of RP's who break the Order (even on a first offence) MUST become near-universal. Transfer of children to teh other parent must ALWAYS follow - unless he/she is unable to cope. That way, fairness will be restored - BUT the lawyers will lose a very lucrative sources of income - so I guess thsi will not happen, In my case, £300,000 was spent trying to get a mother to obey repeated court Orders - all to no avail. Ian

Court Orders

24601 — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:24:35 +0000

I agree. Is it possible to be in contempt of a Family Court? It seems that for most who breach an order: the most they'll get is a telling off - 10 minutes detention, almost. Usually, it is the mother breaching the order adding to the father's despair. Family Law is so heavily stacked against father's that a breach compounds the misery for the father and lessens any time that the child may wish to spend with the Non-Resident Parent.

Court Orders

the umpire — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 16:56:56 +0000

The binding of court orders, their meaning and the law in agreement to it when it is broken. In recent years the District Judges in the Family Court have issued court orders for access and contact for non resident parents for the court orders to be ignored or even refused by the solicitors for the other side. At present no action is taken against the RP or their legal representatives and this needs to be done with urgent requirement. Court Orders must be adhere to and District Judges must give out fines and possible Jail sentence when they are refused or ignored.

Family Law

Laura Miller — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 16:20:08 +0000

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

Do you have a point relating to this area of law that you want to discuss? Feel free to comment below.