C C Smale Family Lawyer

Since I posted this a few days ago I have seen a commentary here.

Judges, in my experience, have refused to allow mention of the words “Parental Alienation Syndrome” in their courts. I expect this is a thing of the past following this case. They will not be able to deny it any more.

The commentary is worth analysing as it demonstrates what non-custodial parents are up against and the control that custodial parents have.

“As a result of the failure to secure a normal relationship with the father and the high level of parental conflict (the child) had suffered emotional harm.”

The child, now twelve, refused to speak to the father and put his hands over his ears during contact with the father. He says he may consider seeing his father after his GCSEs.

Let’s apportion blame where it is due – seeing as the court found that the father was blameless. Call this child emotionally distressed if you want, which is what he undoubtedly is. More significantly, this is one spoilt child and one mother who has caused serious long term problems yet untold. Credit to the father; I find it extraordinary that he didn’t walk away a long time ago; another “dead beat dad”!

Things will get tougher, not easier – for a while, at least.

Over the years there have been a number of developments in law and in society which have devalued men /  fathers. The 1996 Family Law Act is routinely used to exclude men from the family home. The 2000 Case of Re L V M H is regularly misused, to exclude children from fathers. The Police and Social Services and maybe your “friends” will take the woman’s side.

As a man, you are seen as as a threat to women and children by virtue of the fact that you are a man.

To some extent, those of us who represent fathers have found CAFCASS to be helpful because at least CAFCASS objectively considered the objections of mothers and saw through those objections which were weak and balanced them with the benefits to children of having a relationship with both parents.

Now listen to this.

CAFCASS are taking up to a year to produce reports and with public spending due to be cut by 25% one would not expect this situation to improve. It is already getting worse and I predict that with the situation as it is CAFCASS will stop producing reports at all.

157 Courts are earmarked for closure around the country.

These things will not help you. Don’t moan about it though because we are wasting our time moaning. (Yes, there are some new proposals from the new coalition government which are encouraging but don’t be relying on that right now.)

Now, more than ever you need to understand the way Family Law works and as a father you need a Lawyer who will fight your case  and who understands the system.

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.

I welcome the guidance that has recently been given by two of the country’s most senior Family Court Judges.

Often one parent makes allegations about the other parent’s behaviour. For example, in a case about a father’s contact with a child the mother may make some allegation that the father has been violent.

There has been a tendency in recent years for the courts to fix a hearing early in the case called a “fact finding” hearing so the court can decide whether the allegation is proved. So, in the example of a child contact case, once the “facts” have been established in a fact finding hearing the case then progresses to further hearings to decide on what contact there should be between the child and their father.

Lord Justice Wall has now issued guidance which says that separate fact finding hearings should only take place if the allegations whether admitted or proved would make a difference to the eventual order made by the court. This follows an earlier case where Lord Justice Thorpe said that costs in the Family Courts are”worryingly high”.

This seems sensible to me. I have never understood why time and expense is wasted so much on arguing points that do not have relevance to the eventual outcome of a case. In the same way, I cannot understand why people with too much of their own or other people’s money to spend think that paying for psychological and other “expert” evidence is helpful to their case or to their child.

Although this website is not intended to be aimed at technical or legal people, if you are interested a report on Lord Justice Thorpe’s comments is here.

The guidance given by Lord Justice Wall is here.