October 3, 2017 11 comments
Family breakdown is emotive. Of course it is. And it’s quite understandable if, driven by those emotions, one or both of the parties behave less than reasonably towards the other. But the emotive nature of family breakdown does not excuse parties from continuing to behave in an unreasonable fashion towards one another for years after…
September 13, 2017 2 comments
Children who spend equal time with both parents following divorce or separation have better mental health than other children, a new study suggests. A team of researchers examined data relating to 3656 Swedish children between the ages of three and five years. Some were living with both their parents in an intact family; some in…
September 6, 2017 26 comments
I wrote here the other day with some basic advice for litigants. In that post I advised that parties should respect the court, and that they should obey the requirements of the court. I almost added that they should obey the orders of the court, but I felt that that was too obvious. The recent…
August 23, 2017 2 comments
For any couple with children, whether married or unmarried, unable to agree arrangements for them and embroiled in court proceedings under the Children Act 1989, the chances are that at an early stage in the proceedings the Court will order both parents to attend what is known as a ‘SPIP’: a separated parents information programme….
August 7, 2017 53 comments
This old chestnut apparently raised its ugly head again on national TV over the weekend. I really shouldn’t have to explain again what has been explained so many times previously, including by myself, but clearly there are still some who don’t understand (or more likely don’t want to understand) this basic truth: child support and…
August 1, 2017 41 comments
Campaigning charity Families Need Fathers (FNF) has condemned last week’s joint report by Cafcass and Women’s Aid as ‘betraying the trust’ of fathers. The report claimed that no less than 62 per cent of all applications to the courts regarding arrangements for children feature allegations of domestic violence. The figure was based on an analysis…
July 11, 2017 37 comments
Or: How do you resolve the problem of the alienated child? The family courts are regularly criticised for failing to deal with the issue of parental alienation. Not only do they fail to deal with it, say the critics, but often they appear to be positively rewarding the ‘guilty’ parent. The recent case Q v…
July 6, 2017 8 comments
The former wife of a Methodist Minister has been jailed for contempt of court after repeatedly accusing him of abuse. The case dated back as far as 2001, when the divorced couple disputed the father’s rights to see his daughter. In the High Court Mr Justice Hayden noted, the father’s wish to see his children…
June 24, 2017 2 comments
Family judges in the northerly American state of Michigan could be required to award divorcing parents joint custody of their children by default. House Bill 4691 was approved by the House Judiciary Committee of the state legislature earlier this week. It would mandate equal parenting following divorce unless substantiated reports of domestic violence have been…
June 23, 2017 0 comments
An 11 year-old girl brought to England by her Latvian mother should return to her Italian father, the High Court has ruled. The couple met and married in that country but their daughter, ‘GP’,, was born during one of their regular stays in Latvia. By the latter part of 2010 the couple were living permanently…
