Demonising the Family Court

I've been noticing a trend in the media lately, where decisions of the Family Court are deemed "outrageous" by the public.

As a family law solicitor, I , and certainly my clients, do not always agree with the decisions made in some Family Law cases. In fact, wherever possible I encourage my clients to reach agreement rather than resort to Court. However, reducing a family law matter to a headline, is certainly not helpful. 

Recently, the media reported on the Family Court case involving the Hague Convention. Many of the reports on that case focused only on one side of the story, but ignored many key considerations for the Court, such as the fact that the girls were interviewed by two different experts before the Judge ordered the mother to return them to Italy (their home), the Judge found that the mother had told the father they were simply coming on a holiday to Australia rather than relocating, and most disturbing: that the maternal grandmother in that case had reportedly threatened harm to the girls.

This week, the case in focus relates to property. The headlines read "Man's humiliation at digging up parents' ashes" and "Dust to dust-up: husband ordered to dig up parents' ashes in divorce row". However, if you actually read the judgement (here is a link to the judgement on Austlii) there were a number of factors the Court was required to consider in this case. If you don't want to read the whole case, some of the key paragraphs are explored on this blog of a barrister who practices in Family Law.

The media report that the wife got to keep the property that she "desperately wanted" but in fact, there was a lot more to it. In fact, the reference to the parents ashes is only briefly mentioned. For example, the Court found that:

• the property was purchased by the parties during the relationship
• the parties eventually moved to live at the property in about 2008
• the husband had voluntarily moved out of the property after separation and some 12 months prior to the hearing
• in the husband's initial application to the Court, he did not seek to retain the property 
• his parents ashes were in urns located on the property, not interred (and not needing to be "dug up")
• the wife had remained living on the property with one of the children and continued to run a business from the property which generated a small income (and her only source of support)
• the husband had employment which included a six figure salary and had admitted to spending more than $600,000 in the 2 years since separation
• the wife's "only realistic source of future income" was generated by the business she was operating on the property
• the wife would be unable to buy a similar property in the area

The Court had to consider all of these factors when making a decision and in the end, they weighed the wife's need to retain the property as greater.

Family Law matters can be complicated. If they were easy, we wouldn't need the Family Court to make decisions for parties when they cannot agree. Family Law matters are hard and are upsetting for everyone involved. Using these matters to create headlines does not help anyone, particularly when the media does not report all of the facts.