Contact and Child maintenance

Dismissing anecdotal evidence is also dangerous: if a million people anecdotally report bad experiences with the family courts, then this is evidence that something is not right. Is that not why government engages with public consulation?

I''m not sure where a million people come from but in 2011 there were 109,656 children involved in private family law applications. By the law of averages 50% of the parents are likely to consider the courts decision as wrong and unjust. Some of them will be rightly aggrieved but others are going to feel deeply wronged and deny the reality. Without good unbiased research and evaluation anecdotes are uncorroborated and unverifiable.

Government consultations are usually to gauge public opinion and appease voters. The questionnaires often produce misleading results and shallow qualitative information or are unrepresentative.

Drdaddy, you are 100% correct, the motivation for my ex connecting with our daughters can only come from him. And yes if I was dead and buried, he would reconnect like a shot with our daughters..

Very sad for both our girls and him, however, our girls will learn to live with it, have great lives, families of their own, lots to look forward to and to be honest if (on the assumption I am not dead) there comes a time when the ex does wish to reconnect with our daughters, I have a horrible feeling that our daughters will tell him where to get off.

I truly truly admire nrp, often fathers who love their children and will do anything to keep a good healthy relationship with them. Just wish I had married one!

With huge respect to Fiona the 109,656 figure may be high as the MoJ tend to count the same children more than once - presumably they are counting children per application.

The corresponding figure for 2010 was 126,220. CAFCASS state that in that year they looked after 43,759 children involved in private law cases which represented about 95% of the total, so the total would have been about 46,000.

I''m finding this debate quite interesting as I have been on both sides of it.

For 7 years I was denied contact and paid child support diligently until a DNA test showed I was not the biological father; the CSA kindly gave me a refund.

Now I have sole residence and receive no child support from either biological parent, neither of whom has made any effort to be involved in any other way.

I am struggling financially, but I can confirm that while financial worries are a headache, not seeing your child and believing you will never see him again is infinitely worse - the two are not even in the same ballpark.

Prior to the Election the Conservatives actually committed themselves to linking child support and contact and to removing child support to parents who repeatedly obstruct contact. It was part of a whole coherent range of measures which has now been abandoned.

The fact that the two are currently separate has far more to do, in my opinion, with the random and erratic way that child law develops and changes than with any firm principle. Principles are absent from family law - other than financial profit and political expediency. Even the welfare principle was originally introduced as an electioneering measure to win women''s votes, and was actually a cynical hoax to prevent mothers having equal rights.

Plus ca change and all that.

Talking of child support, I have reservations about the new child support law that 50/50 equal shared residence requires no maintenance to be paid.

Sounds fair and probably is fair, but unless the 50/50 shared residence is by Court Order, I wonder how many dads will now find that their mutually agreed 50/50 shared care is reduced considerably when it is realised that child maintenance does not have to be paid.

This is another example of the Government doing half a job instead of the complete job.

But contact and CM arent linked!!!!

I am not sure we can say there is no link between contact and CM, at least indirectly. The deduction for overnight stays certainly shows some link, the more overnights the bigger the deduction and the less the NRP pays, so increased contact/overnight stays does infact effect the maintainance payable and received.

Forseti is spot on. The MoJ figures relate to the number of children subject to each application so some children will be counted more than once. Also there will often be more than one child per family so the actual number of families involved will be far less than the number of disposed applications.