Heather Duke asks how parents can be diverted from the battlefield
Sir Nicholas Wall’s speech to Families Need Fathers last month provoked a flurry of responses from journalists and others expressing their views about children being used as ammunition in the battlefield by parents whose relationship has broken down.
Sir Nicholas warned that the first and critical change to be made to the family justice system was to make it less adversarial. The Family Division president added that disputes over contact between absent parents and their former partners are rarely about the children concerned. Perhaps his most striking comment was that, in his experience, “as a rule of thumb, the more intelligent the parent, the more intractable the dispute”.
The debate has continued with some questioning whether it is money rather than intelligence that drives people forward into costly litigation. But whether it is intelligence, wealth or both, Sir Nicholas makes an important observation about private law children disputes. So when there is money and disharmony in abundance, how should practitioners react to minimise the impact on children and uphold the principles upon which the
