Things to consider if you are separating and have teenage children

When a relationship breaks down and children are involved it can be an extremely stressful time. Typically, one parent must leave the family home and this can then mean that normal contact for the absent parent is interrupted.

This can become increasingly difficult if you have teenage children, as the emotional effects on a teenager can be traumatic. They are already going to be dealing with the pressures of hormones, exams, friendship dramas, and now their parents separating. Because of their age and dependant on their maturity, they can often get caught in the middle of ‘squabbling’ parents.

Additional considerations should be undertaken in relation to child arrangements for children between 14-16 years old; if you go to family court, the first hearing may not be for another 6 months’ time, and the courts are not keen to make a final order for child arrangements for children in this age range.

A Father’s Friend Case Study

Parents separated in February 2021 and child arrangements were agreed between the parents for the child on an informal basis. By Oct 2021, communication between the parents had progressively got worse and all contact with the father ceased, at which point the child was now 14 years old. The father tried to reconcile the situation informally until March 2022, when he contacted ‘A Fathers Friend’ to help with the family court process.

The court application was made in early April 2022 and the first hearing was scheduled for August 2022, by which point the child was now 15 years and 3 months old. The hearing was held in front of magistrates and although contact had resumed from June 2022, no overnight stays were being allowed by the mother under the guise that ‘the child did not want to stay over’. There was concern that this was an example of parental alienation due to maximising child maintenance for no overnight stays.

Fundamentally, the court was faced with the issue of considering the wishes and feelings of the child, particularly due to their age. If a second hearing was scheduled to explore this the next available date would be June 2023, at which time the child would be 16 years old. So, the magistrates encouraged the parents to consider a ‘Consent Order’, which required time out of the court hearing to agree what steps they could both take together as parents to improve the situation for their child. The magistrates were keen to send them away from court with some steps for a better co-parenting outcome, so a break in the hearing was taken to explore this.

A Father’s Friend representative helped our client, the father and with help from the mothers McKenzie Friend, both parents we able to agree to commit to the following:

Both to attend a SPIP (shared parenting information program)

Child Inclusive mediation

Medical appointments to be disclosed and father invited to attend

Both to actively encourage the child to stay overnight with the father

Both to communicate through the ‘Talking Parents App’

Although this was not the outcome that our client, the father, was initially hoping for, he could understand the difficulty the court had in making an order for a child of this age. Overall, he was content with the outcome of a consent order and the fact that it gave both himself and the mother, with the court’s assistance, the ability to focus on the child and hopefully set aside their indifferences to find the best way to co-parent.