Life cannot be imagined without a family because a family gives us love, attention, support and values. It gives a person sense of belongingness and they are a child’s first relationships.
Like every other relation, it also suffers and due to issues and breakdowns in family, the whole family experiences bad and unpleasant things. Both parties need help and legal advice to solve their disputes. First we need to understand what is family law? The government made family laws and family courts especially to solve these issues and problems concerning children and adults like personal relationships, separation, divorce, child abuse or domestic violence.
County courts and family proceeding courts both decide the cases of family law. A specialist division of the high court of Justice is Family division to hear family law cases only.
This family proceeding court or Magistrate’s court deal in the issues like:
- Family relationships:
This concerns marriage, divorce, separation and domestic violence.
- Children rights:
It involves child custody, child abuse, visitation and parental behavior and their responsibilities towards children.
- Property rights:
It involves guidance about the division of property after separation and child maintenance payments. Property settlement includes assets, source of income and responsibilities of both sides.
All these issues and problems are handled by family law courts. Cases which concern children are public law and private law.
Public law deals with the cases brought by authorities and it concerns with the child protection and supervision of the child to the local authorities.
Private law deals with the cases of private person about the matters of divorce and separation. These courts can give orders for the adoption of child, special guardianship to a specific person in addition to the real parents. This happens when parents cannot fulfill the financial liabilities and responsibilities of their children. To understand this delicate matter, first we need to understand what is family law? In case of separation or divorce, the courts and authorities always prefer the welfare and protection of children. The decision about child custody is a very sensitive issue and a judge has to look into everything before making the decision. Domestic violence is another reason for not granting custody to a parent applying for it. Court also decides the visitation plans. In case of abusive behavior from any parent, the other person gets the custody.
The court offers some time and counseling to both the parties before arriving on the painful decision. Children are mostly affected by this bitter settlement. They are emotionally disturbed due to the loss of a parent, a home and a family.