President of the Family Division makes important contribution to the debate on Shared Parenting
Sir Nicholas Wall, President of the Family Division, spoke to the annual volunteers' conference Britain’s leading shared parenting charity Families Need Fathers, on 19 September.
In a wide-ranging speech the subjects he discussed included the current review of the Family Justice System, the harm done to children by warring parents, the need for judicial continuity in individual cases, the adversarial nature of our system, the current law on the leave to remove (allowing a parent to take children out of the country) and the role of McKenzies (non-lawyers who provide support to the increasing number of people representing themselves in the family courts).
On shared parenting he said: “I make it clear that my own view is very simple. In the same way as it takes two human beings to create a child… the best upbringing for most children is in a household where there are two loving parents, who mutually support and respect each other; each of whom can show to the child their joint and individual standards, and each of whom can teach the child how to treat other people… I remain of the view that the separated parent’s role in the lives of his or her children retains the same degree of importance as when the parents were living together, even if the opportunities to manifest the qualities which an absent parent can bring to his children may be limited.”
Craig Pickering, CEO of Families Need Fathers, said “I welcome this important contribution to the debate on encouraging shared parenting by divorced or separated parents. Generally speaking, children do better in every way if they have two parents in their lives, and the children of separated families are no exception.”
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