FNF Scotland to host Aberdeen focus group on Scottish government family law reforms

Ian Maxwell

Aberdeen Grammar School FP Club,

86 Queens Road.

A special meeting of the Aberdeen FNF Scotland group in June will act as a focus group for the civil servants running the Scottish government review of family law in Scotland.

The Scottish government has launched a public consultation on the law that governs the arrangements for sharing care of children when their parents separate.

During the consultation period the civil servants conducting the review will attend several FNF Scotland group meetings to get insight into the personal, financial and relationship costs of the current system from people who have experience of it and hear their suggestions for changes.

The Aberdeen FNF Scotland group has been meeting on the 3rd Thursday of every month since November 2011. Other groups meet monthly in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Paisley, Dundee and Stirling.

FNF Scotland national manager, Ian Maxwell, said: “We are delighted that the civil servants will be using our regular meetings as ‘focus groups’.

“The majority of attendees at our monthly groups are separated fathers but we also have a regular presence of mothers, grandparents, new partners and aunts and uncles at our Aberdeen group. Most are shocked by how bruising, slow and expensive it is to go to court and how difficult it is to enforce a court order one made – and above all how the process can put intolerable stress on the children involved when their parents are belittling and undermining each other.

“We believe a rebuttable presumption of shared parenting after separation will help the individuals involved draw up arrangements that genuinely put the interests of their children first.

“There are too many incentives in the ‘winner takes all’ approach of the current system that promote character attacks on each parent by the other and which damage relationships long after their court case is over and the sheriff has gone home.”

Attendance at the meeting will be free but to help plan for numbers anyone interested in attending is asked to register at http://gldn.gg/e/Aberdeen_consultation