Shared Care After Separation in the United Kingdom: Limited Data, Limited Practice?

Despite legislative reform in the last five years aimed at giving non-resident parents (NRPs) official rights to ‘involvement’ in the lives of their children, the UK has not enacted a presumption of ‘50/50’ shared care. The emphasis on individual arrangements follows an overall policy trend toward privatization of family disputes. The little data that exists suggests that the UK lags behind other countries in numbers of separated or divorced couples engaging in shared care, though the actual prevalence and practice of shared care in the UK is difficult to assess for several reasons: definitions of shared care range from 50/50 living arrangements to less definitive timeshares; data on shared parenting practices are relatively rare and fragmented; and it is too early to assess the impact of the new legislative presumption of ‘parental involvement’ on judicial decisions. This article outlines recent legislative changes, examines the available information on post separation contact and shared care, discusses reasons for the scarcity of data, and concludes with observations on the importance of improved data-gathering on UK post separation parenting.