Mothers who deny fathers access to the couple’s children could be jailed

Separated parents who fail to allow their partners to maintain a proper relationship with their children could be stripped of driving licences or passports, hit with curfews, ordered to do a period of unpaid work or even jailed.
Ministers will today propose a dramatic extension of punishments for breaches of court orders regarding care arrangements amid concern that millions of youngsters are losing contact with absent fathers.
The move is part of the most radical shake-up of the family courts for decades, with a new right to ‘shared parenting’ following family breakdown to be enshrined in law.
Argument: One in five children from a broken home loses touch with the parent that leaves the family home within just three years. (Picture posed by models)+2
Argument: One in five children from a broken home loses touch with the parent that leaves the family home within just three years. (Picture posed by models)
Ministers have decided reform is necessary in the light of heartbreaking evidence that one in five children from a broken home loses touch with the parent that leaves the family home within just three years and never sees them again.
Many more lose contact with a parent, most often with fathers when mothers are awarded custody, as they grow older.
Children’s minister Tim Loughton will announce that the Government is to rewrite the 1989 Children Act, which states that the child comes first in law courts in the UK.

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Campaigners for fathers’ rights complain that the courts repeatedly pander to the notion that mothers are ‘more important’ than fathers.
The Government will consult on how the law should be changed, but its preferred option is for courts to be required to ‘work on the presumption that a child’s welfare is likely to be furthered through safe involvement with both parents’.
Unless their welfare is threatened by staying in touch with either their mother or father, children must have an equal right to a proper relationship with both, ministers say.
The move is designed to ensure that the parent who moves out of the family home - normally the father - cannot be cut out of their children’s lives following an acrimonious separation.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2158490/Mothers-deny-fathers-access-couple-s-children-break-jailed.html



This is a good thing, which is getting us nearer to real equality. What do you guys think?

It's good in principle but not good if one of the parents is abusive or the like.

I'm fairly sure a parent can stop the other seeing their kids if they're abusive. This isn't going to overrule all the laws currently in place.

It's good in principle but not good if one of the parents is abusive or the like.

Not good, the UK is becoming a communist state

this isn't about "abusive parents", this is about "fathers" - are you assuming that the issue of bad parents is regarding the gender of the parents?



how?!

I dont think parental ability has anything to do with gender.

well if you're acknowledging the rule of law/equality before the law regardless of biological matters then I suppose that's okay then, because I interpreted it as you saying that fathers, not in principle but in practice, were worse parents, or ideas to that effect

There may be perfectly good reasons why a parent stops the other parent from seeing their child (i.e. they're abusive) so they are protecting them, obviously this goes for either gender

fair point.

what if the other partner doesn't want access then is really petty and gets their partner done for not letting them see the kids?

There needs to be some good legislation in place to stop abuse of the system.