Senior judge warns against using children to score points in divorce cases

England’s most senior family court judge has warned of the dangers of parents using their children as ammunition after separation.

In a speech to the annual volunteers’ conference of parenting charity Families Need Fathers, Sir Nicholas Wall, president of the Family Division and head of family justice for England and Wales, said disputes over contact between absent parents and their former partners are rarely about the children concerned, but still end up damaging them.

“Far more often, the parties are fighting over the battles of the relationship, and the children are both the battlefield and the ammunition,” he said.

“Often the mother, who finds herself caring for the children, is able to use her power over them to deny the father contact.

“It is very easy for one party to say that he or she is acting in the best interests of the child concerned, and that the other party is not; it is quite another to understand that both think they are and that often neither is.”

In the speech he said issues around separation can often be more complicated when they involve intelligent couples.

“As a rule of thumb my experience is that the more intelligent the parent, the more intractable the dispute.”

He added that shared parenting is as important after separation as before it.

“I remain of the view that the separated parent’s role in the lives of his or her children retains the same degree of importance as when the parents were living together, even if the opportunities to manifest the qualities which an absent parent can bring to his children are limited.”

Craig Pickering, chief executive of Families Need Fathers, said “Generally speaking, children do better in every way if they have two parents in their lives, and the children of separated families are no exception.”