Support After Court
The conclusion of a family court case is a major landmark, but can come at a personal cost leaving many women emotionally drained from the adversarial nature of family court proceedings.
You may be two days, two months or two years down the road but if you feel that you would like support and assistance then please contact us.
We Can Help.
- Help you to rebuild confidence and self-esteem through understanding and adjusting to your experience.
- Help with adapting to the reality of court orders and navigating how these orders are working in reality for you and your children.
- Help with strategies to make court orders work for you.
- Help with an application to vary a court order that you feel is no longer appropriate or has an impact on the child’s welfare.
- Help to enforce a court order if boundaries are being breached.
- Help to apply to the court if abuse/coercive control has increased and escalated since the order was introduced.
Please contact us for a FREE 30 minute consultation to discuss your needs.
The outcome of a court case regarding child arrangements or financial proceedings may not have resulted in the best outcomes for you or your child. Your perception of fairness may have been undermined. You may feel that child contact or shared living arrangements for the children may be unsatisfactory, difficult, unsafe and exhausting, creating on going anxiety, resentment or frustration. You may feel stressed and anxious for the future.
There may be instances where you feel the court did not address the issues that were important or that the abuse you raised was systematically minimised. This may have ranged from children’s voices not being heard and allegations being ignored, dismissed or disbelieved. Failings of the court may have included inadequate risk assessment and you may continue to feel child arrangements are unsafe; where an ex-partner continues to control through repeat litigation and threats of repeat litigation.
Potentially, orders made by the court may have enabled the continued control of yourself and your children post separation. The long-term impact of post separation abuse manifests itself in physical, emotional, psychological, and financial harm for yourself and your children.
You may feel the level of abuse that you and your children experienced has worsened or escalated following proceedings in the family court. This may be compounded with concerns about reporting continuing abuse for fear it could be dismissed by criminal justice and child welfare agencies because of the family court orders.
The impact on litigants in person is particularly acknowledged. Feeling alone, vulnerable, threatened and re-traumatised is common to anyone having to navigate and survive the family court process without support.
Evidence suggests that where children are not heard during proceedings this impacts on the child. Children can feel let down or suspicious of authorities and trust in the court system can be eroded due to a child’s negative experiences. Children may continue to feel unhappy or unsafe with the new arrangements; do not want to visit or have contact with the other parent or may exhibit difficult behaviour on return and challenge the other parents boundaries. Alienation of a child by one parent of another is toxic and corrosive, causing harm to children.
Co-parenting is promoted by family courts and it expects parents to work together to facilitate contact arrangements. However this is not always achievable to all participants in the family courts, especially if you have or are still experiencing domestic abuse, coercive control or alienation. You may feel concerned about the negative impacts on your children compelled to have contact with an abusive parent and the burden placed on you as a mother to comply with contact orders.
Here at Women’s McKenzie Friend we can support you after court. We know that for some families this is just the beginning. We are experienced and understand what has happened for you since the day you started court proceedings, to the date of the final court order and now…