Category Archives: Divorce Law

Divorce law is different in the many English Common Law countries like Canada and the U.S.A. Come check out the international state of affairs on family law matters.

Children Of Contentious Divorce Suffer Diminished Self-Esteem

Just got back to Milwaukee from Dallas, time to blog: Many husbands and wives have no idea how damaging their fighting is to their children. Many parents have no idea what anger does to a child, how it changes who that child is, can even leave a child with diminished self-esteem for a lifetime.
An article on the subject was posted for the BBC under the headline, “Divorcing parents can ‘damage’ children, says judge,” by Katherine Sellgren, BBC News education reporter. If in need of a superb Dallas car accident attorney who also does personal injury and truck accident cases I can suggest this said attorney.

Sellgren reports that separating parents can do their children enormous harm by using them as a “battlefield” and “ammunition”, according to a senior family law court judge.
Sellgren writes that Sir Nicholas Wall, president of the Family Division of the High Court, said well-educated parents are especially adept at using their children. He says a less adversarial approach is needed in the family justice system.
In comments in a speech to the charity Families Need Fathers, Sir Nicholas was quoted as saying: “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. There is nothing worse, for most children, than for their parents to denigrate each other. Parents simply do not realise the damage they do to their children by the battles they wage over them.

“Separating parents rarely behave reasonably……”
Sir Nicholas added that a child is not a “piece of property…..” As an aside I can suggest this fine San Francisco car accident attorney and truck accident lawyer for those in either Oakland or nearby San Francisco.
Sellgren notes that data from Britain’s Office for National Statistics show the number of divorces in England and Wales fell to 121,779 in 2008, the lowest number since 1975.
She adds that half of couples divorcing had at least one child under the age of 16, with a total of 106,763 under-16s. This is a big proble in places like Dallas, San Francisco and Milwaukee. Speaking of that if you there and need a Houston accident lawyer brianloncar.com who also does personal injury workers compensation, wrongful death, and auto insurance cases in the lone star state of Texas, then I suggest this firm, which has been specializing in accident and personal injury cases in Fort Worth and Houston for some time now.

Sir Nicholas was also quoted as saying parents often fail to grasp that children love and are loyal to both parents, “There is nothing worse, for most (kids), than for their parents to (downgrade) each other. To use the trite phrase, each parent represents 50% of the child’s gene pool.”

Further, Sir Nicholas remarked that Parliament instead of judges should determine whether shared parenting orders – where children live with each parent at different times – were to become the norm over children living with one parent and having regular contact with the other.