Caroline Overington | June 03, 2009
THE shared-parenting law introduced by the Howard government is deeply flawed and must be either amended or thrown out and replaced with something new.
That is the view of Patrick Parkinson, who was chairman of the Family Law Council when the legislation was being developed, and the council's current chairman, John Wade.
Professor Wade said the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act of 2006, designed to give children access to both their parents after divorce, was incoherent, "filled with gobbledegook" and failed to give judges "the clear signals they need to make good decisions".
"So there have been some horrible decisions," Professor Wade added. He said it set up false expectations for fathers, who believed it would guarantee them a 50-50 time split with their children, and it condemned other children, including infants, to a damaging cross-country "shuttle life" between warring parents.
Professor Parkinson said the amendment did not give clear signals, nor give judges enough guidance on when shared parenting was appropriate and when it was not.
"There have been some cases where children under the age of two are doing week-about (one week with the father, one with the mother) and often travelling long distances," Professor Parkinson said. "Young children often do well with frequent contact with both parents, but it is important to avoid long separations from the primary caregiver.
"If you've got mum and dad living around the corner it might be fine because frequent short visits are possible."
He said the law needed "tweaking". "It's sometimes that the parliament needs to send clear signals," he said. "This is not a coherent piece of legislation."
The Australian has recently reported on Family Court decisions that have troubled some family law experts. In one case, known as Irish and Michelle, the Family Court ordered that two Tasmanian children be removed from the care of their mother, with whom they had lived all their lives, to live with their father, who had moved to Melbourne to be with his new girlfriend. There was no abuse or neglect.
The judge thought the mother had not encouraged the children to maintain a relationship with their father after he left home.
In another case, known as Rosa and Rosa, heard in Townsville last month, a mother was told she could not leave a remote mining town in northwest Queensland with her five-year-old daughter because her ex-husband wanted to stay there and work. The couple had lived there less than a year before they broke up and the mother, who said she would not leave without her daughter, is now confined to poverty, and life in a caravan.
Professor Parkinson said judges in different states were interpreting the law differently. In Victoria and Western Australia, for example, parents were more likely to be allowed to relocate with a child after a divorce than in NSW.
The Family Law Council - a statutory body established in 1976 to give the attorney-general advice on whether family law is working, and which comprises judges, lawyers and family law academics - recently compiled a paper on shared parenting that found a "new breed" of family disputes had cropped up in the Family Court since the shared parenting amendment was enacted, "namely attempts to stop the primary residential parent from moving within or across a city".
Some members of the council are also concerned about the "undisputed damage to young children engaged in shuttle lives".
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment