Fathers suffer in family court system

IN his column, Fergus Finlay (Opinion, August 23) has taken issue with comments I made in my letter regarding the unfair treatment of fathers in family law courts.

While he doesn’t directly contradict the points I made, he claims that, because of secrecy in the family courts, nobody knows whether or not fathers are treated unfairly.

Despite the secrecy, there is ample evidence that men in general, and fathers in particular, suffer severely in the family courts.

Even in the report by Dr Carol Coulter, to which Mr Finlay refers, she sets out a scenario which is representative of the majority of separation and divorce decisions. Her report refers to a ”husband... paying the mortgage on a house he is not living in, paying maintenance for his children whom he may not see as frequently as he would like, and his access may be restricted if he does not have suitable accommodation for them to stay with him overnight.”

Dr Coulter is right when she says that ”this is not due to any bias on the part of the court”.

This routine destruction of fatherhood is caused by the Family Law Acts, which give women the power to unilaterally apply to the courts for an order excluding the father from the family home.

Before anyone resorts to the predictable insinuations regarding abuse or misconduct, I can tell you that they are wrong. There is no requirement in the act for a woman to prove or even allege abuse or misconduct in order to get a court to exclude her husband from the family home.

Faced with such an application, it is virtually impossible for a man to defend his right to remain in his own home and be a father to his children. Opinion-formers, such as Mr Finlay, who defend the retention of this draconian provision on the statute books, have no defence against accusations of misandry. They are in fact complicit in the statutory destruction of fatherhood.

Matt Harper

Monaghan