A High Court judge has warned that the family court needs to reassert its authority to tackle the ‘lack of respect’ shown for its orders.

Speaking at the Association of Lawyers for Children annual conference at the weekend, Mr Justice Coleridge said that, in placing too much emphasis on the ‘sacred cow’ of the unfiltered views of children, including young children, the court was ‘shirking our responsibility to a degree which is bordering on abusive’.

He said people do not take the decisions of the court seriously enough and do not obey its orders promptly and fully, which leads to an increasing number of hearings and greater cost.

Coleridge said the lack of respect shown for court orders mirrored the lack of parental authority and other forms of authority in society in general, but said that in the interests of children it was vital for the family court to reassert its authority.

‘Just as parents need to be the authority figures for their children and not cowtow to ill-considered and apparently fashionable views about their role in their children’s lives, so too the court needs to act with authority by imposing clear boundaries on the behaviour of litigants,’ he said.

Coleridge called on all involved in the family court system to ‘be alive to the unintended slippage in the authority of the family court which has been creeping in and gathering momentum over the last decades and which we can no longer afford to ignore.’

‘Expression and projection of proper authority is of vital importance to parents, the courts and society. The rot must not be allowed to go further. In every way we simply cannot afford it,’ he said.

Coleridge criticised the trend of putting too great an emphasis on ‘listening uncritically’ to the wishes of children, particularly young children, which he said created the danger of ‘undermining the court’s authority and proper function’.

‘Children expect and are entitled to expect us to make these important decisions without overly and unnecessarily involving them in the process,’ he said.

‘I suggest we need to reaffirm, redefine and re-establish the proper function and role of the family court and family judge. It is to act as the proper and appointed authority figure both towards the parents and the children. Not another expert or welfare officer.’

To enhance the court’s authority, he said that, once a decision or order had been made, the consequences of breach should be spelt out, and where a breach does occur, enforcement action should be taken swiftly and rigorously.

He suggested that a three-strikes system should be introduced in contact cases, meaning that, where a parent disobeys a court order three times, the residence of the child would be transferred to the other parent provided it was safe to do so.

He also suggested that the wearing of robes by judges should be reintroduced, especially in serious, intractable cases.

Coleridge said the circumstances in which the family court finds itself, and with the prospect of funding cuts, called for a reappraisal of its approach.

‘There are simply too many cases and too few resources. The situation will only get worse and, quite simply, we cannot afford to go on as we have been,’ he said.

‘The luxury of endless hearings and endless employment of lawyers and experts is not going to be funded by central government, and so has to be very substantially restrained. We cannot go as we are, however retrograde and even painful that may seem to us,’ he added.