A Good News Story

 Progress At Last

Separation and divorce is painful enough for adults, many of whom remain permanently scarred.  In hindsight not a few come to regret their decision to split apart and look back at the conflict and circumstances that led them to that fateful decision, concluding (now) that it was all small change in the grand scheme of things. They regret their immature decisions and hasty actions.  But we have learned that the children of such divorces often are damaged for their entire lives. 

This bad situation is made ten times worse if the divorce is acrimonious.  Far too many divorces have ended up that way, even if the decision to separate initially was reasonably amicable and mutual, due to the involvement of the Family Court.  Courts require lawyers, and lawyers' stock-in-trade is disputation and argumentation, getting the best-deal-no-matter-what for their client.  The resulting anger and bitterness can last decades, inflicting yet far more needless damage upon children. And, not a few lawyers have preferred a long drawn out process because of the higher fee payoff. 

Finally, the NZ government has introduced some reforms which are deconstructing the hostilities.  The Minister of Justice, Judith Collins has announced:

More parents are resolving their disputes outside of court only months after the Government’s family justice reforms came into effect, Justice Minister Judith Collins announced today.  “Progress to date confirms our reforms are empowering people to resolve their parenting disputes outside of court, minimising the stress children often face when their parents separate,” Ms Collins says.

Since the Government’s reforms came into effect on 31 March this year, 562 assessments for the New Family Disputes Resolution (FDR) mediation service have been completed and another 530 are in progress.  Of the 122 mediations completed, 87 (71 per cent) have resolved all matters in dispute between parties, without going to court. Urgent matters, such as those involving family violence, still go straight to court.

The number of Guardianship applications to the Family Court has also dropped from 481 per week to 231 per week.

Collins concludes:

“This is an encouraging trend and shows parents are taking responsibility for their actions and putting the welfare of their children first,” Ms Collins says.   The Ministry of Justice has also provided 40,000 parenting plans and booklets to a range of agencies for distribution. A further 1700 have been downloaded from the new family justice website (http://www.justice.govt.nz/family-justice).  The website has had around 1.7 million page views since its launch on March 31 – more than double that of the old Family Court site.

“It’s fantastic to see parents making a real effort to work their problems out themselves. As a result, they avoid the unnecessary conflict, delays and expense the court process may involve, and the Family Court remains free to focus on the most serious and urgent matters.”

One absolute travesty of the previous approach, racked with terrible unintended consequences, was the Family Court almost always favouring the mother in the allocation of parental cares and duties.  This was due to a strong feminist bias throughout the system, the primitive ignorant belief that young children needed a mother whilst a father was an unnecessary optional extra, and the poisonous criticism and character assassination of the father by the wife and her lawyer in order to bolster the case for maternal custody.  The residual anger and bitterness has lasted for years and years in many cases.  Legions of disaffected and disillusioned fathers departed for Australia and other places, concluding they had lost everything worth living for in New Zealand, leaving the state to pick up their child-support payments.

Having argued successfully before the court, former wives all too readily concluded that their former husbands were useless appendages, of no value to their children or to them, and useful only for the provision of money.  The former husbands began to live the role ascribed to them by society and the court, disappearing forever into the great Western migration, along with their child support payments. 

We are sure that, whilst not solving all the issues and problems, having a mutually negotiated settlement by parents working issues out themselves, not contending and fighting in court, will be far, far better in most cases.  It will be exponentially better for the innocents--the children.  This is a very positive, good-news development.