The former High Court judge is reported to have stated that Australia should follow the English model of dispute resolution by encouraging mediation and arbitration. Australian lawyers have been successfully using mediation for years. Family Court practices dictate the use of alternate dispute resolution before a judicial determination. Lord Woolf’s lessons were [...]

The Australian Institute of Studies has released a study confirming the long held view that divorce has lasting impacts on women’s income levels compared with their male partners. The information collected to reach this conclusion was compiled since 2001. There has, of course, been major legislative change in the form of the `shared [...]

The Institute of Family Studies has been requested by the Federal Attorney General to review the 2006 amendments to the Family Law Act, sometimes called the shared care amendments.
I am confident that the Institute can cut through the self-interested anecdotal based lobbying to reach a sensible conclusion. Anecdotes are typically boring and irrelevant. [...]