Family Law Changes Fail

Posted by: "John Flanagan" jef02@hotmail.com jef0042000

Fri Dec 1, 2006 12:05 am (PST)

Hi
I have been following a case in the Family Court over the past few months. The custodial mother was seeking to totally remove the custodial father from having any contact with the non-custodial father (previous contact was 37 per cent) . I went along to the final part of the hearing in the Family Court last week. The judge has had some considerable experience in family law. At a previous part of the hearing, some months before, the judge had even mentioned the new section 65DAA of the Family Law Act (i.e the judge has" to consider
equal time or substantial and significant time". I was quite hopeful that the new legislation may have an impact on the way the Family Court thinks. I even half expecting to see some changes in the way the Family Court deals with the new Family Law legislation. (Silly me) I was wrong In the interim period, the judge made interim orders that the father was to have some contact. The mother continually ignored the orders and
refused contact. The judge realised that the custodial mother was not Going to give contact to the father under any circumstances. The only alternative option that the judge had was to reverse contact. In that way, both parents would have had contact with the children. However the judge was not game enough to do this. As result, the mother has sole custody of the children and the father has no contact whatsoever - not
even telephone contact. Until the Government legislates for a
rebuttable presumption of equal time shared parenting we will continue to have no fairness in the Family Court.

Regards John Flanagan