An Australian father spent AU $200,000 (£123,347) on a three year court battle to see his daughter.
Thomas Home from Cairns in northern Queensland has now launched a campaign to reform the approach taken by the family courts to fathers following family breakdown.
The 30 year-old cares for his three year-old daughter three days a week, The Cairns Post reports, but only won the right to shared care so after 27 court appearances and a legal bill which has forced him to remortgage his home.
He has now established the Australian Brotherhood of Fathers, a national lobbying group pushing for new family court legislation. To date the organisation has attracted support from around 16,000 Dads across the country.
Mr Home told the paper:
“We’re trying to achieve fairness in family separation for access for both parents and making it as ideal for children as possible. We want to repair the flawed social policies and the system within the Family Court for family access issues.”
Two subsequently withdrawn domestic violence claims prolonged Mr Home’s courtroom struggle and reduced contact with his daughter at one point to two hours a week in a local shopping centre.
He recalls:
“In the first year, I was paying tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers to be able to see my child, to be able to try and maintain a relationship with my daughter, so that she knew who I was. It was having an effect on me and the people around me as well and the financial burden was extremely difficult.”
So instead of that money being able to be passed on to his daughter who statistically will have a more challenging life than those of children from non separated parents, the lawyers have got a fat pay day, nice.