Our Family Law Lacks Commonsense!

Yvonne Roberts, award winning journalist, has written this excellent article for the Guardian online. Emphasis added by EPC. It's all commonsense really, but unfortunately our government doesn't appear to have any commonsense at all! They continue to stumble from one failed policy to another. We have an idea! Why not try approaches that are actually working elsewhere?

Rules of disengagement
Yvonne Roberts
July 14, 2006 04:43 PM

Two billion pounds in child maintenance owed by absent fathers will never be paid. Another billion pounds has been wasted in trying to reform the Child Support Agency in the past three years. Now, it is to be axed and replaced by a mish mash arrangement of bailiffs (that's really going to help ruptured family ties) and a new "streamlined body" that intervenes only in the most difficult cases where couples cannot come to their own financial arrangements.

Who on earth does the government think the CSA is supposed to help now? These are the leaked proposals of Sir David Henshaw who has conducted a review of the CSA. It was a review constrained from the outset by its limited remit - only look at the bureaucratic red tape and the question of dosh, not the lack of support for the human turmoil that precedes one wage packet being divided for two households.if these proposals have been reported accurately, Henshaw also suggests tough sanctions against "deadbeat dads" including seizure of passports; electronic tagging and community service. All of which will only lead to buckets of extra blood on what is already a post-divorce and separation battlefield. One positive suggestion is that instead of losing a pound of benefit for every pound gained in maintenance, the resident parent will be able to keep benefits up to a threshold.

At present, it costs 70p for every £1 of child support collected. The hours of anger and frustration trying to contact the CSA, typified by one of my friends who has rung without results 27 times in a fortnight, goes uncounted. This shambles, however, was all so utterly unnecessary.

Before the British CSA was set up 13 years ago, civil servants visited Australia - where the satisfaction rate of both parents with the CSA , hits over 90%.In Australia, efforts are made to discover why a father isn't paying. Is he unemployed, ill, depressed, has he a large second family, is it family conflict? Does he have alcohol or drug problems. How can he be helped to sort himself out? The approach is holistic - it's not just about cash, it's about government recognising that, if children are involved, family life has to be helped to continue even after the adults' relationship ends.

The British civil servants came home - and, did it all differently. The result has been a bureaucratic disaster outstripped only by the distress and financial hardship and frustration of mothers and fathers to the detriment of the children.

Where we go from here, however, is not a matter for Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton - who is expected to back the review's findings. The very fact that maintenance is deemed solely a matter for work and pensions betrays the fatal flaw. One that guarantees years of further cock-ups and unpaid maintenance.

Child support; contact and access to children after separation; an understanding of how relationships work; an awareness of the emotional needs of children and the availability of appropriate help if a marriage hits difficulties, are all of a piece. The spectrum that begins when a couple get together should continue in the event of them going their separate ways if the child's interests are genuinely to come first.

It doesn't happen here because the judiciary, policies and politicians' attitudes are disjointed, out of synch and anachronistic. Too often, when the going gets rough in a cohabitation or marriage, the old-fashioned belief that mother knows best and "owns" her offspring, rules - very definitely OK .

It's time for Britain in the 21st century to junk this damaging matrimonial rag-bag (difficult because the lawyers will resist the honey pot of marital breakdown being prised from their sticky hands). The government at present is engaged in a series of timid little exercises such as the now defunct "early intervention" project. It offered counselling and mediation for warring couples to settle post-separation arrangements over children. Predictions that it would be a total flop proved absolutely correct. Why? Partly because it's based on an assumption that both partners are in a similar emotional place when they start negotiating issues such as how often Johnny and Jane stay over with dad for the night .

In truth, according to Australian research, it takes three years before the unhappy partner (in 70% of cases, the woman) announces that she wishes to end the relationship. During this time, she mourns the loss of the relationship, adjusts her life and makes plans for a different future. Then she announces her intention to her partner. He, often, is utterly bemused at such drastic and irreversible action. That quickly turns to despair, anger and grief - especially because in most cases, he will lose his day-to-day life with his children.

All of which is exacerbated by his wife's apparent indifference . She, of course, has already navigated these choppy waters. Family courts in the UK fail to take this lack of sychronicity into account - as have many projects designed to help with mediation.In Britain, two attitudes cripple the birth of a radically different approach. The first is one that says since individual fathers are some or all of the following (rresponsible, unreliable, lying, violent, tight-fisted lazy bastards) we will not accept a philosophy that assumes both parents are equally capable of caring for a child.

The second concerns the deification of the mother as the "natural" carer and the belief, often prevalent in the courts, that she is always in the right. This is in spite of the fact that research indicates that from birth, positive input from dad, can and does make a significant difference to a child's outcomes.

Child support, contact, access and the promotion of emotional literacy (otherwise known as learning how not to behave like an arse in relationships) have to be linked by the expectation that both parents are equally involved in a child's upbringing, both practical and emotional. If a man (or woman) is abusive and violent then, of course, suitability as a parent is also impaired. It's bonkers to insist, as some courts now do, that contact between a violent parent and children is maintained against their wishes. This month, Australia has attempted to adopt a different approach. It has introduced the most radical reform of family law since the "no fault" divorce in 1975. The legislation driving the change is called the Family Law (Shared Parenting Responsibility) Act. It acknowledges that while a father (usually) may not live with his child full time, he remains a parent .

Australia's goal, via a number of measures, is to keep warring couples out of court if at all possible and away from lawyers. The legal profession, needless to say, is hostile. Now, in a series of meetings in an informal setting, a couple sits with two trained counsellors and two negotiators, working out a resolution with the help of a magistrate. Before, it took up to 15 months to conclude a case and a child might see a non-resident parent damagingly little . In pilots, under the new scheme, resolution comes in a couple of months. This isn't because a miracle is at work. It's because everyone knows that the the assumption is that both adults will behave like grown-ups and share parenting. For those who refuse to accept the terms, one option of last resort is jail.
The rules of the CSA have also been changed. Now, controversially, a full time mother is obliged to find work when the child reaches six. The incomes of both parents is taken into account, as are the expenses a non-resident parent may encounter having his child every other weekend and in the holidays.
The change in the Australian law is only a small part of a multi-million dollar exercise providing more help for couples as lovers and parents. Here, Harriet Harman, minister at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, is looking at ways to improve the business of marriages falling apart.
Ministers are fond of saying that 90% of relationship breakdowns involving children don't end up in court. That's no indicator of a successful solution from the point of view of the child. What that flags up is that many men believe they don't stand a chance in the courts. So, some melt away - but not nearly as many as urban myth would have us believe. According to research well over half of fathers stay in touch with their sons and daughters, no matter what.The Children and Adoption Bill that passed its third reading at the beginning of the month will enable courts to force parents in private law proceedings to undertake parenting classes, to support contact and to punish those who breach contact orders.

The framework is all wrong - punitive and authoritarian. For the majority of parents such an approach wouldn't be necessary if the terms of disengagement caught up with the modern day - and were fair, clear, sustained throughout the system and written into the fabric of society. That's the least children deserve.

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