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'The Changing Face of the Family' by Tracey O'Dwyer.
16 February 2009

In the current economic recession many people will find themselves faced with difficult choices that may well change the whole dynamics of the family. 

Not so long ago the terms house husband or full-time father were almost unheard of, but today those terms describe many family arrangements, some as a lifestyle choice, some forced for economic reasons.  The Office of National Statistics’ latest figures reveal that 192,000 men in the UK stay at home to look after the children, compared to 119,000 sixteen years ago.  Another fairly common situation is where both parents reduce or adapt their hours and share care of the children more equally. 

The numbers look set to rise in the future as people are forced to review their arrangements due to redundancy or, in the case of self employed people, ailing businesses.

As family law practitioners we are faced with resolving the legal issues in these relationships if they break down, and as such the face of family law has changed in recent years.  Some years ago there was an assumption that in custody (now called residence) disputes, the children would go with the mother unless there was an exceptional reason why that should not happen.  However, nowadays we increasingly see residence orders in favour of the fathers, more and more joint/shared residence orders, and we also see maintenance orders for wives to pay maintenance to husband.  

Faced with questions about who should look after the children, the courts are usually keen to maintain the status quo of the existing arrangements, stability being a key issue in determining what is in the child’s best interests.  Accordingly, it may come as a surprise to some that decisions that they took for sound economic reasons in times of difficulty could leave them with a rather different outcome on questions relating to the children and/or finances if the relationship should break down.  Naturally that may seem unfair to some, but, in fact, stability of the children has been a key concept since The Children Act 1989, and as families change, the courts are simply catching up.

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