Shared Parenting Scotland

Ian Maxwell, founder of Shared Parenting Scotland, joined me on The Respondent to discuss the challenges parents, children and families endure in a broken family law system.

Ian has worked for charities supporting parents for nearly 30 years, part of that time working with a single parents organisation. In 2010 he set up the Families Need Fathers Scotland charity, which supports fathers who are having problems in seeing their children after separation and promotes the advantages of shared parenting. In 2020 the charity changed its name to Shared Parenting Scotland, reflecting the fact that increasing numbers of separated mothers are seeking their help.

During our conversation I challenged Ian on how Shared Parenting Scotland is trying to help children and parents, if what they are doing is actually helping, and I wondered aloud wether his organization might be causing more harm than good. Why? Well, Ian seems to support more bureaucracy - taking children’s rights from parents and placing them in the hands of more “qualified” professionals - whereas I firmly believe we need less bureaucracy and oversight. After all, it's a parents fundamental right (notwithstanding serious neglect or abuse) to determine the rights of their children, not the state. 

Read more about this episode here.

Support my charity CPU: Children and Parents United here 🎗

Greg Ellis: Hi Ian, thanks for joining me on The Respondent. Where are you located in Scotland?

Ian Maxwell: I'm in Edinburgh, which is a very lovely city to live in and I'm particularly fortunate that I live in Portobello, which is on the eastern edge of Edinburgh. So we're close to a beach we're close to countryside and yet we're only half an hour from the center of town. So that's a rather nice place to be.

GE: Sounds idyllic. Did you grow up there?

IM: I did. I don't sound very Scottish I don't think but I'm certainly born and bred in Edinburgh. I have lived elsewhere. But I returned here, and I'm gonna stay here.

GE: Good for you. As a happily married man of 30 years with two grown up daughters, what led you to set up the Families Need Fathers and Shared Parenting Scotland charities.

IM: I've been working, supporting parents and working with families for a long time previously with a charity called One Parent Families Scotland. And that means that it does give me an understanding as a parent of these issues. I know a lot of the people who work for father's organizations and shared parenting organizations have had their own problems in their own life. But I think I can at least understand it's not... I'm not saying that I know what it's like not to see your children or to be kept away from them. Because I've never had that experience. But I do know an awful lot about the difficulties that people face, particularly fathers. And when the opportunity came to set up a charity in Scotland as an offshoot of a UK charity, which had been going for more than 40 years, I took that chance. And I found it really interesting to be involved with a very small organization. I like working with small charities because you get to do a bit of everything. And it's also, particularly if you're campaigning, it's really good if you're talking to a government minister or an official or something like that, to be able to say well, on our helpline I heard this problem yesterday from a parent. So I've got you know, I feel that I've got direct touch with the issues. But at the same time as a national charity, we can have some influence in what happens... we can't change everything, but we can certainly push.

GE: Well, some would say, I think as I alluded to, how can a married man, possibly, a happily married man, possibly understand the pain and anguish of the separated fathers that they are trying to help and support. Did you have a personal tragedy that impacted you to want to help parents and particularly dads?

IM: No, I think I just... I had been working for charities for most of my career, I moved to the charity that was supporting single parents. So I got to understand a lot of the issues. But I'm quite clear, I can't... I'm not saying to somebody, I share your pain, I understand what you're going through, because I don't, but I've heard from so many fathers over the last 10 years about the struggles, about the stress and the agony and the despair, that I can at least understand that that is such a powerful issue. Losing touch with your own child is such a horrible thing to happen. And it shouldn't... it should be far more difficult for that to happen and should be very, there should be a lot more effort put in to try and restoring conditions. At the moment we tolerate people being separated from their children for months, years, decades, sometimes, which is not good.

GE:Yeah it can't be good for the community collective of our overall familial tapestry if we are encouraging or at the very least tolerating the breakdown of the family. What challenges do separated fathers in Scotland face in ensuring that they are able to stay fully or more fully involved with their children?

IM: Like almost every country in the world, there is still a lack of understanding of the importance of fathers. And there's also still this feeling that mothers are the most appropriate people to bring up children. That's not to say that mothers aren't good for children, because obviously they are. But having both a mother and a father involved is really important for children and young people, because they get to different role models. Not even to say that, you could say that the stereotypical role model of the mother being sort of caring and loving and the father being active and adventurous. Now, some families it works completely differently and in some, some families the father is the caring, loving, close cuddly one... And in Scotland when relationships break down, and unfortunately, a lot of relationships break down. More than half and also more than half of children in Scotland now have unmarried parents. When the relationship breaks down, it is still so common for the children to stay with the mother. And if there is animosity, if there is hurt, it can be very difficult for the father to remain involved. And being involved isn't just visiting the children on a Saturday or Sunday or having them away for a week in the holidays. Because that's not parenting that's not bringing up their children that's not helping them with homework that's not wiping up their sick or mopping their heated brow when they're ill. And you know that there is this presumption that the father who gets every second weekend and half the holidays is okay. And that's just not the case.

GE: I remember when I first looked into Texas here in America, there is a system in place in family law in Texas that fathers who fight for the right to be involved and more involved who are good fathers who are good dads. They fight to be involved in their kids’ lives. And what tends to happen is a success or a victory is seeing their kids every other weekend, the judges there really do focus on the matriarch being the sole provider of a safe home and nurturing a discipline and meeting the needs and dependency of younger children and slightly older teens as well. And it does speak to I think a more cultural phenomena that seems to have been taking place recently is this shift towards the devaluation of fatherhood, the good father and the eternal mother. And I had Caitlin Flanagan, who is a writer for The Atlantic on my show recently and she, she talked about, it takes a mother to raise a boy, it takes a father to raise a man. And there is something in that rite of passage that that connectivity that's deep within the psychological sovereignty of the child that connects and needs to remain connected with the father for more than an every other weekend visit, a distant image of dad at the back of the school play in the last row or the appearance, the solitary appearance on the sidelines of a footy pitch or soccer if we're in America. And the system that's set, and it seems to not just be an American phenomena, it's a British phenomena, Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, European, even in the southern hemisphere, South America too, there is a distinct devaluation of the very idea of men. And men are expandable, they can work on job sites, hard labor, go down the pits in mines, go to war. All of the statistics support the fact that men and fathers and dads are seemingly dying at higher rates. That's not to mention mental health, and suicide, and the rates of suicide and the disparity of suicide. So what support does Shared Parenting Scotland provide to fathers who are in this situation or find themselves in, in the oftentimes, completely perplexing and very desperate straits of the family law system, and who and who don't know where to start in terms of accessing legal assistance, or psychological assistance and navigating the complex and often myriad biased ways the world of family law works?

IM: Well, you get the inquiry that comes into our helpline quite a lot, which is I've just split up, what are my rights? Because fathers, whether they're married or not married, often don't know what they're even entitled to. And it's a good thing if the father rings us up at that stage, because we can advise them on how the system works, we can advise them on what to do, and also what not to do. Because obviously, the last thing you want is to be shouting and bawling and showing your rage, even if you're the wronged person in whatever's caused to split up. Because if you do that, you may well find that you've got the police arresting you and taking you into the cells, because you're a man and you've made a noise. Now, that's one of the things that we can do to help people. Unfortunately, a lot of the people who come to us are quite a lot further down the line, they are having to try and restore a relationship and spend far more time with their children or have their children far more, and we can then guide them through the process. Now, I know from a lot of the discussions you've had with other people that the court process is probably not the place to put people unless you have to. But at the moment, if you aren't seeing your children, you can't negotiate any sort of agreement with your ex-partner and the children are actually living with your ex-partner, then unfortunately, you probably do have to move towards court. And we now have quite good working relations with a number of family lawyers in Scotland. And what we feel is that the lawyer has got a role in family court cases. That is quite different to in lots of other court action. If you're going to try and you know, let's say chase up a debt or a defective building, bit of work with somebody, then your lawyer is going to fight on your behalf as hard as possible and get a win. But in family cases, nobody really wins in court, because they're in court to sort out something which is not just a one off occurrence. It's about The family arrangements for the rest of the children's life. And if you've got two lawyers throwing things at each other, that doesn't help anybody. We come across some lawyers who will just engage in aggressive correspondence. And then will be throwing allegations backwards and forwards in court. That is, that is really the worst thing that can happen. What we would say to people is if you can agree if you can use a mediation service or some other dispute resolution, family, friends, whatever, to reach agreement, that's far better than ever going near the court. If you do have to go to court, you've got to come across as a father as a sensible, upright, child focused person. So it's not a case of going to the court and saying, I want my rights because you won't get them because you don't actually have the rights as such. But if you can go to court and show that you're a reasonable parent, and if you're lucky enough to get, well we call them sheriffs in Scotland, or a judge, who is slightly more modern and views the idea of fathers and mothers both having a strong role in families, then you may well get something reasonable out of court, but it might take you many months, and it might cost you many 1000s of pounds. And that's one of the other problems in the system.

GE: The system seems inherently broken, and it needs improving. And I do concur. I think we have to keep parents out of court. And that is the primary goal is to keep the legal system out of a family breakdown. And that's particularly difficult because at a time when families need assistance in two warring factions or parents who aren't getting along. The communication breakdown has become insurmountable a lot of the time and there are accusations or heated emotions flying around. How do we make that connection? And I think that that conduit to relief, that initial conduit to relief. It cannot happen through the legal system, because... but each part... there are two parties involved. And they are required by law to each be represented by a lawyer or an attorney. Yeah, so the challenge there of course Ian is how do we find a way to implement a program or a model that is an intermediate intervention between and betwixt the legal system, and the two parents who aren't getting along, can't communicate? Because, as you well know, just as well as I, a family system that comes together between a husband and a wife, they are inherently creating a new family system born of two other hierarchal family systems. So when these two parents family systems break down, it's not just the parents and the children who suffer, it's the entire family systems plural. And if a father is removed from the ability, and I'm not talking about the rare and it is rare. If we dive into the statistics, the rare situations where there is violence involved, or there is abuse involved, I'm talking about the vast majority of cases where a father has been involved, and many of whom have never had a criminal record. They are cast as the villain. And as I like to sometimes say The Respondent because we have the petitioner and the respondent

IM:Yes

GE:And they are forced to respond when their entire lives are crumbling, because the meaning of their lives is their children. And they're used to the routine, the routinization of seeing their kids and being involved. So how we can better formulate a way because mediation is one way you mentioned mediation. Even mediation is rife with attorneys and lawyers who retired and became mediators and judges who retired and became mediators and their high priced and so the incentivized churning within the system to keep the money yeah, you know... it's almost like how highway robbery of family estates where sometimes the attorneys come together and the mediators come together and they look at the value because they have access to it. So the estates worth this much, we can keep this case going for five or six months, and then we'll sod off richer than before. And who cares about the family and you mentioned, the despair, the existential terror sometimes, of suddenly being accused of a crime that you haven't committed, and you don't get the presumption of innocence over. Having become almost destitute, maybe lost your livelihood and your job and access to the meaning of your life, which is your children. So the lack of concern I hear in society is so deep?

IM:Yeah well, let me be slightly more optimistic than this very bleak picture you're painting. There have been changes in the last 10-20 years moving forward. If you go back 20 years, you had fathers having to prove their worth to get even closely into the... get even slightly back into the family. Whereas now, you don't have to stand up and just prove how wonderful you are. But I would agree that the current courts in a lot of countries are not by any means ideal. There are a number of relatively simple changes that can be made. One difference between the courts in the UK and I think most of the American courts and the courts in Europe is moving from a confrontational system an adversarial system to an inquisitorial system, where a judge is examining what's going on, rather than opposing lawyers, putting up arguments and counter arguments. Now, that obviously requires that you've got judges who know what they're doing, who've got modern attitudes, who are willing to be equal minded. But that in a stroke would take out some of the mudslinging that goes on you may well still involve lawyers, because people aren't particularly good at understanding how a court works, what they have to do, but the lawyers role will be changed very much from being just the hired assassin, if you like, to being the facilitator. So that... and if you compare some European court systems with the adversarial courts that we have, you can see that immediately, you do get slightly different results. Another big change, and this is what we were trying to do in Scotland over the last couple of years, is to include in the law what's called a rebuttable presumption. And the word rebuttable, unfortunately, is something that very few people understand and quite a lot of people misrepresent. If you have a rebuttable presumption of shared parenting, that means that when you go to court, the first option is going to be a fairly equal split of the children's time between the two parents. Because and one can point to a lot of research evidence that shows that this is almost always the best option for children in separated families. There's now been a lot of research, including in some of the countries where there's already a reasonable amount of shared parenting. So you've actually got quite a large group of people to study. And both there've been studies with very young children, there've been studies with teenagers, and they will say that there are all sorts of benefits for the children of equal sharing, maybe not, doesn't have to be exactly 50/50. But you want to have, let's say at least 30/35% of the time spent with each of the parents. And that has got advantages in terms of the behavior, in terms of educational achievement. And some of the studies have even followed through to these children as they grow up and it helps them in their own adult life, in their own relationship forming if they've got a reasonable pattern rather than a very skewed pattern to model on. So the story as far as we're concerned in Scotland, we looked elsewhere. We looked particularly to Belgium, because Belgium has had a presumption of shared parenting in their law since 2006. And that has meant that the proportion of court disputes that end up with a decision of shared parenting still isn't 100%. But it's somewhere about 50/60%, depending on which of the Belgian courts you go to. And that is way far above the sort of results we would get from court in Scotland. We had a review of family law in Scotland last year. This is where I've got to be maybe clarified for for some people, Scotland, although it's still part of the United Kingdom, and still has comes under the Westminster government. Scotland has its own legal system, its own courts, its own judges, its own education system. And for the last 20 years, we've had our own Parliament sitting in Edinburgh. So the laws most of the laws that apply to people in Scotland are those coming from the Scottish Parliament. Some things like foreign policy and employment law are done at a UK level. But a lot of our family law is all Scottish Family Law. So we had a law that was passed in 1995. And which was, in its day, quite progressive, but 25 years on, a lot has changed in family systems. So we were lobbying during the course that this of this legislation passing through the Scottish Parliament last year, we were trying to introduce a rebuttable presumption of shared parenting into Scottish law. But we encountered a fair bit of opposition to this. And…

GE:From who?

IM:Well, from the domestic violence lobby, I would say primarily, because there is justice, you’ve come across the sort of very strong arguments that are going on at the moment about parental alienation, and about whether or not parental alienation actually exists...