Or abusers given excessive power to hurt an ex through a gendered family law system can drive good people to suicide just by the sheer hopelessness of their situation.

Abusers come in both genders and use a range of techniques, playing the victim and relying on gender stereotypes being one of those techniques.

None of us here have any way of knowing if the man mentioned earlier was an abuser or not, better mental health facilities might help to prevent some suicides but they wont solve the very real problems some people face when an abusive ex aided by the sista's and CSA is doing their worst.

Time to stop the gender wars and work towards a sytem that reduces conflict whenever possible rather than one that rewards it.

R0bert

...Here is a simple view: A new rule. Children of divorcees must be held in custody by a third party. Access to the children will be issued to both parents, on a presumption of no fault. (As is the rule in divorce cases, since Goff Whitlam era).

...The role of the court will be to assess the third party for suitability. A further role of the court, will be to assess a time and a place where total security of the child is guaranteed, and which is neutral to both parties, for parental access.

...The buckets of money saved, can now be redirected to the entire welfare of the child. Obviously custody cases have fallen into the old paradigm, once the horrific preserve in divorce cases, prior to the Whitlam era changes to no fault divorce.

...Whitlams reforms, forged a new road of peace in such family matters, and will be (as I see it), the only answer for the future, with any likely possibility of achieving a peaceful settlement in child custody issues into the future.

After achieving step 1 which would be the gender neutral expression of all laws pertaining to Family Law... what else?

I've offered these thoughts before, R0bert:

'How best to minimise the problems?

Is a compulsory prenuptial agreement about any post nuptial circumstance too simplistic?

A bit like building into a marriage contract the parties' agreement (before psychopathy sets in) of the provisions for a 'divorce contract'.

Or else a version of my grandmother's method of settling arguments between my brother and me over a piece of cake – "he cuts, you choose."

In a disputed divorce the court draws random lots and one party writes two complete settlements including provisions for custody and maintenance each of which applies to a single parent, and

The other party selects which one they want for themselves!

However this would not alter the fact that the only people responsible for a breakdown of the marriage are the man and woman involved – both of whom should have made a better decision in the first place.'

Trevor I agree in part, I tried a variation of the agreement part when my ex and I were discussing property value, she was running a campaign of massively over valuing stuff that I was likely to keep and and setting a very low values for the bit's she wanted to keep. I suggested that we work to a plan where a nominated value implied a responsibility to take the item at that value or allow the other to have it at that value - she was not very keen on that idea.

Pre-nups etc can't cover issues like child residency where there is genuine abuse involved. Nor can the swappable plan approach, how do you write a pair of plans when it's clear that child residency just can't be picked from a hat.

Agreed that those of us who have horrible marriages should have done better at picking partners, I hope I've learned from my fist experience but I think it's also clear that enough of the human race has made mistakes in that area that it's not a clear cut thing. Nor is the state and society free of responsibility, it involves itself enough in aspects of relationships that it can't wash it's hands entirely. I don't know that there are any groupings of people who've never made a mistake on who they have put trust in.

The reality is that there are some people of both genders who treat their partners and or kids abusively, some are upfront violent thugs, others run campaigns of psychological warfare against partners and or kids. The first are relatively easy to deal with when identified, the tricky bit with physical violence is picking the violent bully from someone who has reacted badly to the ongoing psychological bullying of the second type.

TBC
R0bert

Pt 2
Those who want to portray isolated incidents occurring during the breakdown of a relationship as reason to destroy someone's life whilst ignoring the family terrorist actions don't help protect anyone. The family terrorist can get at a partner in almost every aspect of their lives, leaving them no safe place of retreat. Walking away can mean the loss of almost everything and keep it going for a long time if there are kids involved.

We do need protections in place against the genuinely abusive but we can't afford to allow those protections to become yet another tool in the arsenal of the family terrorist, backed by the power of the state and gender stereotypes to hurt people who have tried their best to do the right thing and not done any genuine harm.

R0bert

I appreciate the personal complexities you describe, R0bert… though the swappable plans has some merit in that it worked in the SALT treaties between the Soviets and the USA – though not all game theory is ever going to work in the real world – and I'm increasingly of the opinion that nothing will in respect of some failed marriages. Mostly because in these (minority of) cases the parties concerned have lost respect of the other and/or themselves and/or the children.

Nor was I trying to address the case of genuine child abuse issues – where there are they should be treated as 'criminal' matters.

Dealing with the 'family terrorist' is never going to be straightforward since their psychopathy has become total selfishness in motivation.

Humans have a nasty habit of almost never voluntarily yielding any power of whatever sort that they believe they have over others – and that's when things are going well!