“Stay out of court”

Establishing a health approach instead

Echoing the evidence we have, the growing mountain of advice to separating parents underlines that it is best to treat it as a health issue not a legal one. That means an approach that promotes compassion, positive self-help and all kinds of health, emotional and relationship support and intervention. A legal training or system is just not designed for these skills or services.

Family lawyers themselves often move across to provide alternative dispute resolution. That’s “alternative” to the adversarial “resolution” that a court offers. Family court judges themselves often say that family courts aren’t best.

Yet, even with that support from the horse’s mouth, the informal advice to turn to health services can only slowly erode the established idea and system that points families down a legal track.

Good online advice alone may not be enough to guide stressed separating parents. The new health idea and system needs to become the established one. But the proliferation of advice like Dr Gold Buscho’s paves the way forward.