Family court- why doesn’t character and parenting matter

[whatsmissing]

Can anyone explain to me why in family court, when one parent wants more time with the child/ren than the other will agree to, why don’t they assess both parents’ character and parenting and home environment, and have some kind of standard scoring framework, and then allocate time accordingly so the child gets more time being raised with a better parent, in a better parenting style, in a better environment? And then have a process to reassess every X years or if requested if circumstances change?

Obviously this will raise the question of what is better. It will come down to values and research I suppose but it’s pretty obvious. Honest is better than lying. Peaceful is better than violent. Respectful is better than abusive. Towards others not just toward child. Because children are influenced by behaviours around them.

This is only scratching the surface, there are lots of every day positives like organising positive things for child and living a healthy life with positive supportive networks/social connections , and supporting child to be healthy and maintaining a clean nice home with peaceful atmosphere etc etc, things that are good for the child. And also history of time spent with child, relationship etc. Ability to respond appropriately to child, support and hold boundaries where needed. Ability to reflect and learn and admit mistakes and repair conflict not escalate it.

There must be a million things that are known to be good for children. Why aren’t we using that knowledge to get the child as good an upbringing as possible, rather than starting from 50/50?

I’m not saying the child should not see their less capable parent, but that this assessment should be considered alongside and balanced with giving some time with both parents in order to optimise things for the child.

Wouldnt family court be a more beneficial process if it was structured like this. Wouldn’t it save some of the grief if people could see in advance how it was likely to come out. Wouldnt there be less post separation abuse if people knew it would negatively affect court outcomes. Wouldnt an accepted definition of good character and parenting be a helpful thing for people to look at outside of the court process.

Come on then, shoot it down! Are there good reasons things are as bonkers as they are, with little kids being forced to spend large amounts of time with parents who are basically assholes or incompetent parents, but not deemed dangerous enough for it to matter?

Who determines character though? A quick read through many threads here will show a huge variation on what’s considered acceptable character - and there is huge variation. A persons character is formed by so many variables that an assessment of character is wholly subjective based on the person assessing subjective view. Some of the comments in a recent breakfast thread would have you think folk consider giving a child Rice Krispies for breakfast an abuse akin to giving them a morning fag.

If a prospective parent couldn’t see their potential partners character flaws despite being in a relationship with them, living with them and conceiving a child, how do you expect a court or social worker to do so in a short assessment period?

Besides which even where parenting is less optimal, children generally love their parents, and separation from them is harmful. We have processes to deem whether parents are able to parent safely, and that threshold is incredibly hard both to evidence and act upon. The state considers removal with limited contact as an option of last resort for good reason.

It also gives yet another weapon to abusive partners who can undermine their partners health and wellbeing to the point of insanity. It’s very easy to make a non-abusing parent look like a neglectful, abusive one especially if that non-abusing parent is impacted by trauma or uses unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Parenting capacity is quite a complex thing, it’s not as simple as which house is cleaner, or which diet is better.

There isn’t time. It’s too subjective. A child still deserves a relationship with the less good parent anyway.

I get it I really do. Those saying choose better partners - I did choose well. Until he turned into a selfish arsehole after we’d had kids.

Yes exactly.
We have a principle of law and ethics in the UK that parents have the right to parent their children the way they see fit, unless they are abusive. We do not socially engineer other people's families according to what 'we' as the authorities see is best for them. We don't have the right to determine who is the more deserving parent. We only intervene in families where children are being harmed. The need for the family court to arbitrate in private family life is an anomaly of our social system.

people change when they marry and children arrive. It’s unfair to blame the person who becomes abused in a marriage.
It's unfair to allow an abusive parent to continue to abuse the parent by repeated court proceedings and to give them access to the child. The Court theory is that they will not abuse the child if they abused the woman. This is incorrect.

So if a couple separates:

• one works full time to make ends meet, child is ASC, food is bought from Aldi, weekend activities are free, no time to supervise homework
• the other one has a trust fund (or wealthy parents), doesn’t need to work, feeds the child organic food and can offer them educative clubs and camps, private tutors

By your rationale, the first parent would barely see their child, right?

I was the Aldi parent @SushiForMe and my ex, albeit he didn’t have a trust fund, came from a much more wealthy family.

I ended up in a council house on a shit estate.

I smoked because I was under extreme stress.

but he could put on a good show for officialdom that didn’t reflect my reality.

he used to do things like withhold the kids clothes once we were split - I would send them in clothes and with coats and (say) swimming costumes for the weekend, or their good outfit for church or a wedding, and I’d never get them back. Even down to socks. I never got socks back and I bought packets of socks every week in Tesco for YEARS.

But the court wouldn’t be able to fill on that because it was post-divorce.

Well it is. A section 7 report looks at parenting capacity of each parent. But the assumption is that parents who can meet the basic standards of meeting the child's needs should have the opportunity to parent their child rather than the assumption being that the state gets to decide who is the 'best' parent and award time accordingly.

There are impossible ethical issues to consider because intelligence, education, income and physical health are closely tied with the ability to give children a better life. There are probably many mothers out there who are loving and never violent to their children but who are obese, not very educated or have a history of MH issues. The father might be cold and unpleasant but have a much bigger home and enough income to fulfil their kids material needs including vital ones like healthcare, dental care etc. Do the courts rule in favour of the healthy parent with a clean medical record and high income or the unhealthy one with a good character? Many decisions would come too close to discrimination and ableism.

I genuinely agree with your original point, in that it's mystifying why courts give 50-50 to families that are splitting up because of appalling behaviour from one parent. But the reality is that children's fates are sealed the moment two adults decide to have a baby. Realistically, there is no system that can give a child a good life by rectifying their parents mistakes. Some cases are just a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. Most will agree it's better to live without abuse than with, but it doesn't mean the baseline level of abuse-free life is fantastic.

I agree with the OP that the current system is often not in the best interests of the child or children.

I think part of the issues are that often the things which are a bad example to children, never mind the other parent, are not measured. The parent who is always late to spite the other one, and other behaviours which are done out of spite by one of the parents towards the other.

Non-payment is perhaps the easiest one to deal with.

But if you’d stayed with him, your kids would still have been raised by a selfish arsehole because that’s their dad. Why does the state owe a duty to conduct a massive investigation into character that is funded by public money just because the parents split up? If the parenting gets critically bad, the state intervenes. If it’s just lower level shit parenting, they don’t. Especially not for things like food and weight management (which is highly nuanced anyway).

And I do know there are some men who manage to keep up a facade of being absolute angels and then flip in pregnancy but it’s far far more common that the woman knew this was going to be a shit dad from the off and didn’t care because she wanted a child. Or had seen how shit he was with their first child but had multiple others with him. If you literally just want someone’s sperm, go down the donor conception route. If you pick an actual man then you will have to accept that he will be co-raising your kids and yes they will be exposed to his negative traits.

Things my SIL’s ex did before she had kids with him: declared bankruptcy, arrested for ABH four times, drinking heavily, smashed some of her furniture in anger, cheated, gambled, lied, out of work, called her names during arguments, left her several times. But after 10 years of this bullshit and everyone saying to split with him she decided she wouldn’t find anyone else and had two kids with him. Surprise, he’s a pretty shit dad with shit values that he’s instilling in the kids. She hates it but genuinely not sure what she expected.

Things my brother’s ex did before they had kids: ran up debt, threw huge tantrums and had mood swings, fell out with everyone around her, acted highly controlling and verbally abusive. She left school at 16, has no qualifications, has always lived off boyfriends and partners, has engaged in financial fraud, is highly materialistic and just doesn’t have good morals or values. He’s now devastated that his kids (who to be fair he does have 50/50 so has equal influence on) aren’t being helped with homework and education, are being taught to be unambitious and have quit all their extracurriculars because mum refuses to take them when they’re with her. Again, while I sympathise, I wonder what he expected there.

In both these cases I don’t think it’s the job of the courts to intervene.

Your idea is a good one and I am sure would be the option unless it would be fundamentally impossible to execute. Family courts are absolutely overwhelmed and barely manage to get through the cases where abuse is alleged. The mechanism to test how good a parent someone is, what even would that look like?! Impossible. People can act a certain way for a whole day or even a whole week if they’re unscrewed me.

It’s not fair to blame the abused parent. Yes in some circumstances abuse becomes apparent during pregnancy, it’s a well researched fact that some men will turn up the abuse when he feels a woman is dependent on him.

Its is also the case that the signs were often there early in the relationship. You just need to look on here to see people who don’t recognise abusive behaviour until a whole host of women say “no, that’s not ok”, or who argue that he’s mostly a good partner, husband, or dad while also describing aggressive and controlling behaviour. I’ve worked with domestic abuse for decades and very often the signs were there but the woman disregarded them, had been manipulated into thinking she was at fault or wanted her man at just about any cost.

In the absence of a conviction, which is very hard to get, it can be very hard to pick through abusive behaviour even for people with specialist knowledge. I don’t know what the answer is because all the education in the world hasn’t changed things significantly but I don’t think courts are equipped to decipher whether the parent is difficult, different or abusive.

Pitting parents against each other in a competition to win contact time will cause even more stress and conflict.

Are we actually talking about abuse here though? Because yes I do think that should be taken seriously by courts. But as an example the OP gives an overweight child being fed the wrong food. The fact is though that abuse covers a range of behaviours and you could have a man who is eg a controlling arsehole to his partner but there isn’t enough to stop him from seeing his kids. And most cases in family court involve allegations of abuse and loads of those will involve cross-allegations where both parents say the other parent is abusive and the examples are things like shouting and insults. What is the court supposed to do in those situations? Where the allegations are serious they do often conduct lengthy fact finding hearings that cost a fortune. But they can’t do that in every case. And what many people don’t understand is that if you turn up to court and say your ex was abusive during your relationship but he’s had unsupervised contact with your child for a long period now then the abusive behaviour in the past is going to be less relevant.

@whatsmissing what you are questioning presumes that the court has the time, inclination and expertise to tease out all of these factors in every individual case. Also that CAFCASS reports are insightful and accurate.
Neither is the case in the current besieged family court system. So there is a much more fundamental issue that would have to be addressed first.

Exactly my point!

Well one issue would be the impossibility of defining and measuring better. It won’t be a panel of MNers. It won’t be based on your consensus of one.

Another issue is that progress in area of life backed up by studies, evidence and qualified peer review says this type of judgment and conflict is the problem. Children don’t suffer because one parent is a better cook or cleaner. They suffer because of needless conflict and judgment between parents.

decades ago fathers with money and Nannie’s/ new wives got custody because they were deemed better.

Do you mean family court processes that arise through divorce? If that’s what you mean, it’s because UK divorce law follows the no fault process, which doesn’t seek to apportion blame, it seeks to divide assets and parenting responsibilities 50/50 unless there is a very good reason why this cannot happen: one parent works away for part of each week, mental incapacity etc. It’s designed to reduce mud slinging and focus on equitable and fair division.

She’s talking about proceedings for child arrangements under s8 of the Children Act 1989, ie where the child lives and who they spend time with. It has nothing to do with divorce. No fault divorce relates to reasons needed to evidence breakdown of a marriage which are no longer needed. But it has nothing to do with child arrangements at all.

But I. The eyes of the courts ( and children’s services) you don’t have to be a good parent….,you just have to be good enough

Yes. Otherwise a lot of parents would have their children removed from their care. There are hundreds of thousands of families whose parenting is somewhat shit but not shit enough for the state to intervene. You might not think your child is getting an optimal diet or adequate mental stimulation at the other parent’s house but nobody else cares. That’s the reality.

But what constitutes shit parenting is a social construct. How many children really have an optimal diet - and what does that consist of? There’s huge debate about UPFs, veganism, does it include snacks or not. Most kids eat a good enough diet - access to fruit and veg, at least one hot meal a day and sweets or snacks. Many kids don’t. Do we remove kids from parents who feed their kids fish fingers and oven chips? We’d have a lot of kids in care if that were the case.

Can you IMAGINE the horror show that court hearings would turn into. Endless witness statements and schedules about a child going into school with a Penguin bar instead of a carefully selected assortment of organic and seasonal chopped fruit, whether or not their sock had a hole in it, whether 8.30 or 8.45pm is a better bedtime.

It would be completely unworkable, it would create intolerable pressure on each parent to perform as hard as they could (and to interrogate the children about what they did with the other parent) and it would be open season for post-separation abuse.

I guess because we don't require people having DC to have these kinds of tests! Anyone can have a DC who is fertile and has access to the gametes of the other sex. So if we're not going to require future parents to have suitability tests, we can't just retroactively do that once the DC are here.