Stop Child Divorce!

Equal Parenting Now!
Children are regularly forcibly divorced from one parent against their will in Canada’s family law courts in violation of Canadian and International law.
Divorce law was never intended to separate children from fit and loving parents. Spouses divorce, but children cannot and should not be separated from their parents without a specific finding by a separate hearing with clear evidence of parental unfitness or clear harm to the child. Most often, something in the order of 90%, the parent removed is the father, almost always with no evidence-based finding of unfitness or harm to the child.
Yet social science is almost unanimous: the loss the father as a parent in divorce subjects the child to a wide array of higher risks and negative social outcomes: higher risk of abuse, poor physical and mental health, educational underachievement, delinquency, teen pregnancy, relationship problems, unemployment, and the list goes on. The current system harms children by its very practice.
There is increasing agreement that the current adversarial family law process, with its emphasis on affidavits without proof, high costs to the point of inaccessibility for most families, and procedural game-playing, is the problem. Surveys of the public confirm that most Canadians believe that money and careers in the divorce industry are the obstacles to reforms.
The United Nations Convention on Children’s Rights obliges signatory states, of which Canada is one, to protect the child’s right to both parents. Canada’s federal and provincial governments have failed in this regard, as there are more children of separated families who have had a parent removed by Family Courts than lost a parent in the Native Residential Schools fiasco. That hundreds of thousands of children are forcibly divorced from a divorcing parent as a matter of course each year in Canada is a source of deep shame and personal responsibility to Canadian judges, lawyers, politicians and associated professionals. All Canadians should feel responsible, as this is done with our tax dollars. We should all be outraged that children suffer for the profit of a relative few. We should be further outraged that children suffer disadvantage in a system which pretends to act in the “best interests of the child.” Those who claim this are either dishonest or misled by ideology, greed or careerism.
How do we stop forced divorces? I am convinced that it needs a political solution, although pressure from other directions could be helpful. First, we need to organize parents and allies so that the common message to politicians is that the current system is intolerable to children. It is children’s right to both parents. It is children’s right not to be forcibly divorced from either parent without due process, clear evidence and findings based on science, not mere unproven accusations and stereotypes.
How can the current system claim due process when children are almost never allowed a hearing in courts? How can judges and lawyers claim to act in the “best interest of the child” when they are neither listening to the child, nor representing the child? How can the system, including politicians ignore the overwhelming science, research and evidence showing that children benefit from both parents and suffer when forcibly separated from fit, loving parents?
Parents need to organize and provide the solution where government, courts and the legal profession have failed. Let’s stop forced child divorce now.
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