Rotterdam court introduces children's advocate to give children a voice in divorce cases
The Rotterdam court has been experimenting with deploying a “children’s advocate” in cases concerning contact between children and their divorced parents. The advocate, who explicitly looks out for the interest of the child, mediates between the child and both parents separately before things get heated in court, and in many cases can come to an agreement before the court intervenes. The court finds this works so well that it has become standard procedure starting this year, Trouw reports.
This mostly involves cases in which children lost contact with one parent, usually the father, after a divorce, and that parent goes to court to restore contact. The “children’s advocate,” officially called a gurdian at litem, first meets with the child and both parents separately to investigate whether and how contact can be restored.
The cases are often complex because children sometimes feel torn by the conflict between their parents. Sometimes, a child will decline contact with one parent out of loyalty to the other.
A judge can’t always get to the bottom of things in a hearing, and if things turn heated, the hearing could turn out to be traumatic for the child. The children’s advocate has more time to investigate what the child wants and needs.
Trouw spoke to one of the Rotterdam court’s children’s lawyers who worked with a 15-year-old, furious that her father had left without explanation. “After a year, her father wanted to contact her again, but she wasn’t very receptive. Ultimately, I got her to sit down with her father,” Eric van der Pols said.
He helped her prepare for the conversation, so she knew what she wanted to say and had the chance to say it. “But her father was also able to explain why he couldn’t handle the conversation with her earlier. Ultimately, that led to understanding, and even a hug. Later, they had dinner together.”
During the hearing, the court considered Van der Pols’s report, which the girl and both her parents supported, and ruled that the family could continue on their chosen path.
According to Van der Pols, he restored some form of contact in about half the cases he was involved in. But he stressed that contact is not the goal. The goal is to figure out what is in the child’s best interest.
The children’s lawyers allow the child’s voice to be heard more effectively in court, Judge Sanderijn Wierink, one of the initiators of this experiment, told Trouw. Her colleague Eelco Moerman added that it saves time.
“In the old system, it could take six months for a case to come to court. Then you appoint a guardian ad litem, and then it’s easily another five or six months before you can discuss their report. Meanwhile, the child experiences tension for a year,” Moerman explained. Now, there’s also an initial hearing after six months, “but a lot has already happened in the meantime.” People tend show up at the hearing more on the same page.
During the over 18 months of the experiment, children’s advocates represented 47 children in the Rotterdam and Dordrecht region. The court considers the pilot so successful that it has implemented children’s lawyers as standard practice.
