Most people going into family court proceedings assume the system is a leveller. That if you tell the truth, present your evidence and follow the rules, things will work out reasonably. And often, they do. But for some people and particularly those dealing with a controlling or high-conflict ex, the legal process becomes another arena for exactly the same behaviour they've been living with at home. Not because the system is broken, but because it can be used by someone who knows how to work...

There's a quiet practice happening in some separating families that rarely makes headlines, but it's become common enough that the Family Justice Council issued specific guidance against it last month: parents asking their children to record the other parent. A phone left running in a school bag. A child gently prompted to "remember what Dad says" or "tell me if Mum seems upset." If it sounds extreme, that's because it is. But in the pressure of a contested separation, it happens more often...

Father's Day is everywhere this weekend. The cards in the supermarket, the Sunday lunch bookings, the "tag a dad" posts filling up your feed. For a lot of fathers, none of that touches them today because the children they'd be celebrating with aren't there. If that's you, this is genuinely hard, and the challenge of it is not a sign that you're failing. It's a sign that you're a father who wants to see his children and currently can't, on a day that's designed to make that absence impossible...