Court Orders: One Parent Says No. The Other Says Yes. Now What? | Family Law for DSLs

Hi Brian, great to have you on the podcast today.

Earlier last week, I decided to put out on Facebook and LinkedIn a question saying that we're going to be interviewing today.

Was there any questions people might have on a legal basis when it comes to working as a DSL, predominantly in schools? And while these questions are tailored specifically to schools, they still apply directly to various other organizations as well.

But as DSLs, we often receive information about court orders relating to children.

Can you just briefly explain the types of orders that will be provided to schools?

So there's two sort of different areas in which the school might see court orders.

One is predominantly in relation to the children themselves, things like child arrangements orders, specific issue orders or prohibited steps orders.

But you also might have a school seeing some injunction orders such as non-molestation orders.

In order to really explain why these orders are in place, it's worth taking a step back and talking about something called parental responsibility.

A lot of schools are probably familiar with that term.

It comes from a piece of legislation that sets out what most people would call their parental rights.

So those with parental responsibility are responsible for determining decisions in relation to a child's upbringing, where they live, who they spend time with, what school they go to, what medical treatment they have, etc.

All of those sorts of decisions that a lot of people, as I say, tend to think of as their parental rights, but the term we use is parental responsibility.

And I think there's quite a lot said about the use of the word responsibility there.

It tells you a lot about the court's mindset, which is, as a parent, it's not your right to do these things.

You are responsible for making the best decision in relation to a child.

Most people who are a parent of a child will have parental responsibility.

Mothers automatically get it by their birth.

Fathers will have it if they're married or in a civil partnership with the mother.

They'll get it if they're registered on the birth certificate.

You can get it through a court order.

There's various other ways and they're a little bit beyond the scope of today, but there's lots of different scenarios in which someone might have it.

But the key fundamental point is if you have two people with parental responsibility, and I think it would be easy for me to sort of just say the parents for the peripers of today, but it may not necessarily be the parents.

But if all the people with parental responsibility agree on what's best for a child, then that is simply what happens.

If they agree what school the child should go to, then that is where they go to school.