C C Smale Family Lawyer

This kind of thing is what really breaks up relationships.

I wrote a few days ago about the government’s proposed change to the law to give grandparents rights to see grandchildren. The reality is that it does no such thing – all it does is it removes the requirement to obtain the permission of the court before you can apply for court orders. As permission is always given to Grandparents any so-called “change” to the law is purely technical

Fathers rights organisations, the most high profile being Fathers4Justice, seek changes to the law which they see as making the law fairer.

One such proposed change is a “presumption of shared parenting”. I disagree. There already is such a presumption as the 1989 Children Act is pretty much gender neutral. A second proposed change is to make the “secret”  family courts more open to the media. I think this is reasonable in principal but who is going to report on anything other than the celebrity cases?

In considering “shared parenting”, who is this supposed to benefit? The most likely beneficiaries are those families who can choose to arrange their lifestyles that way. It will not benefit fathers whose work takes them away from home, nor their children.

Tweaking the law in these ways will not make any difference for just as long as women, and particularly- mothers, are indulged by a culture of entitlement and victimhood.

Allegations of violence, sexual abuse and deviant behaviour are routine in the family courts. By “routine” I mean they are made in most cases and they are made for tactical reasons. The most spurious allegations will be taken seriously and they take months or years to investigate.

Any advocate of fathers’, or grandparents’ rights needs to understand this – any tweaks in the law will be defeated until we understand the truth about domestic abuse and child abuse allegations. Your child’s mother only needs to make an allegation about you and your relationship with your child is stopped – shared parenting or not!

Here are a few observations – they are from personal observation but if anyone wants to comment, posting some statistics we could have a proper debate:

• Mothers kill their children more than fathers do.
• Mothers physically assault their children more than fathers do.
• Women are more abusive than men, mentally and physically.
• More women die at the hands of their partners than women do but it evens itself out if one takes into account women who get someone else to kill the male partner – if you take into account suicides there are more male than female fatalities from domestic abuse.
• Women who abuse men are incredibly unlikely to be arrested or convicted of any offence. Sentences for any such offences, including murder are likely to be harsher for men than for women.
• There is far more sympathy for female than male victims. I posted on here a few days ago in connection with the fact that in Scotland £3,500 was spent in supporting female victims of abuse for every £1 spent on supporting men.
• There is an entitlement / victimhood culture which is sold to women. “No blame”. “You are not responsible”. Even womens’ rights organisations who proclaim this know it is a lie and in private they will tell you this. This is why women keep going back to abusive men.

Why has this man had so many marriage proposals?

My challenge here is to fathers’ rights organisations to acknowledge the real issues and stop trying to tweak the law. If this gets one of you to stop disrupting the traffic and take off your Spiderman outfit – let me know.

We family law solicitors make our living from people’s unhappiness. Happy relationships are less likely to end in separation or divorce.

I am not suggesting that all relationship problems are ever going to work out but here is my suggestion for remaining in relationships which have a chance: Married sex is better than other types of sex but you have to be committed and you have to get your spouse to be committed.

Will any other lawyer ever tell you this? No, because like me they fear losing money.

Think about it.