Shared Care After Separation in the United Kingdom: Limited Data, Limited Practice?

• Author: Stephen McKay,Ruth Cain,Tina Haux
• Date: 01 October 2017
• Published date: 01 October 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12305

SHARED CARE AFTER SEPARATION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM:

LIMITED DATA, LIMITED PRACTICE?

Tina Haux, Stephen McKay, and Ruth Cain

1

Despite legislative reforms over the last 5 years aimed at giving non-resident parents rights to ‘involvement’ in the lives of

their children, the UK has not enacted a presumption of 50-50 shared care. The UK’s emphasis on individual arrangements fol-

lows an overall policy trend toward privatization of family disputes. The sparse data that exists suggest that the UK lags behind

other Western countries in the number of separated or divorced couples engaging in shared care. This article outlines recent

legislative changes, examines the available information on post separation contact and shared care, discusses reasons for the

scarcity of data, and concludes with observations on the importance of improved data-gathering on UK post separation

parenting.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

Recent legislation in the United Kingdom considered (once again) introducing a presumption of 50–50 residence after

separation, but decided against it.

Instead, there was an emphasis on the involvement of both parents after separation, without defining shared care in

terms of time or residence division.

UK policy and legislation on post-separation child arrangements and child maintenance emphasize private arrange-

ments without state intervention; only 10% of couples go to court for child arrangements and those that do are consid-

ered to be “high conflict.”

Data on shared care practices in the United Kingdom are sparse and difficult to analyze, reflecting a lack of definitional

clarity in policy and poor measurement in existing studies.

Estimates of the incidence of shared care range from 3 to 17%, although the accounts of resident parents suggest that

50–50 arrangements could be as low as 1%.

There appears to have been no substantial increase in shared care over the last decade, but the impact of recent legisla-

tive changes has yet to be assessed and better data are needed.

The United Kingdom has some way to go in strengthening the evidence base around patterns of post-separation

parenting.

Keywords: Child Arrangement Orders; Fathers’ Rights; Household Survey Data; Presumption of Parental Involvement;

Privatization; and Shared Care.

I. INTRODUCTION

Despite the high profile of recent media and policy debates on shared care in the United Kingdom,

the extent of shared care post-separation in the United Kingdom is difficult to establish due to the

poor capture of the phenomenon in survey data, which in itself reflects a lack of direct policy interest.

Estimates of 50–50 shared care in the United Kingdom range from 3 to 17% (Fehlberg, Smyth,

Maclean, & Roberts, 2011a, 2011b), although figures from parents with care have been as low as

1%. The absence of an official definition of shared care in the United Kingdom, or even a clear aca-

demic sense of what should be counted, adds to the confusion. Terms such as “shared parenting,”

“shared care,” and “shared residence” are often used interchangeably. The concepts of a resident or

main parent and a nonresident or contact parent linger on, even though they have now been officially

replaced by the supposedly neutral term “child arrangements” (along with the terminology of contact

and residence orders; Children and Families Act 2014, s 12).

Correspondence: T.Haux@kent.ac.uk; smckay@lincoln.ac.uk; r.c.n.cain@kent.ac.uk

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 55 No. 4, October 2017 572–585

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C2017 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts