It’s a truism that being a parent doesn’t involve receiving an instruction manual and parents invariably try to do their best, often in difficult situations. These challenging positions often involve coping with co-parenting upon separation where the landscape is made more complicated with the emotions and experiences of that relationships.
It is another truism that communication which is so much easier when two people are in a relationship with each other (and physically closer and more able to share experiences directly) gets much harder with two houses and a natural drop in sharing information. Quickly, those gaps in conversation can be filled with the worst in intentions on the part of the other person. By way of example, if two parents are together and a young child doesn’t want to go out with one of them, it is much more straight-forward to address that reluctance when both parents can see what the other is doing to support them. It is much more difficult when distance and grievance can seep into an analysis of intentions.
When caring for children, parents, grandparents, step-parents and carers need the honest truth about their options – not a march to court or an expensive trail of what could be fruitless solicitor correspondence. Clients need to know from experience what approaches are likely to work in their given circumstances. Sometimes, this involves an advisor exploring hard truths which parents cannot see from an understandably less than objective perspective.
All of our practitioners are experienced in talking through what could lie ahead, accounting for the matter at hand, the health of existing relationships, extended family dynamics, money and the willingness (and effectiveness) of each individual to take responsibility for running their own case in mediation, arbitration or court. These questions are vital in understanding how much support is needed to manage the issues at hand effectively.
Commonly, we deal with the following children matters:
Colleagues in every office handle these matters, but we also have a specialist children solicitor, Daniel Bennett who deals with more complex cases, often involving children with particular challenges and parents demonstrating extremes of behaviour, mental illness or narcissism. With more than 20 years of experience, Daniel has grown a network of effective practitioners who he trusts to open out conversations, represent clients in court sensitively and robustly and experts to report on illness, potential for harm and ability to support children in their care. Daniel invariably assesses cost, court effectiveness and the likely psychology of the other parent in providing an unvarnished picture of the right way forward in any given circumstances.
