After more than two decades in family litigation, I believe it is time to rethink custody, visitation and parenthood. Every custody dispute involves three persons the mother, the father and, most importantly, the child. Yet the child’s interests can become secondary to the conflict between the adults.
Custody is not parenthood. One parent may provide the child’s primary residence and daily care without the other becoming a visitor in the child’s life.
The marital status of parents should not determine a child’s right to maintain a meaningful relationship with either parent.
Children deserve relationships, not appointments. Meaningful parenting means being present in ordinary life at school, during holidays, at birthdays, during illness, and in the countless everyday moments through which a parent-child bond is built.
Shared parenting does not necessarily mean 50/50 custody. The child’s welfare must remain paramount, and genuine concerns such as abuse, violence, neglect or parental incapacity may require restrictions. But absent such circumstances, parental separation should not become parental disappearance.
Our jurisprudence has already recognised that custody with one parent does not necessarily require marginalising the other. In Mst. Madiha Younus v. Imran Ahmed (2018 SCMR 1991), the Supreme Court approved substantial periods of interim custody with the father, including weekends, vacations and family occasions. In Shahida Adnan v. Additional District Judge (2021 YLR 1915), the Lahore High Court also recognised the continuing importance of a child’s relationship with both parents.
And while parents litigate, children grow. Time lost during prolonged custody disputes cannot be restored by a judgment delivered years later.
The objective, therefore, should not be a battle for “equal custody” but recognition of equal parenthood giving equally situated parents an equal opportunity to remain meaningfully involved in their child’s life.
Not because parents have a right to possess children, but because children have a right to meaningful relationships with both parents.
Marriage may end. Parenthood should not.
At the end of every custody dispute, the true winner should never be the mother or the father.
It should be the child.
Fahad Ahmad Siddiqi
Advocate Supreme Court of Pakistan