Petition - Ended

[Ash]

Not looking too hopeful with only 806 signatures and only 4 days left. 10k needed for a response, 100k for it to be debated in parliament. But you never know. I've tweeted it to a number of celebrities with massive Twitter followings. Sometimes when there is a deadline, people respond. Edited the title as it's now ended - see below as to why it didn't achieve much.

Petition: Legal default of equal shared care for children upon separation.

Respect the rights of children to have both parents in their life upon separation. An equal shared care default should negate the need for costly proceedings in the family court, which should help improve the lives of children and reducing the mental health toll to all involved.

petition.parliament.uk

 

[Ash]

And after all that, only two more signatures. Maybe a new petition another time.

 

[Fubidou]

I would have signed but only just joined. It's a pit because there are so many many dad's who would have loved to sign this!

 

[Ash]

I was told there had just been another petition very similar, before this one, which did reach the number of signatures and got a response from the government that was negative. Hence the apathy with this petition which came straight after.

A bit more time and another one on a different angle with slightly different wording perhaps. Meanwhile - if everyone writes to their MP - ask them to bring it up in parliament. At the moment there is a HUGE pushback against the current situation, never mind automatic shared care - a strong lobby of feminist academics pushing at parliament to turn the clock back so there is NO presumption of Fathers being involved! So that things go back to how they were pre 2014 (which was much worse than now). Pre 2012/2014 Mothers automatically had sole residence and were automatically entitled to legal aid for any court application. Dads had to basically "prove" they were a fit and safe parent to get ANY "contact". The result of that was Mothers abusing their power and "stopping contact" all the time for whatever reason they felt like. It was very bad.

In 2012 there was a family justice review - anyone could contribute. People on the street, organisations etc. Families need Fathers pushed hard to get automatic shared care back then. And didn't get it. The result was they wouldn't do it because a panel of women decided it was dangerous as there were so many abusers out there. Instead they amended the Childrens Act so there was a presumption of "significant and regular time with both parents", residence and contact orders were scrapped and "Child Arrangements Orders" were brought in - with the focus on equal parental responsibility. Legal aid was scrapped EXCEPT in cases of domestic abuse. This was supposed to equalise the situation. It did help a lot - a lot more 50.50 orders were made and Dads automatically got a good order, unless there were welfare issues. However, that is when the accusations of DV went through the roof! I think the figure was a 300% increase of the top of my head. Clearly the majority of those were false allegations - to get legal aid for court. And that is still the current situation. Mediation (or MIAM at least) became mandatory before applying to court. Which hasn't worked.

So no way does it want pushing back to pre 2012. This is a gender battleground. Instead of things moving forwards - a large lobby of well funded womens charities are pushing for things to go backwards - there is currently a house of Lords consultation which they have all contributed to.

The "Me Too" movement has probably fuelled them as well as it's been high profile.

As yet though, the only thing that has changed is - the pandemic has caused a huge backlog of cases and as a result the family courts have introduced gatekeeping hearings to try and speed things up (ie to rule out any cases that have no allegations so they can go straight to a first hearing and to send any cases with allegations straight to a fact find sometimes). More remote hearings, less Cafcass negotiations at first hearing.

So basically everything is slowed up. But no real changes as yet. Which means there is still a presumption of both parents being involved unless one party proves a welfare issue about the other party (so still an incentive for a vindictive Mother to make allegations and get legal aid).

Something does need to change. So write to your MP. Family courts are underfunded, there aren't enough Judges available. Gatekeeping hearings are delaying cases with no welfare issues and delay is bad for children.