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Lifeclass Extra: Save our dads
So many Telegraph readers are impassioned by the problem of fathers losing touch with their children after divorce that I'd like to invite readers to send their views in online, says Lesley Garner
Your view: Are we guilty of ignoring fathers' rights?
In this week's Lifeclass I highlighted, with the testimony of many of you, the inequities in the law.
The current system in the Family Courts divides parents into first and second class. One parent, usually, the mother, becomes first class, by virtue of being the resident parent. The other parent, usually the father, becomes second class, by simply being allocated visiting rights. But the second class can quickly become third class and then no class at all.
Disagreements, missed arrangements, the problem of maintaining a relationship with distressed children, prolonged court hearings and mounting costs drive a wedge between a father and his children. More and more evidence is coming in from readers that the system needs changing.
Responding to yesterday's article a father writes:
"Thank you for being one of the very first to highlight the plight of divorced fathers with such balance.
"I am one of the very few lucky ones in that, although my divorce was fairly acrimonious, my wife was always very keen that I should continue to have access on a shared basis. Until there is real momentum in the exposure of how many men ( and their children's grand parents) are marginalised by unfair procedures and the ineffectiveness and lack of balance within the family division, there will be ongoing anger.
"It takes real commitment and extraordinary effort by many men to put up with the vitriol from some women which so easily dissuades them from keeping in touch with their children. Especially when the courts do not enforce their decisions. All children are the losers."
Another father writes:
"I am a married father whose wife left me within weeks of our son being born. The last ten years have been almost unbelievable. Legal action for contact with my son continued for nine years. During this period I paid my solicitor over £100 per hour while my wife was legally aided. I also had child support payments to make to the CSA as contact with your children and liability to pay are not related issues.
"I have never been accused of any form of abuse, yet I have had no contact with my son for over a year, despite having an agreement reached through solicitors for my son to stay with me every second weekend. The courts do not enforce contact orders if the mother chooses to ignore them. This is a fact.
"After my ex-wife severed all contact with me my son went to pieces in class. I will never give up my struggle to be involved with my son despite the opposition of my wife, who is backed by the State."
What gives force to these arguments from Telegraph readers is that they are expressed by people across the board. It's not just fathers who feel disgruntled. The same message comes from wives, magistrates, grandparents and children who have lost contact with a father. Everyone wants to see a new emphasis put on the rights of children to have fathers and a new emphasis on shared parenting in the courts.
These are the views of a mother:
"I have come late to your discussion about fathers and families but was very moved by your column in the Telegraph today. Maybe you have a website where the discussion is ongoing and my comments could make a difference to other people who are going through difficult times.
"More than thirty years ago my husband left me when our son was less than six months old. My first reaction, frankly, was to go as far away as possible in order to deny him access to his son. I felt he had no right to his son. It did not take me long, however, to realise that his SON had an absolute and inalienable right to his FATHER.
"The ensuing years were not easy, to put it mildly. Both of us remarried and other children were born and I don't think matters were completely resolved until our son was married at the age of 27. But resolved they were and I have always felt that my decision was justified for my child's sake.
"However badly your husband has behaved or however badly you feel he has behaved your children have a right to their father and it is your duty to keep an avenue of communication open, where possible, for their sake."
This is my position on this issue. I agree with this mother. No matter the differences between parents, children need and have a right to both parents. I think there should be mandatory mediation in all cases where there is a dispute over children, before the matter goes expensively, and pointlessly, to court.
I can see, from the evidence of your experience, that there is a powerful case for the family court system to be overhauled and for the assumption of shared parenting to replace the present system of one primary and one secondary parent.
It's over to you. What do you think?
Thursday, 30 November 2006
Thursday, 16 November 2006
Bill to axe troubled CSA unveiled
See EPC comment below story.
The troubled Child Support Agency is to be axed and replaced, under legislation announced in the Queen's Speech.
By July the CSA, which has been dogged with complaints throughout its 13-year history, had a backlog of 300,000 cases and debts of £3bn.
The Child Support Bill aims to replace it with a smaller body and a simpler way of collecting child maintenance.
Ministers hope it will encourage more parents to make their own arrangements, part of a more cost-effective system.
The bill ends the requirement that all lone parents with care responsibilities who claim benefits must also submit a claim to receive child maintenance, regardless of whether they already had a private arrangement.
Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton has said the government would seek more powers to deal with parents who repeatedly fail to pay maintenance - such as suspending passports and imposing curfews.
Criticism of the CSA has ranged from accusations of snooping and unfair settlements to its failure to collect millions of pounds in unpaid maintenance.
EPC COMMENT: Both parents should be responsible for supporting their children financially. It should not fall to the State to support the cost of raising children simply because the parents neglect their obligations.
Equally, both parents should be involved in the emotional support of their children. Where the State goes so wrong is in allowing (often encouraging) one parent (the de facto custodial parent)to exclude the other parent (sometimes totally) from their children's lives. Until Government gets this vital component right they will make no progress in installing a CSA system that works!
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/6151424.stm
www.EqualParenting.org
The troubled Child Support Agency is to be axed and replaced, under legislation announced in the Queen's Speech.
By July the CSA, which has been dogged with complaints throughout its 13-year history, had a backlog of 300,000 cases and debts of £3bn.
The Child Support Bill aims to replace it with a smaller body and a simpler way of collecting child maintenance.
Ministers hope it will encourage more parents to make their own arrangements, part of a more cost-effective system.
The bill ends the requirement that all lone parents with care responsibilities who claim benefits must also submit a claim to receive child maintenance, regardless of whether they already had a private arrangement.
Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton has said the government would seek more powers to deal with parents who repeatedly fail to pay maintenance - such as suspending passports and imposing curfews.
Criticism of the CSA has ranged from accusations of snooping and unfair settlements to its failure to collect millions of pounds in unpaid maintenance.
EPC COMMENT: Both parents should be responsible for supporting their children financially. It should not fall to the State to support the cost of raising children simply because the parents neglect their obligations.
Equally, both parents should be involved in the emotional support of their children. Where the State goes so wrong is in allowing (often encouraging) one parent (the de facto custodial parent)to exclude the other parent (sometimes totally) from their children's lives. Until Government gets this vital component right they will make no progress in installing a CSA system that works!
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/6151424.stm
www.EqualParenting.org
Sunday, 5 November 2006
Blair has killed family life, says Maureen Freely
Maureen's article appears in today's Sunday Times magazine.
EXTRACTS FROM ARTICLE:
Prime suspect
Lifelong Labour supporter Maureen Freely has been at the thick of family policy for a decade as an author, academic and political commentator — and as a mother of four. But she can take no more. The government, she argues, has killed family life. And all the evidence points to Tony Blair being the main culprit
ON DIVORCE MAUREEN SAYS:
Though officially committed to shared parenting after separation and divorce, and fully aware that our family court system is a disaster – exacerbating conflicts between parents, creating conflicts where none existed, and often permanently excluding one parent, generally the father, for reasons anybody who was not a judge or a family court welfare officer would call capricious – the government has changed nothing. It has commissioned a few reports and pilot projects and left it at that. Meanwhile, families continue to travel through this discredited system at the rate of 80,000 a year.
If we calculate that the average family includes two children, we can see that family courts affect the lives of a quarter of a million men, women and children annually, and often adversely.
WITNESS: Stephen Wiser
Stephen Wiser, 55, a company director from Hertfordshire, was divorced five years ago. He has four children from his marriage, whom he hasn’t seen for six years. He is a co-founder of the parent-support group Jump
“I have pictures of my children and I kiss them every morning and every night. I have been self-employed for 35 years. I feel unsupported and let down by this government because of their inability, or unwillingness, to adequately reform the family law system. Before this election this government introduced a pilot project —“the early interventions project” — to intervene with mediation and speed up the divorce process, because what happens is you can get a court date, which may take three months, then it can be adjourned for three months. So six months have gone by and children are becoming alienated from the nonresident parent.. But the project was just another ploy to buy a year of inaction and get them past the last election without too much controversy. As predicted by everyone, it was an unmitigated disaster, and wasted millions of pounds.
“I realised the government would never be forced to change or couldn’t afford to be seen to be caving in to pressure from the likes of Fathers4Justice, which is why I started a political initiative to move matters along. The result has been effectively no meaningful response from the government. Regarding family law, I’ve supplied written submissions to the constitutional affairs committee, the Department for Education and Skills, and Cafcass (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service). Cafcass is the organisation that acts as expert witness — to interview the children and families and report back to the courts. Listening in on the debates in parliament, you realise that Cafcass is totally underfunded, overworked, understaffed and demoralised, and still the government doesn’t come up with any money to help them do the job properly.
“This government should be more interested in improving people’s lives, not simply maintaining the status quo and attracting headlines for what they aspire, but fail, to do. The situation is so frustrating that some solicitors have banded together. They’re now called collaborative law solicitors, which means that the two sets of solicitors work to reach an agreement before it gets to court. If they fail to reach an agreement, neither of them can act for that client. So they have a vested interest in cutting away all cost, all the delay. It’s all in the child’s best interest.
“When I started this, I didn’t expect there to be any benefit or change in my personal circumstances. I’ve done this for the hundreds of thousands of other parents, and children and grandparents who don’t get a look-in in this situation. It’s a national disgrace.”
Click here to access the full article.
EXTRACTS FROM ARTICLE:
Prime suspect
Lifelong Labour supporter Maureen Freely has been at the thick of family policy for a decade as an author, academic and political commentator — and as a mother of four. But she can take no more. The government, she argues, has killed family life. And all the evidence points to Tony Blair being the main culprit
ON DIVORCE MAUREEN SAYS:
Though officially committed to shared parenting after separation and divorce, and fully aware that our family court system is a disaster – exacerbating conflicts between parents, creating conflicts where none existed, and often permanently excluding one parent, generally the father, for reasons anybody who was not a judge or a family court welfare officer would call capricious – the government has changed nothing. It has commissioned a few reports and pilot projects and left it at that. Meanwhile, families continue to travel through this discredited system at the rate of 80,000 a year.
If we calculate that the average family includes two children, we can see that family courts affect the lives of a quarter of a million men, women and children annually, and often adversely.
WITNESS: Stephen Wiser
Stephen Wiser, 55, a company director from Hertfordshire, was divorced five years ago. He has four children from his marriage, whom he hasn’t seen for six years. He is a co-founder of the parent-support group Jump
“I have pictures of my children and I kiss them every morning and every night. I have been self-employed for 35 years. I feel unsupported and let down by this government because of their inability, or unwillingness, to adequately reform the family law system. Before this election this government introduced a pilot project —“the early interventions project” — to intervene with mediation and speed up the divorce process, because what happens is you can get a court date, which may take three months, then it can be adjourned for three months. So six months have gone by and children are becoming alienated from the nonresident parent.. But the project was just another ploy to buy a year of inaction and get them past the last election without too much controversy. As predicted by everyone, it was an unmitigated disaster, and wasted millions of pounds.
“I realised the government would never be forced to change or couldn’t afford to be seen to be caving in to pressure from the likes of Fathers4Justice, which is why I started a political initiative to move matters along. The result has been effectively no meaningful response from the government. Regarding family law, I’ve supplied written submissions to the constitutional affairs committee, the Department for Education and Skills, and Cafcass (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service). Cafcass is the organisation that acts as expert witness — to interview the children and families and report back to the courts. Listening in on the debates in parliament, you realise that Cafcass is totally underfunded, overworked, understaffed and demoralised, and still the government doesn’t come up with any money to help them do the job properly.
“This government should be more interested in improving people’s lives, not simply maintaining the status quo and attracting headlines for what they aspire, but fail, to do. The situation is so frustrating that some solicitors have banded together. They’re now called collaborative law solicitors, which means that the two sets of solicitors work to reach an agreement before it gets to court. If they fail to reach an agreement, neither of them can act for that client. So they have a vested interest in cutting away all cost, all the delay. It’s all in the child’s best interest.
“When I started this, I didn’t expect there to be any benefit or change in my personal circumstances. I’ve done this for the hundreds of thousands of other parents, and children and grandparents who don’t get a look-in in this situation. It’s a national disgrace.”
Click here to access the full article.
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