Do UK Courts still favour mothers over fathers?

[Ukuleila]

Just out of curiosity - do you think that the UK Courts still favour mothers over fathers when it comes to custody issues?

I'd be interested in your experiences here.....

Custody is a very outdated term - here in the UK, the courts decide on issues of residency and contact. Either, or both parents can have residency of a child - if shared residency is awarded, it does not mean that there is always a 50:50 split; the arrangement is set out in the court order.

I do believe that there is still "mother bias", particularly from agencies and professionals who support parents during the court process, but my DP's experience is that once the case is placed before magistrates, the starting position is that both parents are equal, with individual circumstances influencing what is decided to be in the best interests of the child.

Hi NotaDisneyMum, thanks. Did your DP apply for residency and did he get it? Our custody or residency if you want is a 50/50 right now, has always been, but needs to be re-evaluated, as my DPs child starts showing some quite serious troubled behaviour. The school tells us that this is due to the mother who has no structure whatsoever and that the child should be best with the father. However, they warned us to be careful, as they have the impression that mothers are still favoured here in the UK and they told us if she wins, this would be absolutely disastrous for the child and we should rather try a non-confrontational way. On the other hand I've been told that the UK magistrates will try to maintain the status quo, they would rather maintain the 50/50, unless there is some serious reason to change it, e.g. mother is unfit for parenting.... hence while I am interested in people's experiences here....

uku if there is evidence from the school to support the child to live with your dp, i think it would carry some weight with the courts..(am not 100% sure)

residency is based on what is best for the child through social services reports etc/ this includes reports from the school/ medical etc

hopefully someone with more knowledge will come along and post better advice x

I don't know anything about this really but from what I have heard, they will be most likely to award residency to the parent who has historically done the main caring. Most often that is mum, hence, courts are often bias towards mum. But they will take other things in to consideration.

In my experience if they do still favour Mum's or believe the relationship between Mum is more important than that of Dad's. My BIL has residency of his daughter. His ex walked out to be with a new partner. She then decided she was ready to have their DD back. BIL fought for residency and Mum applied for residency and a contact order and as we all know, if it was Dad applying for a contact order, he would have been awarded every other weekend and an after school in between as well as longer periods in holidays if possible. Instead, because Mum was applying the Judge declared it was very important for their DD to have regular contact with Mum and she was awarded short periods of contact every day. As it stands, Mum let her down on many occasions and put her in danger, so after many more court appearances contact was cut down to every other weekend with special conditions put on Mum's contact. Now my niece doesn't see her Mother at all as her Mother doesn't turn up.

I was shocked at the way the judge treated my BIL. Especially as I had seen many men go through the same thing and have to fight for every other weekend contact ... and these men hadn't walked out on their children and abandoned them for months on end.

What wicked said. They favour keeping things as consistent for children as possible, which means keeping them in the care of the parent who has done the majority of day to day caring. This is most usually the mother which is why the courts appear biased towards mothers.

Continuity has been shown to be the most important thing for children so generally residency will not be ordered the other way unless there are serious concerns about the current main carer (I am talking child protection issues at the level social services would be considering intervention by removing children.) Concerns about a "lack of structure" would be considered to be a matter of opinion and so not really strong enough.

I find it strange that the school would be so quick to jump into blaming the mother's apparent "lack of structure", I would have thought they had to be more impartial. What does "lack of structure" refer to anyway?

I don't think the school jumped too quickly into "blaming" the mother. There is already quite a bit of track history and if they talk like this, they must have some serious proofs and concerns about the ability of the mother to parent the child appropriately. But yes, they need to be impartial when it comes to a custody fight - they are not allowed to testify openly against one parent and in favour of the other in front of a judge. They can officially only report their opinion to the school psychologist, who then can in turn be consulted by the court psychologist or the judges... at least this is how I understand it.

Lack of structure I guess means that the mother seems unable to prepare the child appropriately for the week ahead at school when with her. At least not in a consistent way. Lack of care, lack of authority, lack of discipline... sometimes she is in the mood of doing her job as a mother, sometimes she isn't. I don't want to go too much into the details of this. I don't want to accuse this woman either. The fact is the child shows some quite worrying behaviour now at school and the teachers are pointing into the direction of the mother. The exact why and how needs to be determined by a child psychologist.

ChocHob... i've heard this a few times...that court professionals were unable to take the right decisions and that the children have to go through many years of confusion until they are old enough to decide that they do not even want to have contact any longer with the dysfunctional parent. It is reason for concern. Hence my question here.

School psychologist? I didn't know schools had those.

I hope things work out for the best for your DSS.

@wicked.... they have, yes, at least they are supposed to have one ;))) tx