Contact (law) - Policy Background

Policy Background

As a specific application of parens patriae (see public policy and the concept of best interests), most states treat the interests of any children caught up in litigation as their first and paramount concern. Usually, the children are not directly the parties to the lawsuit, so the courts have a range of options including the power to appoint a guardian ad litem to protect their interests. This is particularly important in cases involving the breakdown of any family relationship where questions relating to the welfare of the children will become significant in sometimes acrimonious disputes. At a supranational level, the Convention on the Rights of the Child emphasises the need to allow children a voice in any proceedings affecting their welfare. Significantly, it also suggests a change to the terminology, replacing "custody" and "access" with the concepts of "residence" and "contact".

However, the most common legal outcome to cases involving the issues of care and control reinforces the sexual stereotype that a mother is always the better qualified person to care for younger children. Whereas some jurisdictions formally prefer joint custody arrangements in situations where there has previously been a stable family relationship, many states have a formalised rebuttable presumption in favour of the mother, requiring a sometimes unreasonably high level of evidence to rebut, with the result that the access rights of perfectly capable men are sometimes denied in favour of women who have demonstrated a poor track record of care.

Consequently, a new political trend represented by fathers' rights and men's rights movements, is developing in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western countries to demand 50-50 parenting (access and visitation are considered more archaic terms and the movements prefer the term parenting time). Under this system, there would no legal determination of custody, and the rights of both parents to equal time with their child(ren) (and vice versa) would be protected. For example, groups like Fathers 4 Justice, American Coalition for Fathers and Children (ACFC), Alliance for Non-Custodial Parents Rights (ANCPR), S.P.A.R.C. (Separated Parents Access & Resource Center) and National Congress for Fathers and Children (NCFC) work nationally and internationally. Bob Geldof, of Boom Town Rats, Band Aid, and Live Aid fame, is one of the leaders of the movement in the United Kingdom with Parents 4 Protest and The Sun's Justice 4 Dads campaign.