Parenting on Separation – endless decisions

There was a case reported in the press recently about a 10 year old girl who wanted to be baptised. The child was living equally between her separated parents, her mother remained of Jewish faith and her father had converted to Christianity after the breakdown of his marriage to the child’s mother, having been of Jewish faith before that.

The child’s mother had issued an application to prevent the child’s baptism going ahead and considered that the child should be made to wait until she was 16 years old before making such a decision – the child’s father considered that the child knew her own mind and that she should be allowed to be baptised now, as was her wish.

Ultimately, whilst there was no jurisdiction for the Court to order that the baptism take place, it refused to prevent the baptism happening and the judge felt that the child’s best interests would be served by starting her baptism classes as soon as possible.

It struck me when looking through the judgement of this, admittedly, unusual case that despite any separation, there are an almost incalculable number of decisions that parents will need to make for children as they grow up. The vast majority of these will need to be made jointly, both because joint decisions ultimately must be better for children but also because Parental Responsibility necessitates consultation when significant decisions are made for a child, such as schooling, religious upbringing, medical care etc.

Disputes concerning a child’s religious upbringing are probably less common than say disputes over schooling but such disputes are not uncommon – even the Cruise v Holmes divorce settlement included clauses to limit the child’s involvement in the father’s following of Scientology as his “religion”.

Also sometimes before the Court are disputes over whether a child should be given certain medical treatment, for example where one parent is a Jehovah’s Witness and will not consent to the giving of blood.

It is fairly common for parents to have differing opinions on various topics but the difficulty with separated parents is how those differences are communicated, acknowledged, discussed and dealt with.

Surely better that potential areas of dispute are considered early on by both parents – at least then they can identify where they differ in their opinions and where perhaps they will need some assistance  in the future – court based or otherwise –if those areas become an issue.

The Court devised, some time ago, a way of encouraging separating parents to think about their views and opinions in terms of the child’s upbringing early on – Parenting Plans.

These “plans” take the form of a booklet and include a whole range of different areas relating to the child’s upbringing – some that parents may not even have given thought to or be aware that the other holds particularly strong views on.

The idea was that these plans were given to separating parents at an early stage, either by a Solicitor or perhaps a Mediator to encourage some forethought and discussion – ideally with the outcome that neither parent would need to resort to Court applications.

I am not sure how successful these plans have been or how routinely they are used across the country but I would say that the earlier potential sources of dispute are identified, the more opportunity there is for parents to enter into discussions together to try and resolve matters.

Ok, it won’t be suitable for every family and life is ever-changing – What if the child expresses a strong wish for something contrary to what the parents had agreed together? What if there is a change of circumstances and as a result one or other parent changes their mind about something?

There is, as ever in cases concerning children, no one size fits all solution but early identification and discussion must surely be a positive all round.