As the courts commendably move to try to put themselves in the place of the family members that come before it, Lord Justice Sedley does the extraordinary and highlights the significance of allowing the Voice of the Child its full clarity, in a case last week.
Credit must also go to the savvy social worker who assessed the little chap and came to the same conclusion as Lord Justice Sedley.
For understanding the importance of listening to little people and using sound common sense to come to a solution, albeit a saddening one for both the mother and son in this case and one which places an emphasis on respecting young people’s feelings and the need to allow those feelings to be worked through without coercion, Researching Reform makes Lord Justice Sedley, Judge of the Week.
To read more about the case, click here.
Hello. Thanks for your reply.
I would still question whether the weight prescibed by Sedley to the views of a 10-year-old child is in that child’s best long-term interests.
Why did this child not wish to see his own mother?
Was there any sub-threshold ‘alienating’ influence from the father?
Did the father fulfil his absolute duty to encourage his child to re-establish a relationship with its mother?
Was the mother badly affected by the “adversarial” and polarising court process and did she exhibit negative behaviour towards the child as a consequence?
I would re-iterate that, in the absence of a long-term and significant pattern of abuse, it must always be in a child’s best interests for its relationship with BOTH parents to be protected, encouraged and facilitated.
When that child becomes an adult, he will be extremely thankful that he had been encouraged or even forced to go to school, to eat his greens and to stay in contact with his mum (EVEN if he didn’t want to do any of these things when he was a child).
In relocation cases, the majority of children removed overseas go on to lose all contact with the left-behind parent, even when that parent had been considered to be a perfectly good parent by the court.
A child’s Right to Family Life – which, for a post-divorce child equates to maintaining a meaningful relationship with both its parents – must be served and protected by the courts. Payne v Payne fails to in this respect.
This issue will be discussed at a Family Justice Evening Seminar entitled “Rethinking Relocation: Child Welfare and Family Law Reform” to be held at the Palace of Westminster tomorrow evening…
Regards
BD
http://www.familylaw.co.uk/articles/Coleridge26112010-8965
“Mr Justice Coleridge criticised the way in which too great an emphasis was being placed on listening uncritically to the views and wishes of children, including young children. This he said was leading to the danger of “undermining the family court’s authority and proper function which is to arrive at a decision which is overall, best for the child.”
“As a matter of both fact and law, children lack capacity to make important decisions. That is why they are treated as ‘being under a disability’ legally speaking,” the judge said.
“If we forget this and too readily impose the decision on the child, surely we, all of us, are shirking our responsibility to a degree which is bordering on the abusive. In just the same way as the weak and indecisive parent allows the children to call the shots we are abnegating our function to a degree which is nothing short of cowardly and unfair.
“Children expect and are entitled to expect us to make these important decisions without overly and unnecessarily involving them in the process.”