Commentary
Submissions on the Australian government’s draft Family Law Amendment Bill are due by Feb. 27. There is much to be concerned about in Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus’s draft amendment. But perhaps its most problematic aspect is the proposal to remove the order for “equal shared parental responsibility.”
As noted by Patrick Parkinson, a leading family law academic, the draft released on Jan. 30 “stripped almost all references which encourage the meaningful involvement of both parents in relations to the child after separation.”
One of the well-known facts about divorce is that children often adapt better to their parents’ separation if they are allowed to have a continuing contact with both of their parents. Indeed, a recurring theme in the field of child psychoanalysis is that children of divorced parents often desire to develop a meaningful relationship with both of their parents….