Fathers' rights movement in the United Kingdom

The new system in the United Kingdom whereby the amount of child support that, in the vast majority of cases, the father pays, is acknowledged to be less fair than the old because it has ceased to take into account the other household's income. This is justified on the grounds that it saves administrative cost for the government agency concerned.

There are issues to do with the non-enforcement of Contact Orders - orders made by family court judges which oblige the so-called resident recalcitrant parent (usually the mother) to let the children spend some time with their dad. Such orders are not required if the mother is cooperative about letting the children see their dad, but generally speaking no action is taken if such an order is made and the mother is uncooperative.

The main issue, however, is to do with the adversarial nature of the system, in which most parents are dissatisfied, according to a United Kingdom government report published in 2004, and the only winners are lawyers.

Also justified on the grounds of administrative convenience is the United Kingdom system whereby child benefit is only payable to one parent, even when both separated parents provide substantial portions of the childcare. In a Court of Appeal judgment in February 2005,[12] in a landmark (HOCKENJOS v. SOS JGT) ruling, Lord Justice Ward declared "To allow a father nothing for the maintenance of the child when he shares care virtually equally is so unfair that no reasonable secretary of state should countenance it." He said that the practice of making just one parent responsible for a child under the benefits system was "grotesque... It is degrading to fathers who actually - and lovingly - tend to their children. A law so framed is so far removed from reality that it brings the law into disrepute and justifiably fuels the passions of protesting fathers."

The publication of the Green Paper together with the item in the Queen's Speech may not deliver much immediately, but if it can be established early on in the process which aspects of any proposed new legislation will become retrospective then there is opportunity for it to start having an immediate social impact.

There was a debate on the topic of Family Justice on 13 December 2004 in the House of Commons.[13] The motion:

That this House agrees that on the separation of parents, priority should be given to the interests of the children; believes that it is in the best interests of all children for both parents to be fully involved in their upbringing and hence that separated parents should each have a legal presumption of reasonable contact with their children, except where a child's safety would be at risk, so that children are able to benefit from being parented by both their parents, as well as from contact with any grandparents and extended family members able and willing to play a role in their upbringing; regrets the Government's opposition to such a legal presumption, which will lead to yet more children being denied access to both their parents and their extended families; views with concern the Government's failure to implement the Early Intervention Project; and calls on the Government to replace the legal term 'contact' with 'parenting time', to introduce a legal presumption of co-parenting and to introduce early intervention in parental separation, with court-backed mediation and guidelines on parenting-time.

It was defeated by with 168 Ayes and 283 Noes voted by MPs.

(This section appears rather anecdotal and opinionated - needs improvement)

In 2001 Mr Justice Wall (now Lord Justice) chaired a Children Act Sub-Committee (known as CASC).

They reported in March 2002 in a document called "Making Contact Work".

It called for "urgent reform". It was a sort of Hutton Inquiry of family law reform. It is well known that Wall LJ was very vexed that nothing happened for a long time.

The Facilitation and Enforcement stakeholder group was however created to discuss the CASC report. Stakeholders included a couple of district judges, a solicitor, a barrister, CAFCASS, Women's Aid, various academics, mediators...

The report went to Minister Margaret Hodge in June 2003 and the response was a Green Paper in 2004.

CASC, and the stakeholder Group could be called Prong No. 1 of reform, which was started off by the politicians, after pressure from several directions, including from the campaigning charity FNF.

The impression formed by many involved at the time was that the government had no true appetite for reform, and hoped that the problem would just go away.

Fathers 4 Justice have had success in bringing the subject to the nation's attention at a bottom-up grass-roots level, (rather than at the top-down political level of the CASC group, and the stakeholder group.)

However, the true size of Fathers 4 Justice is a matter of opinion. While the organization claims to have over 25,000 members in five countries, its main base of operations is the United Kingdom and there appear to be fewer than 20 actual members who conduct regular civil disobedience actions - namely Jason Hatch and Jolly Stansby.

The results of their campaigning remains to be seen. While they are a fixture in the United Kingdom, they have yet to pull off a successful action in the United States or in Canada. The Canadian branch of Fathers 4 Justice has existed for 15 months and has yet to make national headlines.

This is the work of Oliver Cyriax. He has run two conferences about early interventions in 2001 and 2002. These were attended by high-ranking members of the judiciary, including from overseas, where schemes that promote retaining both parents' involvement in childcare, but leave the courts as last resort, have been very successful. Notably in Florida and California.

He has a strong alliance, made up of senior members of the Solicitors Family Law Association (SFLA), Family Law Bar Association (FLBA), Hamish Cameron the child psychiatrist, Fathers Direct and the campaigning charity Families Need Fathers. Ex-president of the United Kingdom Family Division of the courts Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss has said she supports this plan.

Observers indicate that there is currently a tug-of-war between Oliver Cyriax's early interventions pilot project — which would be run by PESF (Parenting and Education Support Forum) in a low key way, probably at Wells Street (the family court in central London) — and another plan, created by the civil servants.

The worry about the civil servants is that they are not expert in family matters at all, and their pilot plan might fail. The civil servant behind it, Bruce Clark, comes from a child protection background. He is said to be the man who drew up the discredited Munchausen's guidelines, and not a natural champion of fathers rights' that campaigners demand, in particular to ensure that children will have adequate parenting time with their fathers.

Fathers' rights campaigners urgently want an "Early Interventions Pilot Plan" to test and develop compulsory mediation and parenting plans, etc. backed up by a strict enforcement regime, "Facilitation and Enforcement" as the stakeholder group was called.

It is not clear who will win the tug-of-war,[14] and campaigners argue that both initiatives are worthwhile. Duncan Fisher of Fathers Direct says Oliver Cyriax's PESF scheme could start immediately, although it is known that civil servants and politicians are prone to call for numbers of rounds of committee meetings and consultations, sometimes indefinitely.

It is arguable that the recent Consultation Paper issued by CAFCASS and entitled [15] is a recognition of the hurt and resentment caused by the existing Family Law system, and is a call for radical change, particularly by the early adoption of Shared Residence in the vast majority of cases. This is clear from Section 36 on page 21.

In July 2004 the United Kingdom Government published a Green Paper [16] in response to the two-year-old Making Contact Work document, and the more recent Child Contact Survey.[17] Only the year before, the Government had been indicating that no legislative changes in this area were planned, so this is a turnaround whose timing is generally felt to be the result of the efforts of fathers' rights activists. The Women's Aid response to this paper [18] contains the following: We believe that legislation is still required to create a rebuttable presumption in family proceedings legislation that child contact is not awarded unless and until it can be shown to be safe, and that this should be done through a mandatory risk assessment process. The response does not make clear whether this provision is intended to apply to both parents involved in a child residence dispute.

At the same time, the Conservative Party has started indicating that it believes fundamental changes in the law are required.[19] The Labour Party supports the stance taken by CAFCASS's trade union NAPO. The Opposition stance is that such a policy is against the existing Children Act.

The Liberal Democrats, the third major United Kingdom political party, has framed the issue in terms of domestic violence, but yet has to communicate its ideas widely.

In April 2004, the Honourable Mr. Justice Munby of the Court of Appeal in the UK wrote:

"From the father’s perspective the last two years of the litigation have been an exercise in absolute futility. …

He is entitled to [feel let down]. … I can understand why he expresses that view. He has every right to express that view. In a sense it is shaming to have to say it, but I personally agree with his view. It is very, very disheartening. I am sorry there is nothing more I can do." [21]

The legal system in the United Kingdom has seen argument about parental alienation and parental alienation syndrome as is illustrated by comments the following cases:

Lady Justice Hale (in Re K (Contact: Psychiatric Report) [1995] 2 FLR 432) stated:

It is my unhappy experience, borne out by other anecdotal evidence and confirmed by the Official Solicitor's department that there seems to be an increasing number of cases coming before the family courts where contact between a young child and the absent parent has become bedevilled by stubborn opposition to contact being shown by the child which may, or may not, be evidence of some implacable hostility on the part of the other parent for good reason or for no reason at all.

Since The Children Act requires that the views of the child need to be made known to the court, fathers' rights campaigners claim that the mother sometimes alienates a child against his or her father and that this then supports the mother's case in court to banish the father. Lady Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, President of the Family division, (the top United Kingdom family court judge) stated (in Re L, V, M, H (Contact: Domestic Violence) [2002] 2 FLR 334 at 351):

There is, of course, no doubt that some parents, particularly mothers, are responsible for alienating their children from their fathers without good reason and thereby creating this sometimes insoluble problem. That unhappy state of affairs, well known in family courts, is a long way from recognised syndrome requiring mental health professionals to play an expert role.