Parental Alienation – a sad story

I don’t have time today to analyse this case in a full blog post but I did want to post a link to it. John Bolch at Family Lore has been able to provide a very helpful summary of it and links to the judgment.

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Musings on new fangled equality

Just a thought. I’m not trying to be controversial or nuffing. But it did occur to me today that whilst the clamour for a presumption of equal parenting is all well and good (I agree its a solution that should be given serious consideration in most cases, but not that this should be elevated to [...]

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Shock News – Family Justice System Stretched to Breaking Point

Thanks to Family Law Week for alerting me to this judgment of Thorpe LJ in which the court considered the proper husbanding of limited resources in determining the way forward in a contact case. It was in the course of that judgment last year that Thorpe LJ remarked that the family justice system was ‘stretched [...]

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Lib Dem Contact Proposals

A colleague emails: …When looking through the LibDem manifesto this week, I noticed an express commitment, buried deep in the document at page 52, which may be of some interest (and reads, as follows)…. “The Liberal Democrats will “introduce a default contact arragangement, which would divide the child’s time between their two parents in the [...]

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Surviving a Stepfamily Christmas

I must be moving up in the world: I haven’t dealt with a single last minute spat over who gets the kids on Christmas Day this year. I had steeled myself for the annual onset of the Christmas Contact frenzy: desperate attempts to shoehorn in urgent hearings, and to persuade a judge to give the [...]

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Wishes & Feelings Reports – No Panacea

I attended the FLBA Annual Conference in Bath today and was struck by a really interesting talk by Dr Kirk Weir, Consultant Child, Adolescent & Family Psychiatrist. He presented statistics based on his work as an expert reporting in High Conflict Contact Cases over a number of years, in support of the proposition that an emphasis [...]

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