Is the worry of men getting 50/50 in court ,making women stay in abusive relationships

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Just from reading some threads on here , it made me think ,how awful it must be to know your in an abusive relationship,but then also know if you leave he can go for 50/50,.
Do the courts listen to the woman,in this situation?
I can't imagine an abusive husband would make a great father ,mine certainly didn't,thank goodness I only had to go every other weekend.
When did it become normal for men to get 50/50

I only have experience of being a child of a divorce ,and 50/50 would of been a disaster for me

It’s a shame that happened to you but I don’t see how, given that most fathers are not abusive, removing parental responsibility from fathers in general would help in the majority of cases. in most cases, men needs to be as responsible for their children’s upbringing as mothers are, otherwise it negatively affects the woman and children.

If there is abuse towards the child, the only way for that to have an impact when it comes to how much time and in what setting the abusive parent spends with the child is to file a police report.

A long time ago. My friend & her husband split up about 25 years ago and they had 50/50 from the start.

You get an imbalance on here. People dont come on saying what a good relationship they have with their ex and how well 50/50 is going. People post because its not or wouldnt work for them and want advice

Yes many men use it as a way to avoid paying for their children or to pressure their partner to stay but equally many want it because the children are theirs too and they dont want only see them once a week

I've got 2 friends who did it and it worked very well for them both

Are the judges male ,mainly ?
Could this be part of the problem
Why do they think an abusive husband will make a good father
Or do the children's rights to be properly looked after come second to what a man wants

Does it work well for the children,going between two homes
Surely what is best for the child must come first
Personally I could not imagine anything worse than having to split my life between two homes ..as an adult or a child I would of absolutely hated this .
Would you like it ..would others like it ,half your possessions in one house half in the other , different rules and ways of living, different foods different bedtime,how does that make a child feel secure

I was married for 30 years to an alcoholic narcissist who emotionally, sexually and financially abused me for at least the last 15 years.
The reasons I stayed were complex and only now understand after a lot of counselling.

Firstly he was so good at putting on a great front. I was embarrassed to say my life wasn't amazing . If you met him you'd think he was the loveliest bloke, would do anything for anyone.
We were living overseas in a Muslim country. He paid for all housing and schooling for the kids. While we weren't Muslim ourselves, there was no equivalent of women's aid, and if I'd tried to divorce him there I was terrified he would be given the kids by default.
He wouldn't have wanted them but would have kept them out of spite and neglected them (at a minimum)
By the time we were back in the UK, his alcoholism meant I was virtually his carer and was told constantly how grateful I should be.

My now adult DDs helped me get out. I'm grateful every day. But I had to wait until they were adults. I recognise the damage it did to them and I'm grateful they are all now doing well in life. They have no contact with their dad at all.

My ex does 30 percent just because he now has a girlfriend. He'd rather pay me maintenence than do anymore. My child actually does things with us rather than sit at home and eat shite which must be so boring.

I’m Swedish and here 50/50 has been the norm for decades. I’m in my late 40s and children were doing 50/50 when I was a child. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t do 50/50 and for everyone I know of it has worked really well. Both homes feels like home.

Worked great.

The friend who split 25 years ago, has one son. At his uni graduation party he toasted his parents and said that while it wasnt conventional, the childhood he had was the next thing to perfect and he appreciated what he can now see was the work his parents put into making it work.

Both my friends were lucky. Their children had their own rooms at both houses. Their parents worked together to make sure it was in the best interests of the children. The rules in both houses were the same. They had a lot of things in both houses so they weren't getting dragged from one to the other. They also lived just a few streets apart

Both of my friends and their ex husbands put their own feelings aside and focused on making things easiest for the kids.

This is part of the reason I'm staying with my DH, I don't want to have DD6 away from me. And I know DH would turn into Disney dad of sorts... feeding her crap, shoving an iPad in front of her, dumping her with his parents whilst he fucks off fishing for 6+ hours etc but to outsiders it would be "ohhhh I can't wait to have DD this weekend, I miss her sooooo much".

He would deliver a tired, over stimulated child that had been fed junk all weekend, not having read/written, been read to, not been outside much (except driving to McDonald's or whatever), and would be a moody one, she gets moody with too much TV.

It's much nicer this way , the lesser of two evils as it were, I spend every day with her, all weekend it's mostly me and her (see fishing above!). He's not awful, just not very present. Bity his income also allows me and DD to have a great and enriched life.

It's weird.

What we have isn't ideal, but it's better than the alternative.

I think abusive men use it as a threat but then they also threaten to take the kids entirely etc.
I know women who stay in relationships where they aren’t happy (no abuse) for this reason and I get it as I’d find that very hard

The fear is that they'll follow through and win. We all hear stories where the shite dad got resident parent.

Yeah it's not great. I'm starting to regret leaving after over 2 years now as he still makes my life really difficult and I really worry about my kids when they're with him. I think he's likely going to try and get residency at some point, although I doubt he'll get it.

It makes me angry the posts on here, being horrible to abused women who can't leave, it doesn't necessarily get better when you do. My abusive ex has become more abusive, albeit in a different way.

I did. We've split now theyre 5 and 7 but I would've dragged it out longer to protect them. He was completely untrustworthy as a parent. Had no awareness of when they needed medical attention, no interest in teaching them, didn't bath or brush their teeth. He was just there on his phone for the most part, he enjoyed tormenting me though and was beginning to extend that to the kids.

Yes I think you’re right, at least in some cases.

More men are saying they ‘want’ 50% so they don’t need to pay child maintenance. They don’t care about seeing the kids.

It’s always the children that suffer. The family courts are notoriously bad.

Such an awful situation you’re in, I’m sorry 😔. I get it, we’d do anything to protect the kids.
One day they’ll be old enough to say what they do or don’t want, you’re just biding time til then. They’ll understand in future 💐

The court’s magistrate make the decisions but are heavily guided by Cafcass. And the issue is with many Cafcass officers apparently having no understanding of coercive control and abuse.

Had my ex not made a show of themselves at court vs their usual ‘charming self ‘ it wouldn’t have gone the way in favour of the children best interests.

it’s frankly worrying the levels of variation in their skills and understanding

And the 50:50 no maintenance lure is too high for many

Agree. When my son turns 18 I shall encourage him to sue cafcass for ignoring all his cries for help, for ignoring the letters from his school

People who think abuse or neglect is considered properly by the courts before contact arrangements are made frustrate me so much, they are so happy to offer trite advice. you can always tell somebody who’s had literally no contact with the family court system.

I wonder how many women are really aware of just how shit the family court system is protecting children at the point of separation. But for any that do understand it, I have no doubt they will stay in relationships to avoid leaving a shit father in sole charge of the children, even if it’s less than 50% of the time

my DC had the old-fashioned every other weekend/half holidays and has a litany of issues resulting from his fathers failure to provide appropriate care and his implacable hostility towards me. as Others said, the abuse got worse after we split. I was unable to protect DC and we were mangled by the family court system .

I’m so sorry you guys are going through this too

It's great to see this being discussed. Thanks OP.

This thread is really discomforting - the reason 50/50 is so common now is because children deserve both parents, they need both parents and every other weekend was never a good set up in the first place.

I'm seeing so much misinformation here too, people claiming it's not best for the children despite years of evidence that it actually is, due to the fact each parent provides an entirely different set of bonding/social tools that children need to become well rounded adults.

It's also horrifying to see that no one is considering that domestic abuse does not only happen to women - that the barriers to men seeking help are still huge, from not being believed, to being belittled to knowing that, even now, women are still more likely to receive gentler/biased treatment from social services and CAFCASS...honestly if you'd seen the excuses that have been used and accepted by these agencies your mind would be blown.
I'm honestly staggered that this shortsighted view of abuse and the system is so prominent still.

Not sure exactly but maybe in the last 5-10 years or so. It definitely wasn't the norm 20 years ago.

There is a reason 90% of the prison population is male; and it’s not because men are fluffy kind gentle creatures who love children and animals.

It’s called male pattern behaviour and it’s a thing.

Yes she works. He does not need childcare. The children who have mother they could be with whilst he works evenings. Why seek custody for a child on days you cannot look after them? The only reason is to not have to pay the Ex.. My friend also sometimes works evenings but ensures this falls on days she does not have the kids.

I know. There are some really ignorant views expressed here. Women are told to get the twat Dad out of the childrens' lives by leaving, but a woman can't do that. She risks having the children alone with him for half the week.