The government has unveiled new proposals intended to help parents who are splitting up to make better arrangements for their children.
The green paper Parental Separation: Children’s Needs and Parents’ Responsibilities contains new proposals including better information and advice for parents who are separating to help them deal with the consequences for their children, as well as good practice examples of parenting arrangements.
Lord Falconer, constitutional affairs secretary, said that parents will be encouraged to come to their own arrangements, but if they cannot then cases should be resolved quickly.
He added that while the government believes that children need both parents, it may not be appropriate to divide the time spent with each
parent equally as the Conservative Party recently proposed. "There cannot and will not be an automatic presumption of 50/50 contact. Children cannot be divided like the furniture or the CD collection. It’s more complex than that," he said.
He said legal, practical and emotional advice would be offered over the phone and via websites with the aim being to help parents come to their own decisions. An in-court conciliation system would be developed for those cases which do end up in court.
The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service will spend more time delivering conciliation and support services. Legal aid is to be restructured and an accreditation scheme established for expert family lawyers.
