Children

Children are our most precious possession, yet all too often they can become trophies to be fought over or pawns in the battle between former partners or spouses.  This can be about trying to gain a perceived financial advantage by having the children or just about people feeling they have "won" over the other person.

Parental rights are generally termed parental responsibility. Anyone with parental responsibility is entitled to be consulted over major decisions in a child's life, for example the name they should be known by, where they should go to school or what religion they follow.  It does not give a right to interfere in the day to day decisions that would normally be made by the parent looking after the child.  The mother of a child automatically has parental responsibility.  The father only has this automatically if he was married to the mother or, for any child whose birth is registered after 1 December 2003, is named on the birth certificate.  Otherwise it can only be obtained by agreement or Court Order.

Residence is where the child should live.  In recent times it has become quite common for this to be split between the parents to reflect the importance of both in the child's life.  However, where the child is primarily living in one place the parent the child is living with would normally have residence.  This can be by agreement or Court Order.

Contact is the child spending time with any parent (or possibly relative) that they are not living with, although contact can be indirect. In situations where the child is at risk from the non-residential parent contact may take place on a supervised basis or there may be no contact at all.  However, it must be remembered that contact is a child's right to see their parent, not the parents right to see the child.  If the amount of contact cannot be agreed then the Court can make an Order regulating this.

Where the parties disagree on any other issues the Court can make a specific issue Order.  This will usually be about the choice of school or name the child is to be known by, but is far-reaching in it's ambit.

An alternative to going to court would be to seek to mediate the issues through an independent mediator.  In reality, if the matter does go to court the first hearing is usually a mediation hearing in any event.