Sept 22, 2010
Middle-class parents can damage their children permanently by using them as ammunition in the divorce courts, a senior judge said yesterday.
Lord Justice Wall, the country's leading family judge, told warring husbands and wives: 'There is nothing worse for most children than for their parents to denigrate each other.'
He said that in family break-ups parents rarely behave reasonably and intelligent parents are often the worst.
'Often the parties are fighting over again the battles of the relationship, and the children are both the battlefield and the ammunition,' he said.
His broadside came in a speech on reforms to the family justice system in which he said it was vital to reduce the adversarial nature of the divorce courts.
He also attacked his fellow judges for allowing some cases to go before as many as ten different judges.
Having one judge sit in all the hearings involving a family is essential to provide consistency, Lord Justice Wall said.
In his speech to the pressure group Families Need Fathers, he said: 'Separating parents who are unable to resolve issues between themselves rarely act reasonably.
People think that post-separation parenting is easy.
'In fact, it is exceedingly difficult, and as a rule of thumb my experience is that the more intelligent the parent, the more intractable the dispute.
'Parents often find it difficult to understand that children both love and have a loyalty to both parents.
'There is nothing worse, for most children, than for their parents to denigrate each other.
'To use the trite phrase, each parent represents 50 per cent of the child's gene pool. If a child's mother makes it clear to the child that his or her father is worthless - and vice versa - the child's sense of self-worth can be irredeemably damaged.
'Parents simply do not realise the damage they do to their children by the battles they wage over them. A child is not a piece of property which can be parcelled up and moved around at will.'
Mr Justice Wall said that it was legitimate to criticise the family courts over the number of judges who become involved in a case.
He said that, while working as an Appeal Court judge, he found 'cases in which as many as nine or ten judges had all dealt with the same case.
'Each had had to read the papers: each had had to make a decision and, inevitably, the decisions are sometimes inconsistent,' he said. 'In short, there is a total lack of judicial continuity.
'For a number of judges all to have to read the same bundle of papers is not only a waste of valuable judicial time: it is inefficient and leads to inconsistency.'
Lord Justice Wall made his speech in the midst of a review into the family courts, which handle parental separation, child custody, fostering, adoption and also 'public' cases concerning children removed from dangerous homes by social workers.
Around 20,000 family break-ups come before the courts every year, and fathers' pressure groups have been increasingly vocal about alleged bias in favour of mothers.
There have been a number of demonstrations against the failure of the courts to act against mothers who shut fathers out of their children's lives.
The Labour government considered tagging mothers to punish those who fail to abide by court orders but the idea was dropped.
There is also continuing controversy over secrecy in the courts.
Former Justice Secretary Jack Straw tried to open up family cases to journalists to increase public confidence in the way cases are dealt with.
But judges have made it impossible for any cases to be reported.
Middle-class parents can damage their children permanently by using them as ammunition in the divorce courts, a senior judge said yesterday.
Lord Justice Wall, the country's leading family judge, told warring husbands and wives: 'There is nothing worse for most children than for their parents to denigrate each other.'
He said that in family break-ups parents rarely behave reasonably and intelligent parents are often the worst.
'Often the parties are fighting over again the battles of the relationship, and the children are both the battlefield and the ammunition,' he said.
His broadside came in a speech on reforms to the family justice system in which he said it was vital to reduce the adversarial nature of the divorce courts.
He also attacked his fellow judges for allowing some cases to go before as many as ten different judges.
Having one judge sit in all the hearings involving a family is essential to provide consistency, Lord Justice Wall said.
In his speech to the pressure group Families Need Fathers, he said: 'Separating parents who are unable to resolve issues between themselves rarely act reasonably.
People think that post-separation parenting is easy.
'In fact, it is exceedingly difficult, and as a rule of thumb my experience is that the more intelligent the parent, the more intractable the dispute.
'Parents often find it difficult to understand that children both love and have a loyalty to both parents.
'There is nothing worse, for most children, than for their parents to denigrate each other.
'To use the trite phrase, each parent represents 50 per cent of the child's gene pool. If a child's mother makes it clear to the child that his or her father is worthless - and vice versa - the child's sense of self-worth can be irredeemably damaged.
'Parents simply do not realise the damage they do to their children by the battles they wage over them. A child is not a piece of property which can be parcelled up and moved around at will.'
He said that, while working as an Appeal Court judge, he found 'cases in which as many as nine or ten judges had all dealt with the same case.
'Each had had to read the papers: each had had to make a decision and, inevitably, the decisions are sometimes inconsistent,' he said. 'In short, there is a total lack of judicial continuity.
'For a number of judges all to have to read the same bundle of papers is not only a waste of valuable judicial time: it is inefficient and leads to inconsistency.'
Lord Justice Wall made his speech in the midst of a review into the family courts, which handle parental separation, child custody, fostering, adoption and also 'public' cases concerning children removed from dangerous homes by social workers.
Around 20,000 family break-ups come before the courts every year, and fathers' pressure groups have been increasingly vocal about alleged bias in favour of mothers.
There have been a number of demonstrations against the failure of the courts to act against mothers who shut fathers out of their children's lives.
The Labour government considered tagging mothers to punish those who fail to abide by court orders but the idea was dropped.
There is also continuing controversy over secrecy in the courts.
Former Justice Secretary Jack Straw tried to open up family cases to journalists to increase public confidence in the way cases are dealt with.
But judges have made it impossible for any cases to be reported.
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