Judicial interviews with children in contested parenting proceedings are an uncommon and contentious practice in Australia and many other common law jurisdictions. While there has been some debate about the merits and risks of such a practice among professionals and academic commentators, there...

This article explains the division of legislative responsibility in parenting matters and the language used in Australia in place of 'custody.' It explores the procedure and substantive law involved in allocating parental rights and responsibilities and addresses the international child...

Very different rules regarding the economic consequences of divorce govern divorces in Australia and the United States. These differences are explored in this paper. We consider 6 different hypothetical divorcing couples. Prof. Parkinson predicts how each such couple would fare in an Australian...

Fourteen parents who had undertaken child-inclusive mediation, and a comparison group of 19 parents who had engaged in mediation without their children being involved, were asked about their views on utilising child-inclusive mediation to assist in the resolution of their disputes concerning...

This article presents a thematic retrospective of the past 40 years of family law in terms of the international landscape in developed countries. It examines three questions: First, whatever happened to marriage? While once marriage was central to family formation, it is no longer. Indeed,...

The argument of this Article is that the width of discretion that trial judges have to alter property rights under the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) (‘the Act') has been overstated. The property aspects of the Act can only be valid to the extent to which the law is an appropriate application of...