Child Contact during Covid

The Government made it very clear, early on, that parents were allowed to transport children from household to household for the purposes of child contact.

This, of course, sounds a wonderful idea. However what do you do if those households are hundreds of miles apart, or a member of one household is vulnerable (for example has asthma)? More importantly, what happens where one parent has been doing their very best to prevent contact and is now using the pandemic as their perfect excuse to stop it, until ‘things are back to normal’?

What is certain is there will be many parents with informal or court ordered contact plans which have gone out of the window since late March. How do you get these back on track, and how do you enforce something when the courts are so overwhelmed and under resourced at present?

There are alternatives to court. Mediation is often extremely successful and mediators,I work with, are fully set up for Zoom and Skype.

Another very time and cost effective solution might be Family Arbitration.

I was on a Zoom call recently with many of the countries top family lawyers (including the Family Division President) and it is clear they want to push Child-contact Arbitration as an alternative to court. I will blog in more detail about what is involved. However please be assured there are alternatives to the court route and I have often been successful in resolving things simply through correspondence. 

If you have concerns about what to do then please contact me.