Proposals for the Reform of Intractable Contact Dispute Law

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paper2Last September I had the opportunity to write a paper on the reform of private family law and specifically related to contact enforcement. The paper was presented to Sir James Munby, President of the Family Court, by officers of Families Need Fathers who had been offered a continuing dialogue by him following his presentation to the charity AGM in 2014. A follow-up meeting is diarised to discuss the paper’s contents and proposals.

Within the paper, the guiding principles for the proposals were “what is practical, realistic and has a reasonable chance of being taken forward”.

Continue reading Proposals for the Reform of Intractable Contact Dispute Law

 

Not seeing your child this Christmas? Some presents from us, to you

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For some parents and children this year there will be a gaping hole in their lives while others enjoy the festive season. They won’t be seeing their children. For some, they won’t have seen their children for a while. Some will have no court order or arrangements in place. For others, arrangements will break down at the last minute, or they’re desperately still trying to get their ex-partner to agree dates as the clock ticks down to Christmas morning. It’s torture.

It’s natural to feel depressed and stressed when you don’t see your children, but please take that energy, and put it towards re-establishing your relationship. You’re not forgotten. Please download our guide to Coping with Stress.

While sympathy, understanding and empathy may help, it’s not enough. Practical help to change these circumstances is what a parent in these circumstances wants and needs. Stress and depression comes from feeling helpless. You’re not.

Our guides on our family law app will help. Our family law app contains 1.5million words of content, guides, case law, forms and more… all written for parents in your circumstances… and free throughout the year.

We also have downloadable “guide packs” in our shop, but it’s Christmas and in these circumstances sometimes knowing someone will help, for no reason other than to help, makes a difference. So until 6th January 2016, all of the following downloadable guides and resources are free. Continue reading Not seeing your child this Christmas? Some presents from us, to you

 

Have you tried our guides? 1.5million words of content… free

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The primary purpose of The Custody Minefield is to make family law accessible to separating parents in England and Wales. We’ve been doing this since 2006 when our first book The Custody Minefield was published. The Magistrates Magazine recommended it to ‘any separating parent’ and the Divisional Chair of the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy described it as a ‘gem of information’. Continue reading Have you tried our guides? 1.5million words of content… free

 

BBC World Service – Is Virtual Parenting Time a Substitute for Physical Contact

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If you didn’t catch my interview on the BBC World Service this week on Skype contact, you can hear it on our Youtube Channel (or via the video below). The father interviewed, ‘Peter’, explains the problems extremely well. Was moving the child 400 miles away from this man in the child’s best interests? Hearing him, I struggle to see how it was. Continue reading BBC World Service – Is Virtual Parenting Time a Substitute for Physical Contact

 

Welcome to our new website

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As more and more people move to accessing online content via smartphones and tablets, a change to a very mobile friendly format was necessary. The new site operates seamlessly across all platforms and all devices. Not just improved accessibility, but we’ve plenty of new content for you!

Our Free Family Law Appflapplaptop

Yes, it’s still there. Now running to over 1,500,000 words of content, and process mapping family law into a series of parent friendly, step-by-step guides. There is no similar resource available, and nothing else as detailed, aimed at helping parents navigate the separation process when disputes arise. Of course, it’s free.

Recent additions include:

We’re currently developing new content branching out into more specialist areas. Ones being developed include guides on wardship, acquisition of parental responsibility for non-biological parents (including parents in LGBT relationships), and guides on appeal. These will be published over the coming months. We already provide content in many specialist areas, including leave to remove, parental alienation and others. Our family law app will continue to grow…. filling the void left by legal aid cuts.

NEW – Video Guidesvideo2

Our first video guide helps you get the most out of our free Family Law App. We show you three different ways to search for information, give you a brief run through of features.

We Show You How To Embed our App on Your Site

If you have your own web site helping parents, are an individual, charity or organisation, you can now easily embed our app on one of your web pages. No more sending visitors to other web sites. No expensive development costs. No charge at all! Provide your visitors with top quality information, today!

Incorporated Blog

Our blog has moved from www.thecustodyminefield.blogspot.com and is now incorporated within our main site. We have transferred a number of previous articles and will be adding more in the coming weeks and months. Share articles easily on social media, and rate them if you wish.

NEW – Newsletter

If you’d like monthly updates from us regarding developments in private family law, notifications of important new judgments, and details of new content, please sign up to our free electronic newsletter. Sign up on our blog pages. Your email will only be used to send the newsletter to you, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

NEW – Online Quizzesquiz

We’ve five family law quizzes published so far, to test your knowledge, and three available to download. Challenge your friends and colleagues. Use them to identify gaps in your knowledge, while using our guides for research. Print versions of three quizzes (including separate answer sheets with reference notes) are available for students, charity staff and volunteers to use at meetings where the internet may not be available.

Quizzes will be added to and change periodically.

Relocation Campaign

The Relocation Campaign website is to close (links on that site now don’t work, as we took down a substantial amount of old content when putting up this new site). We’ve moved the history of this campaign to our About Us section and you can read the history of the Relocation Campaign here.

Our Thanks

Our sincere thanks to Reggio Blackwell of armoredcookie.com for his wonderful owls. Reggio is a talented, Chicago based artist, art lecturer, and graphic design consultant for the computer gaming industry. Family Law can be intimidating for those new to the legal system, and we approached Reggio as we wanted graphics which made family law more approachable and a little less intimidating. His owls lighten things a little. Our thanks to Thomas Bodimer and Neil Wilson for late night testing of quizzes and pages across various media platforms, and identifying broken links during the transfer process. Thanks too to Steve Roberts for his design assistance.

 

Parental Alienation – The Need for Consistency

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The Telegraph today ran an article on parental alienation headlined “We must stop turning children against divorced fathers“.

It’s an area of interest for me, having worked on numerous cases where parental alienation was a factor, and having seen slow change in the courts on how parental alienation is considered and approached. Continue reading Parental Alienation – The Need for Consistency