Many parents who have children that are the subject of Child Arrangements Orders are concerned about how the lockdown will affect their ability to see their children. Although many of you will be all too familiar with the standard exceptions to the Stay at Home requirement, you may not be aware of an important additional exception to the Stay at Home rules:
Where parents do not live in the same household, children under 18 can be moved between their parents’ homes.
Contact
As a parent, your children’s health and safety is your responsibility. If you or anyone in your household are displaying symptoms of COVID-19, or have been exposed to someone who has COVID-19, then you must follow government guidance and self-isolate. This means that your children should not attend contact until the end of the self-isolation period. Although this will be difficult, it is important that you are making sensible decisions for your children.
If you have genuine concerns that the other parent will not abide by the government’s rules, the first step will be to speak to them. You must explain your concerns and your reasoning behind those concerns. If after speaking to the other parent, you still feel that they are not taking the Stay at Home rules seriously, and you are genuinely concerned about your children’s health and safety, you may need to consider alternative arrangements. Your concerns must be genuine – you should not be using the lockdown as an excuse to refuse contact.
Alternative arrangements
If your children do not attend contact, the best option is to discuss and agree alternative arrangements with the other parent. The Family Court has been clear in its guidance that if a Child Arrangements Order cannot be followed to the letter, alternative arrangements should be made to maintain regular contact between the children and the other parent. This could mean that the other parent has daily video-chats or perhaps once your self-isolation period has ended, your children could stay with the other parent for a couple of weeks. Whatever arrangement is agreed, contact should be maintained as much as possible.
Court Orders
Court orders are meant to be stuck to, however the lockdown represents a unique exception to this rule. If you cannot reasonably abide by the court order, then you will not be punished for agreeing sensible adjustments with the other parent. If you cannot agree adjustments with the other parent, you will need to use your own judgement as a parent to come to a practical solution. If the other parent has refused contact altogether, or you feel that they are taking unreasonable advantage of the lockdown in order to minimise your contact with your children, you do have the option to apply to the court to enforce the Child Arrangements Order.
For more information on child contact during the lockdown or how the Family Court is dealing with COVID-19, please visit our website at https://www.lesteraldridge.com/la-hub/news-blogs/?department=covid-19-news/.