Japan's supreme court has ruled that parents who fail to respond to an estranged partner's requests to see their children can be fined.

The announcement comes as the result of a series of cases in which biological parents failed to respond to requests from the former spouses to see their children. The cases resulted in a supreme court ruling on March 28 stating that the individual who proposed the meeting must make the purpose and content of the meeting clear, Fuji TV reported.

Furthermore, the court ruled that the Sapporo high court's decision to indirectly coerce non-compliant parents using monetary fines was legal. For the first instance of non-compliance, a fine of 50,000 yen is mandated by the Sapporo high court.

A team consisting of presiding judge Ryuko Sakurai and four other judges considered the issue and agreed that, "the needs of the child should be considered and prioritized by the law. We are implementing flexible laws, in the hope that cooperation can be achieved in private without recourse to legal coercion."

© Japan Today