Further Nuffield Research On The Impact Of Family Court Proceedings On Children
The family court has a role in resolving disputes between separating parents over child arrangements—known as private law. More than twice as many private law applications are started in England and Wales each year than public law applications. Yet little is known about the children and families involved in them.
The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory reviewed UK and international research studies from the last 20 years (2000–2020) that directly obtained children’s and young people’s thoughts on parental separation and/or their experience of court proceedings.
Despite limitations within the research, the paper clearly indicates that children are actively – not passively – involved in their parents’ separation and court proceedings.
The six key findings across the studies are:
1. Parental separation can be highly stressful for children and can have a big impact on their lives. For some, this impact can last into adulthood. The court system should be set up to try to minimise stress and harm rather than add to it.
2. Children often feel left in the dark about what is happening throughout their parents’ separation and the court process. In some cases, children know more about what is going on than adults realise but are not always given the accurate and timely information they want. Attempts by adults to hide what is going on can in fact cause significant stress for children. Professionals should take an active role in ensuring children have access to adequate information presented in child-focused ways.
3. Children overwhelmingly feel unheard in court proceedings. This causes them significant distress. When children did report positive experiences of participation, this was linked to them experiencing the decisions made more positively. Some studies highlighted that simple changes—such as communicating the final decision in a child-friendly way and ensuring children were aware proceedings had started and what that meant—could make children feel more listened to.
4. Many children want to be more involved in decision making. There are different ways children can be supported to share their views and different children may want different things. There is an important distinction to be drawn between children wanting their views to be listened to and taken seriously and children wanting responsibility for the final decision.
5. Children may have to engage with a lot of professionals while their parents are going through separation. Professionals need to ensure these interactions are sensitive and supportive, and that they demonstrate an understanding of how serious these issues are for the children involved. Support can make a difference for children and we need to think about how to improve support in the community, including from schools, for children.
6. Generally children will have views about contact with some serious thought behind them. But they also need time and support to be able to consider their views, especially where domestic abuse is a factor.
It’s important for families to know that divorce does not have to expose their children to conflict. In fact, the studies showed that some children reflected back on their parents’ separation as positive. Over half the children in a study from England (Dunn and Deater Deckard 2001) were positive about their lives post separation. However, the majority of participants in this study had not been involved in court proceedings; one study found that where parental separation was marked by high conflict and court proceedings, it continued to affect the children into adulthood (Kay-Flowers 2019 – England).
Yet again, the take away message is clear: remove conflict from divorce. We all urgently need to treat divorce as a normal life change, to be treated as a process, not a battle. Where couples can share expertise and navigate it together, all the better, as the opportunity for conflict becomes so much less. Divorced parents are still parents 100% of the time. We need to remove the stigma and take on board the message which is repeated again and again in the research: divorce in itself isn’t bad for children, it’s being exposed to the adult conflict which is the issue.
Read the report from The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory here.
Author Name: Editor
Published content by The Divorce Surgery Editorial Team.
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