Removing Children From Marital Home (Shared Parenting)

When you consider this issue, starting from children’s needs, I believe that most married couples who might separate, are in the situation that their mental health and parenting skills aren’t so good that both could make a valid claim for sole custody.

Therefore, they would have to either arrange closely cooperating shared care, to be allowed to separate, or seriously risk having the children removed from them by CYFs.

Conversely, almost all of the happily married couples could separate, with either of them being fully capable of sole care of their children, as they are both in good mental health. (Would any of these people want to do this to their children or themself – NO!)

Children have been observed to select who they will model themselves on, this is not just set by who spends the most time with the child. In cases where both parents have poor parenting skills, but the children have significant ongoing contact with either family friends or wider family, the children may tend to model on these other adults. All of these relationships may be quite important to the children. Tearing up these relationships, at the whim of one parent (or familycaught “judge”) may be quite damaging.

Going back to the couple considering separating, if they were evaluated for parenting skills and mental health prior to separation and advised which of them could be allowed sole custody, many of these separations would NOT go ahead.

To obtain a dissolution of marriage, when there are dependant children, the parents must show a satisfactory plan for the care of the children. Presently, there is no real checking of this plan, by anyone but the other partner to the marriage. Besides, this is only required for a formal dissolution.

The critical incident, in terms of child protection – is the removal of the children from the marital home, not the dissolution of the marriage. At present, no approval is required, for one parent to unilaterally abduct the children from the marital home.

Much familycaught tactical advantage is gained by this ethical breach.

Most of the problems around the care of children after separation, escalate from the wrongs done when children are removed from the marital home, unilaterally by one parent.

Such situations should be handled by returning the children, until an agreed plan had been submitted to the familycaught, for the care of the children after the separation. Part of this plan should include a mental health and parenting skills evaluation of both parents, to check that both have the skills and resources to meet their responsibilities in the plan they are submitting to the familycaught.

Certainly, the “professionals” that the familycaught presently use for reporting on children’s relationships between parents and children, don’t seem to report on such issues as personality disorders. How could these reports be of any value, if they don’t report on an equal basis on both parents?

I have never yet seen personality disorders even mentioned in a psychological report, let alone assessed in relation to parenting needs of the children. Therefore, for my suggestion to be workable, the present psychologists would need to be replaced by ones who can assess and competently report on personality disorders and their impacts on the parenting needs of the children.

Wikipedia on Personality Disorder

Another problem is that ICD-10 (international) and DSMIV (USA) set the level for formal diagnosis at quite a severe level, whereas lower levels also cause parenting problems for the children, especially in a sole parent situation. These are solvable issues.

Warning parents about these issues before any damage is done, would greatly facilitate honest and constructive negotiation. I believe that this would much reduce the stress on children and parents, at access handovers. Honest negotiations would leave both separated and together families with more money in their pocket, to support the best possible upbringing for their children.

The only thing that gives, I couldn’t care less about!

Lets protect our children AND
get value for money from familycaught! MurrayBacon.