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Well Anon 11.01 you seem to be putting yourself on a pedestal as a self appointed scrutineer of the legal system. I am fascinated by your insinuations about lawyers and judges and I can only think that it stems from your own court experiences. I am sad if that is the case.

I think that you will find that judges find custody trials extremely difficult and taxing and often they will make their final decisions with a heavy heart. Such decisions are made following extensive scrutiny of experts' reports and the judgement of the parties and on some occasions interviewing the children themselves. Then the judges have to rely on the facts but use their experience in sussing out liars even tho' some people are very good liars. And isn't dispute resolution what the judges do day in day out? Why do they have to submit to some jumped up civil servant to tell them how to do their job?

You relate to the deaths of children and statistics thereof since 2012. Where do these figures come from and what are you trying to justify by mentioning them? That more mums kill their children than dads? As any judge would tell you every case is different and there are many many factors to be considered in custody trials. Sadly scoring points and "getting one over on the other side" is often the motive for custody trials and so you can't just generalize by saying that engaged parents are all "good" parents. How can you change that attitude? And finally to make mediation legally binding beggars belief as some poor sod who has fallen out with the mediator during the preliminaries and then loses the case as a result can have no recourse for a miscarriage of justice. Is that fair?

Often parties are unable to express themselves properly in the circumstances of a custody trial which are of course difficult and very emotional. Why can't they rely on a lawyer to present their case? If they can't then they fight with one hand tied behind their back.

I don't suppose that you will agree with much of what I have said above but I just felt that I had to take issue with some points you made.