Grandparents
can damage the children of divorcing couples by increasing conflict between
couples, according to a UK family law adviser to the government.

David
Norgrove, the chairman of an official review on family justice which was
published on Thursday, said some couples used their parents as a “weapon” during
contested divorce cases, according to a report in the Daily
Telegraph.

And he said
that the question as to whether giving grandparents access to their granchildren
was the wrong question.

“We should
not be putting all the emphasis on the rights of the adults. The question is
wrong: it should be what is in the best interests of the child, not what is
right for the adults,” he said.

His remarks
came as he unveiled plans for parents to go through more “do-it-yourself”
divorces to speed up settlements.

Mr Norgrove
acknowledged that grandparents could be “extremely important in a child’s life”
but he said that some made problems worse during divorces by demanding the right
to have contact with the children.

He said:
“Grandparents can be used by parents as a way of getting at their ex-partner.
Grandparents are not always straightforward in the way they behave and the
result can be damage to children.

“There is no
evidence that courts unreasonably refuse the ability of a grandparent to bring
an application for contact with their grandchildren.

“Not all
grandparents are good grandparents. One of the separating parents can use his or
her parents as a weapon against the other partner.”

Mr
Norgrove’s review did not recommend any legal right for grandparents to see
their grandchildren after a couple divorced. Instead they would continue to be
able to apply for access through the courts.

In his
family justice review, Mr Norgrove recommended that parents should be encouraged
to carry out more divorces using “do-it-yourself”
websites.

They would
be required to go through a series of mediation steps before getting to court,
guided by a new website where couples could download divorce forms.

He said: “At
the moment it is very hard to get hold of the forms. The aim is to make it
easier for people to do it themselves because the tendency is for it all to get
out of control.”

He also
recommended encouraging divorcing couples to agree a contract, possibly when
they first have children, setting out who would look after the children after a
separation or divorce.

The
parenting agreements could also set out access arrangements for
grandparents.

“It would be
signed and it would be taken into account by the court if they ended up fighting
it out but … it could not be made legally binding,” Mr Norgrove
said.

He said he
wanted to establish a six-month cap on the time it takes for child care
proceedings to go through courts. The average is currently 61
weeks.

More judges
would be encouraged to hear cases from start to finish, and a new Family Justice
Service would make sure agencies and professionals worked better
together.

His
recommendations, he said, were aimed at putting children at the heart of the
family justice system, and avoiding court battles. He said: “All the evidence is
that you cause more damage to children, because the children get caught in the
middle of the battle.”

Mr Norgrove
defended his decision not to include a legal right for divorced fathers to have
a “meaningful relationship” to see their children, which had been recommended in
his interim report in April.

Evidence
from other jurisdictions such as Australia suggested that children were more
damaged when courts imposed time limits on access to different parents, Mr
Norgrove claimed.

“All the
evidence is that it pushes judges into ordering more time with both parents than
is good for the child,” he said.

In the
foreword to his review, he added: “We are aware that some will be disappointed
by our decision to recommend against a legal presumption around shared parenting
and to step back even from the recommendations we made in this respect in our
interim report.

“The law
cannot state a presumption of any kind without incurring unacceptable risk of
damage to children. Progress depends on a general social expectation of the full
involvement of both parents in the lives of their children before separation,
not on changes in the law.”