Lisa Young

This chapter suggests that the teaching of family law, and in particular the use of detailed real-life assessments, provides a good vehicle for developing advanced legal problem-solving skills in law students. Further, family law assessments can present the opportunity for invested personal experiences for students which can foster both retention of core doctrinal principles and calling attention to some of the fundamental tensions at play in family law and thus deepening student engagement with the topic.

This chapter explores how the Australian family court deals with sexual abuse allegations against a parent in a parenting dispute and what difference, if any, an important 2012 statutory amendment should make to the way cases are decided.' The chapter begins with a brief outline of the relevant statutory provisions governing parenting disputes in so far as they are relevant to this issue and then explains the pre-2012 case law setting out what is known as the 'unacceptable risk test'…

As noted at the end of the Australian chapter in the 2013 edition of the International Survey,' aside from the extension of the law to cover de facto couples, there has been little recent legislative appetite to change the basic approach to resolving family law property disputes in Australia. However, recent case-law is raising questions about whether there needs to be some refining of the very general provisions in the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) (FLA)…

Legislating to try to increase post-separation shared parenting, as Australia did in 2006, is intuitively attractive; however, as has been noted by commentators, ‘empirical support for legislating to prioritise shared time over other parenting arrangements is lacking’. A key driver for this brand of legislative reform is the ‘perception that the well-being of children suffers when they have too little contact with one parent (typically their father). In fact, the research presents a much more complex picture than this. However it can safely be said that promoting high quality father-child relationships post-separation will benefit most children. The end of 2011 presents an opportune time to reflect on Australia’s shared parenting experience as other jurisdictions continue to grapple with the question of whether to make similar legislative changes. Interestingly, England has just announced that it is considering heading down the shared parenting legislative path

The difficulties of protecting children from violence is a longstanding theme in Australian family law. Modern policy debates have seen increasing concern about child protection juxtaposed with the fear of strategically false allegations of child abuse and an overwhelming desire to try to maintain and foster father/child bonds. While the competing interests may be predictable, Australian family law has undergone very radical reforms in recent years, which have failed to appreciate the potential dangers children face ¡f those interests are not balanced in favour of child protection. This chapter traces the background to the 2006 family law reforms in Australia, outlines those reforms in so far as they relate to child protection, and briefly identifies the critique that attended their introduction. It then considers the impact of those reforms on the protection of children from family violence, using a case example to support its argument that legislative reform, including increasing emphasis on shared parenting, has fostered a decision-making approach that minimises issues of child protection in favour of parental contact. Recent research and evaluations of the 2006 reforms are then considered; so too is whether or not current proposals for further legislative reform are likely to improve the protection of children in separated families.

The term ‘family law’ suggests a body of laws that deals with all legal issues to families. In Australia, the ambit of what is generally referred to as ‘family law’ is, in fact, quite narrow In part, this stems from the fact that the Federal Government (which has limited law-making powers) has power under the Constitution to make laws relating to divorce and marriage and it has chosen to exercise those powers, predominantly through the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) (FLA). Thus, much of what is commonly referred to as ‘family law’ deals with marriage and divorce and things incidental to those processes, such as property settlements and parenting disputes. However, as the resolution of parenting disputes involve parents who have never beets married to each other (and, therefore, fall outside Commonwealth constitutional power), the states have referred to the Commonwealth the power to legislate on those disputes. As a result, today we have a set of Commonwealth laws that govern a range of matters including the formation of marriage, the dissolution of marriage, the resolution of parenting disputes and child support. This is what is generally meant when referring to ‘family law’.