As a successful working mother, Jo Joyce always thought that women could have it all.
A high-flying divorce lawyer, she revelled in the cut and thrust of the courtroom, proudly combining her career with bringing up two young children, Ross and Madelaine.
With her businessman husband, Andy, the family lived in a £600,000 detached house set in a three-acre garden in a glorious part of Nottinghamshire.
Together again: Jo Joyce with Ross and Madelaine
There was the Ferrari in the driveway and no money worries. The children enjoyed an idyllic existence and Jo felt as though her 11-year marriage was blessed.
Turn the clock forward to today, three and a half years later, and Jo is a different woman. She cannot count the times she has lain awake at night worrying about Ross and Madelaine. After the acrimonious collapse of her relationship with Andy, the two children were taken away by the courts and sent to live with their father.
Now nine and 11, they have only just come back home to her after a bitter custody battle within the family justice system, in which she used to be a leading light.
And 44-year-old Jo, a blonde with a wide smile, believes that her horrendous experience was all because she combined a career with motherhood.
'I am not stupid,' she said yesterday at her now modest rented house 20 miles outside the cathedral city of Southwell, Nottinghamshire.
'I've seen the way courts penalise women during custody disputes for daring to have a career as well as children. I never expected it to happen to me.'
Jo has become part of a worrying phenomenon . Courts are increasingly ruling that women live apart from their children after a divorce.
Many campaigners see this as an attack on working mothers and say that the increasingly 'gender-blind' courts are now biased in favour of fathers (although naturally many divorced men will respond 'about time too'.).
Who knew?
By June 2009, the average amount of child maintenance non-resident parents were asked to pay by the Child Support Agency was £21 per week
Figures from the Child Support Agency show that the instances where mothers are registered as the non resident parent doubled from 32,000 in 2005 to 65,800 by March of this year. Yet, this official picture is just the tip of the iceberg.
The charity Match (Mothers Apart From Their Children), helping women in this distressing situation, estimates that there are closer to 250,000 mothers no longer living under the same roof as their children.
After years of high profile stunts by male pressure groups, such as Fathers4Justice, many people assume that men still systematically fare badly in battles over custody (or what is now known as the residency) of children heard in family courts.
Yet, gradually, the pendulum is swinging against mothers or, at least, mothers who go out to work.
The Equal Parenting Alliance, advising those in such heartbreaking disputes, believes that with the acquiescence of the courts half of the children of splitting parents now end up in the care of the father.
Jo herself says:'I felt like a condemned woman standing before the judge and arguing that I wanted to look after my own children. I was persecuted in the courts and I am sure it is because the judge did not believe that I could have a career and be a good mother too.'
So how has this happened and what has been the effect on the children themselves?
The changes have occurred gradually and out of the public eye. Despite pleas from the press and efforts by the Government to open up the family courts to public scrutiny, most of events that happen there cannot be revealed in order to protect the children involved.
However, the shift in favour of fathers in court custody arrangements is a carbon copy of what has occurred in America, provoking a blaze of publicity and criticism from women's groups across the Atlantic.
It started so well: Jo Joyce and Andy on their wedding day
It was back in September 1994 that the US was rocked by a court decision involving Sharon Prost, an ambitious and highly-successful career lawyer advising politicians on Washington DC's Capitol Hill at the United States Congress.
She was ordered to surrender her two sons to her former husband, who was working part time.
While Ms Prost was described as an obsessive workaholic who got home late at night, eating her supper sitting on the floor surrounded by legal papers, HER husband was portrayed as a doting father who had time to put the children first.
The Sharon Prost custody row set a precedent that critics believe was fundamentally flawed. As Nancy Polikoff, family law expert at the American University in Washington DC recalled recently: 'In the Prost case, the husband was unemployed for a substantial period, yet the kids were still put in day care full time.
'If a woman did that, it would count against her. In that case it was treated as a neutral fact. '
She feels that, back then and now, there is a dangerous double standard operating in the courts.
'Many women who hold full-time jobs still do most of the work of parenting.They're the ones who really know what the child needs, even if they send the baby sitter to buy it.'
Significantly, the British courts take no account of a mother's natural nurturing instincts or that in a family she invariably takes the lead role in looking after children.
Under the 1989 Children Act, courts must consider the interests of the child above everything.
The way this legislation is framed means that parents are no longer referred to specifically as 'mothers' or 'fathers', but as those with 'parental responsibilities'.
This gender-neutral approach means that a mother can not presume that she will become the main carer for her children post-divorce as once routinely was the case.
Miranda Fisher, a family law solicitor with London firm Charles Russell, agrees that in Britain there has been a shift from automatically giving children to their mothers after marital splits.
If one has a career and is working long hours while the other is a stay-at-home parent, then it is likely that the courts will look favourably on the latter whether it is the father or the mother.
She says: 'As more mothers work full time and fathers take on childcare responsibilities, there is a growing trend in the family courts towards making shared residence orders.
There are also more cases where fathers obtain sole residence orders, although they are still in the minority.'
Hazel Wright, head of the family department at London lawyers, Cumberland Ellis, warns that even when the courts grant a shared residency order that does not mean that the children live equally between each of their parents.
The mothers can be eased out of their children's lives if they reside with the father and the mother gets meagre visiting rights, or vice versa.
'More men work from home or have been forced out of their jobs because of the recession, At the same time, women are working to make ends meet. If the man tells the judge he is the primary carer and the mother is the breadwinner who is rarely at home, then the courts will take notice of this and let him look after them.'
Sarah Hart, the author of a new book on this trend, A Mother Apart, is aware of a growing backlash. 'Working mothers are losing out,' she says.
'The courts don't necessarily view a mother as a capable main carer of her children if she also has a career.'
Illusion: From outside, Jo and Andy appeared happy. But, behind closed doors they were arguing because Jo felt he was not supporting her
She cautions working mothers - even those who are happily married - that the hours they spend out of the home can influence court decisions in a custody dispute years down the line.
The stigma suffered by women who lose their children in custody battles is grim. Society assumes that they have abandoned their children, or are deemed unfit mothers by the court. They are perceived as heartless, selfish or cruel, say UK campaign groups.
Norma Cavendish understands this well. A marketing executive from Blackheath,south London, she thought she had the perfect life balance, working three days a week and looking after her son and daughter for the rest of the time.
That was until she and her husband James' divorced and went to the custody courts. James who runs his own business was a very hands on father. Norma admits his work allowed him a flexible lifestyle. He often put the children to bed, and took them out to the park.
But after the marriage broke up he did not want to share them with Norma. The courts gave the couple shared residency but the girl and boy, now ten and 12, were given to James to live with. Gradually James chipped away at Norma's visiting rights and persuaded the children that their mother did not want to see them.
The children grew apart from Norma. She has not seen her daughter for more than a year, and her son just once in the same time. Other parents look at her suspiciously because she has, to all intents and purposes, lost her own children.
Yet she pays maintenance to James through the Child Support Agency to cover the costs of bringing them up. She is £10,000 in debt because during the traumatic time consuming custody battle she lost her job.
Norma, 38, says:'If I had been a stay at home mother I would not have lost my children. What kind of indictment of life in the 21st century is that?
'My children are cut off from my entire family. I wonder how in the future my son will cope a relationship with a woman when he has not seen his mother at such a formative age. I send the children weekly letters, but I don't know if they get them. It is a bereavement and I only hope that when they are older they will come back of their own free will.'
Distraught: After a two-day hearing last October, a judge decreed that Ross and Madelaine must live with their father and see Jo on alternate weekends, half the holidays and a mid-week night
Which is, thankfully, what happened to Jo Joyce. Today as she cuddles her children in her garden, she can look back on her nightmare with some degree of impartiality.She believes that any woman who works - whether it be as a shop assistant or a high-flier - can lose their children in a custody wrangle.
'In the recession mothers who have become breadwinners can all be caught in this trap. In my case, Andy wanted me to work and I believe my career was used as a stick to beat me.
'The judges couldn't see me as an loving mum fighting for the best outcome for my children. I feel that if I had been a non-working mother I would have been treated with empathy and dealt a fairer outcome.'
Such an acrimonious end to her own marriage is not what Jo expected when she first fell for Andy in January 1995. Raised in Singapore and Essex by her accountant father and secretary mother, Jo first met Andy at her local gym after landing a job at one of the Nottingham's best law firms.
Within six months the couple had bought a house together.In April 1997, they married in front of family and friends in Southwell. Within a year Jo had given birth to Ross, with Madelaine following 18 months later in August1999. She returned to work juggling the demands of her legal career with motherhood.
From outside, Jo and Andy appeared happy. But, behind closed doors there were beginning to be arguments because Jo felt he was not supporting her. She says he never changed a nappy and used any excuse to avoid looking after the children. 'It was all left to me even though I had my career.' she remembers.
'He would brag to acquaintances that I was a brilliant lawyer. At home, though, he seemed to have little interest in the kids that he didn't even read Ross and Madelaine a bedtime story. It broke my heart. '
By April 2006, the couple had a ferocious row during which she accuses Andy of manhandled her. Whatever the accuracy of this - and as Jo Joyce admits there are two sides to every story - she decided to call time on the marriage.
'I stayed on in our house until it was sold and Andy moved to his parents in Southwell. I filed for divorced on the grounds of his unreasonable behaviour and we both appointed solicitors.'
The battle lines were drawn. Nothing could have prepared Jo for what happened next. She thought that she would automatically get custody of the children because she had been such a good hands-on mother and Andy had played a smaller part in their daily upbringing.
She was wrong.
At her first court appearance in May 2006, Jo was shattered to hear that Andy had applied for shared residency of the children. 'I thought it was a stunt to cause me the maximum pain as he knew the children were my reason for living.
'I wanted the court to listen to my fears for them because of Andy's behaviour towards me. Instead, I was ignored.
I was constantly told: 'Well that's not what your husband says.'
One barrister labelled her a 'hostile mother' intent on blackening her husband's name to win custody. Another judge said that she was making things up about Andy.
In April 2007, a judge agreed that Jo should have shared residency of the children with Andy. It meant that Andy would have the children to stay three nights a fortnight.
Then Jo made a fatal mistake. When the children grew upset about visiting their father, she racheted up the custody row asking the courts to reduce their visits to him. In response, Andy said he would look after the children himself.
After a two day hearing in October 2008, a judge decreed that Ross and Madelaine must live with him and see Jo on alternate weekends, half the holidays and a mid-week night.
Jo was distraught. The children, particularly Ross, appeared to be missing his mother The little boy began to getting into trouble at school and once ran away from his father's home.
'The only thing that cheered me was my belief that Andy would tire of the arrangement within six months. In fact, it only went on just under four months until February this year.'
According to Jo, Andy began to find it difficult to cope with two young children and his successful business. Simultaneously, Ross told his father: 'I've had enough. I want to be with Mummy.' And back the children came to their mother
Today, they reach out to Jo as if they cannot believe they are with her again. Jo is thrilled and neither she, nor Andy, have gone near the courts again. They agree they both want the very best for their children.
'The court order giving me those limited visiting right to Ross and Maddie still exists. But the children want to live with me so they do,' said Jo this week.
Now Jo has resigned her legal job and just written a book on her experience, 'The Divorcing Women's Survival Guide'.
She says:'The system is flawed. Custody should not come down to whether you're a woman who works or stays at home.
It should be based on behaviour and, most importantly, whether you're a good parent. Other mothers should beware.'
And she is, almost certainly, right.
Ref: dailymail.co.uk