to think family courts are a flaming joke!

[tryingtobeabetterperson]

I have read so many posts on here, groups on FB and other forums of desperate women who have left abusive partners to protect their children just for the courts to award contact and the abuse continues because unless it becomes physical the courts seem loathe to make contact supervised.

I know all about children needing fathers but even abusive ones that will hurt them or screw them up emotionally??

/rant

thanks, spero. I wouldn't wan to be the judge who decides custody etc when you have two people both claiming to be victims of abuse from the other etc.

Can't they do that threaten to cut the baby in half schtick? a £ to a penny that'd sort the wheat from the chaff.

Sad thing is it would save money in a few years if more parenting support, support for abused spouses/parents courts, social services, counselling etc was made available.

Waffly - I have had a few cases where the court was going to take child into foster care - but these are vanishingly rare because of course the trauma to child will be great. This is tragedy - child often loves both parents, no matter how inadequate one or both might be. Again you have to balance harm of removing child against leaving child in abusive situation. And of course, foster care is very, very expensive and there are not enough good careers out there.

I have been following the Steubenville rape case with interest and horror and I think this is very relevant to this debate. The most worrying thing for me was when police interviewed the teenagers who had been at the party and watched an unconscious girl be sexually assaulted - they did not know what they saw was a crime.

So on their minds it was perfectly ok for a drunk girl to be treated like that because hey! She was a bit of a slut and probably wanted it.

These are the boys who will grow up onto the men who abuse both physically and emotionally. How did their parents let them grow up like this? Why are there women who want to be in relationships with men like this and have their children? How did they grow up like that?

I think these are the important questions. By the time these boys and their families come to the family courts, it is probably too late.

So surely more steps should be taken to protect these children from repeating the cycle which is what will happen if contact is forced with these abusive men? The children will learn to copy the abusive parent.... the balance of harm being against contact.

Women get into these situations for all sorts of reasons. Me... I had very low self esteem. Hard to see from the outside as I'm a very high achiever, in a very hard profession to get into (that's not a brag, but was a result of being told repeatedly I was worthless and trying to make my dad proud of me). My ex came along ...very charming, manipulative. All the warming flags were there but when I was treated badly my mindset was that I was just not good enough rather than that he was an abusive nasty man.
Its like the boiling frog syndrome too. Its insidious, then you realise that you are in a horrific situation that is so hard to get out of.

Agree baby hammock it can be very insidious - I got into abusive relationship aged 29 because I had low self esteem and thought I had to get married and he was a doctor blah, blah, blah. I am so thankful I didn't have a child with him because I can see he would have been the absolutely worst man to get into court fight with - so charming and articulate to those outside the relationship but a very dangerous and abusive bully within it.

What would have helped me is early and honest discussions with me about my disability and the impact that would have on my life - I never had any counselling and all the adults in my world were just embarrassed and upset and couldn't talk to me. I grew up thinking that relationships were women's sole goal and if I didn't get married I was worthless.

We do have to break the cycle. The problem is, simply cutting men out of ther children's lives is not necessarily the answer - the children already know them and often love them. What is needed is much better provision of safe environments for supervised contact to at least give men a chance to engage with their issues.

Absolutely agree when there is a relationship and the child loves that parent.. its very very hard.
In my case there was virtually no relationship between DS and his dad (he hardly saw him and didn't live with us) so my stance is much stronger if that makes sense.

My dd loves her dad. He is a damaged man, and I am afraid there's a damaging aspect to contact with him, but it would also be damaging for her not to have any more contact. If he was a monster, the answer would be easy. If he was a saint, the answer would be easy. But he's neither. He is difficult, aggressive, and very flawed, but he brings something to the table that meets her need to feel loved and looked after.

My dd is only 5, and already she's very clear that she says to her father things that she knows are not true, because she knows he wants to hear them. I hope the fact that this a conscious strategy will have a protective effect, so that she can distinguish between what is true and what is an expedient thing to say.

It's pretty horrible. I'm so sorry I gave her this father. I'm afraid she'll be hurt whatever happens. But I really do see that a court can't wave a magic wand and make it go away. I can't fully shelter her from her father. I try to be the best parent I can, acknowledge that it's hard for her, and help her negotiate her way through it.

that is moving and sums up what i am trying to say. it is often very hard and there are no easy answers - but as she has an emotionally intelligent mother, this will be an enormous help to her as she grows and comes to terms with the messy, imperfect reality of her father.

Family courts are a blunt tool used because there is no better alternative at the moment.

Take your typical warring couple. Most of the time they are throwing accusation and counter-accusation at each other. They cannot resolve the situation at mediation hence court. By this time both are so entrenched and convinced THEY are in the right that it really doesn't matter what the court decides. Unless it is the absolute vindication of one against the other, both will leave disappointed.

To give a hypothetical example, Mum left abusive relationship. Uses that as her reason for witholding contact. Says he's abusive, besides which he's not paying maintenance and this place is totally unsuitable for their daughter.

The ex wants half the week since he's dad and doesn't see why he should pay maintenance when she's not letting him see their daughter anyway.

There is a big gap here and it's all too common. Courts have to unpick the lies from the exaggerated and extrapolate the truth somehow then decide what they think is best FOR THE CHILD, not the parents.

Court eventually decides something like I don't know...alternate weekends. Dad leaves pissed off because he's only seeing his daughter once a fortnight. Mum leaves pissed off because court has decided to allow contact to (in her opinion) and abusive man.

Both leave feeling family court has let them down.

But as a neutral third party the court (and even ourselves) may think the result is fair.

My point is that we're using a court system to decide on issues surrounded with emotion and the law isn't really suited to deciding on emotional issues.

exactly.

intervention needs to be way before court proceedings to be effective. blaming family courts is like blaming a bucket for not being able to hold a flood.

Thanks, spero. Just wish I'd been emotionally intelligent enough to avoid entering the relationship in the first place!

join the club! life must be lived forwards amd understood backwards etc. i am now simply oozing with wisdom and insight after all the mistkes of my 20s ad 30s. but would i listen to myself if i went back in time? almost certainly not.

True. I shudder at the thought of dd getting into a relationship like mine with my ex and of course she won't listen to me.

I'm quite impressed by the new tv ad about abuse in teenage relationships - a very useful conversation starter. DD said that the girl should avoid problems by telling her friend she couldn't talk on the phone, which frankly scared the crap out of me. We'll be having lots and lots of conversations on the topic over the next decade or so - but who really learns from someone else's life experience?

I have clients who actually stay in relationships they shouldn't be in for as long as they can but try to live as independently from there partner as they can so he has effectively no role in the children's life because they are so frightened about the family courts giving unsupervised contact.

Several where ss have ended up being involved and making it clear if they don't leave the children will be removed so they leave then less than 6 months to a year down the line when the abusive parent has not even admitted the abuse not taken any steps to change not accepted any treatment for any conditions that cause some of they issues some of them have had. Done absolutely nothing at all to improve behaviour or understanding or anything,have been given unsupervised overnight contact.

Often the resident parent in these cases has been jumping through hoops attending and engaging with every single suggestion the sw has made attending many meetings where often the main concern is a perceived risk of her returning to the relationship or allowing contact.

Yet the nrp has done nothing.

In two cases residency was transferred I remember these so clearly because last year the children involved in one case were murdered by dad and the other mum has ended up as a long term hospital inpatient as a result of an attack by dad the children are now in care dad is in prison due to nearly killing his next girlfriend.

But the reason why they do stick out is it is not the norm the vast majority of times the system does work ok yes contact is favoured as the answer to most things but on the whole its done slowly sensibly with concerns addressed. Not all the time but lots of the time,

It is also my experance that the traditional view of the nasty bitch mother withholding contact is very rare, granted my experance is biased due to my work but in that experance you show me a man who claims that and 99% of the time I could show you a manipulative violent abuser who has little or no interest in his kids he just wants it to be everyone else's fault or to further control and abuse.

Hmm, I see one poster on here saying everything in the nets ''manosphere" says these courts are biased towards women, another saying that everybody on here thinks they're unfair towards women.

I suspect that perhaps this is because they're doing their job properly and rather than doing what the mother or the father wants they are doing what's best for the child. Who's voice is fairly invisible as far as the net goes...

Holy fuck, sock, what awful cases.

I think all children should have at least 3 guardians in addition to their parents, decided on at birth. I think these guardians should help to decide childrens future if there is a family break-up or a parent dies.

Idealistic, but it would certainly reduce the work of the family courts. It is probably a lot harder to deceive several close family members than it is to deceive a random court and random solicitors and social workers.

It's a nice idea polly, but the reality for lots of my clients is that they have NO adults in their immediate sphere who are sensible or supportive. This is a large part of the problem - no friends or family members who can help after split, so,parents pushed onto front line.

I think our historical reliance on the nuclear family as being an ideal has a lot to do with it. We see children as an extension of ourselves and not as individuals that are part of a wider group.

My dd has SEN and I'm setting up a POA to ensure that if something happens to me, that decisions about her future are made by a group of friends and family.

It is only relatively recently that we have hunkered down into these tiny units - before we lived much closer to relatives and I can see advantages to that.

I do think the pendulum has swung too far towards the cult of individuality. A lot of the problems I see are due to adults focusing primarily on their needs and wants and unable to see the children as separate human beings. I want to see much more enforcement of the responsibilities of parenthood rather than rights. I think it should be relevant if absent parents don't pay towards their children.

I'm in the middle of a contact heairng with regards my chidlren, my eldest is now old enough for her wishes to be considered by the courts, however ex has taken the stance that I am brainwahsing the children and they should all attend counselling to persuade the children to go live with him.

In May I will be cross examined by ex who was physically, mentally, financially and sexually abusive to me. As he of course is re-presenting himself with a McKenzie friend.

It's a game to him, he wants to win and he wants me to lose financially and he wants to find a way to stop paying child support.

I hope the courts listen to my chidlren and carefully ocnsider the evidence I am begging them to look at.

I have not had the best experience of the family courts, but I've thankfully not had the worst experience either.

Spero I completely agree with that. I can't stand it when deadbeat parents bang on about their rights because it is always the deadbeats who do this.

I'm not sure that who pays for the children is particularly relevant. Good parents WANT to pay for their children - you hurt the child you hurt yourself and by the same token if you hurt the mother you hurt the child.

That's why a 'group effort' in guardianship would be useful as it could involve financial support as well.

A sea change in favour of responsibilities rather than rights would be very welcome. I too think that financial support should be relevant.

I think you sort of answered that one for me Polly. A good parent does what they can to support a child. If someone is able to support a child and chooses not to then that should be considered within their course of conduct.

I think who pays is very relevant. At the moment we give out this message that you can father as many children as you want, pay nothing and nothing bad is ever going to happen to you.

I think we need to start saying loud and clear - having a child, bringing a new person into this world is a MASSIVE deal and you need to step up - physically, emotionally and financially - or don't expect the state to help enforce your 'right' to be part of that child's life.