Caroline Overington | June 01, 2009
NEW laws governing the custody of children are being used to prevent mothers from moving even a short distance from the family home after a divorce, according to experts in the field.
Non-custodial parents - usually fathers - are able to use the laws to claim that such a move will deny their children the right to spend "substantial and significant time" with both parents, as required by the new law.
In one case, known in court transcripts as Crowe, a father was able to get the Family Court to restrain his former wife from moving the children's home to "any place outside a radius of 30km from the Sydney GPO".
The new law requires the Family Court to presume that the best interests of the child are served by a meaningful relationship with both parents.
Two recent studies of the impact of these provisions confirm it is now harder for parents to get permission to leave town with the kids, even in cases where the wife is at extreme disadvantage.
The Australian last week reported a case where a mother was prevented from leaving a remote town in far north Queensland with her five-year-old daughter, despite having lived there for less than a year, and being confined by high rent to life in a caravan park.
In a paper presented to a lawyers' symposium in March, David Alexander said: "It is now a relatively simple matter for the non-residential parent to claim that even a short-distance relocation will preclude substantial and significant time (with the child)."
Similar conclusions were reached by family law expert Patrick Parkinson, in the Australian Journal of Family Studies.
His analysis "indicates that it is harder for a primary caregiver to relocate than before the 2006 amendments".
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