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Annie Lööf spoke about Christmas peace in her Christmas speech. Or rather because of the lack of it, but it doesn’t hit the mark.
This is a leader who expresses the political line of Smålandsposten: for Christian values, conservative ideology in conjunction with the liberal tradition of ideas and for the preservation of business freedom and property rights. The political etiquette of the newspaper is moderate.
For families with relationship problems or domestic violence, this has been a difficult year that will end with the usual Christmas holidays. If home is not a safe place, the expectations of Christmas turn into demands that put your own situation in an icy light. It is important that these issues are addressed. But the reform proposal of the center leader does not hit the mark.
With the speech also came a reform package that was intended to be a Christmas gift for families in need of support. However, it seems that the party leader’s own image of how relationship problems tend to be has had to take up too much space when the reforms took place. The speech highlighted the controlling and violent parents who turn homes into prisons for women and children. The statistics say nothing more, but the reforms run the risk of strengthening rather than breaking down the walls that tough tyrants build around their relatives.
The proposal that the person who repeatedly brings a custody or contact action with a minor and loses should bear the legal costs of the other party is ill-considered. Lööf’s argument for the proposal is that “recurring court proceedings are costly and tedious, and they become a way for the perpetrator to continue using violence even after the end of the relationship.”
This is true in many cases, but it is not reasonable to link the best interests of the child with the finances of the parents. In cases where joint custody has become an option after previous hurdles, a parent should not be prevented from seeking to serve the best interests of their child by taking the matter to court.
At present, in addition, the courts can already oblige the person who files the appeal without objective grounds to bear all the costs of the process. A better solution would be to let the courts decide the cases with the documents already in the case, if one of the parties tries to use the litigation as a means of harassment. If nothing has come up to put the matter in a new light, no one needs to interrupt everyday life to sit in court.
Lööf’s idea that you should not be allowed to sue in custody or contact cases without first undergoing a mandatory mediation procedure is completely flawed, again due to too one-sided approach to a certain type of case.
This creates unnecessary inertia in a system that, relatively often, needs to be able to activate at full force in a short time. For example, if one of the parents tries to leave the country with the child. If the issue is also about relationship violence, it is not certain that mediation conversations can lead to anything constructive. Courts already have an effective classification of cases in which mediation may be appropriate.
Many custody disputes are handled with money from state legal aid, which only covers your own costs if you lose in court. With the Lööf building, it would mean a lot of risk to try to get it right, some couldn’t afford it.
These proposals seem ill-considered and partly unnecessary. Other reforms in the parcel box are more conventional and precise. But the lasting impression is that it is guided by a defined image of how it is normally seen in broken relationships rather than from what contributes to improving the protection of the vulnerable. The result is an unsaved Christmas gospel.
