SIR BOB GELDOF, the singer and Live Aid organiser, has unleashed a blistering attack on the legal system for its treatment of fathers in custody battles. He makes a passionate demand for changes in the law governing access to children after couples break up in an essay to be published this week.

He writes: "So many of us are hurting and yet the law will treat the man in court (if my case is typical) with contempt, suspicion, disdain and hostility," adding that the law is "unjustly weighted in favour of women".

In an extract published in today's News Review, he says: "The law is creating vast wells of misery, massive discontent, an unstable society of feral children and feckless adolescents who have no understanding of authority, no knowledge of a man's love and how different but equal it is to a woman's.

"Family law as it currently stands does not work. It is rarely of benefit to the child and promotes injustice, conflict and unhappiness on a massive scale. Most custody rulings show no understanding of contemporary society."

Geldof underwent a bitter custody battle with his late wife Paula Yates after she left him for Michael Hutchence, an Australian rock singer, in 1995.

He eventually won custody of their three daughters, Fifi Trixibelle, now 19, Peaches Honeyblossom, 14, and Pixie, 12, who he has brought up single-handedly. He is also the legal guardian of Tiger Lily, 6, Yates's daughter by Hutchence.

Hutchence, singer with the band INXS, was found hanged in a Sydney hotel room in 1997. Geldof was one of the last people he spoke to when they allegedly argued on the phone over Yates's rights to see her children. She died of a heroin overdose in 2000.

After criticising the law on custody on television chat shows, Geldof said he received more than 70 bin-liners full of letters on the subject. Studies have shown that keeping in contact with both parents is beneficial to children, and that 40% of parents not living with their children ?? the vast majority of them fathers ?? lose all contact with them within two years. But the conflict that can occur when estranged couples arrange contact with children can be bad for their sons and daughters.

Geldof wants the law to be remodelled around the Danish system, under which parents are urged to ensure that children divide their time equally between both parents. Official figures show that nine out of 10 single-parent families in Britain are headed by women.

Geldof believes the law assumes that women are automatically better at childcare than men, when in recent decades male and female roles have become more blurred.

Geldof's essay, entitled The Real Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name: A Sometimes Coherent Rant, is part of a collection of writings by leading experts in the field.

Cherie Blair QC is expected to attend the launch of the book in London this week, which has been compiled and edited by a group of academics and lawyers.

Geldof has attended seminars and meetings with the group to discuss his contribution to the book, Children and Their Families: Contact, Rights and Welfare.

Dr Andrew Bainham, of Christ's College, Cambridge University, who is one of the editors of the book, said: "There has been a lot of debate recently on the subject of contact. It divides people very strongly. There is a view that fathers have an uphill struggle maintaining contact with children, and that the law is stacked against them, and that's Bob's view.

"His contribution is unique because it is written from personal experience. He has also had an enormous number of letters from people who have been through the system."

The book also examines the psychological cost to families of break-ups and the likely impact of the Human Rights Act on battles between couples over access rights.

Another contributor to the book, Dr Shelley Day Sclater of the University of East London, said that while men such as Geldof feel that the law is biased against them for being men, women also often feel hard done by in custody and access and blame it on a gender bias.

"Both partners say the court is favouring the other and that they are being badly done by," she said. "The feeling is shared by both women and men."

Geldof told The Sunday Times last week: "My agenda is to change this law. It's a blunt instrument and if you're subject to it you're freaking out. On father's day there is a peak of suicides, because of the fathers who are not allowed to see their kids on that day."

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