HADEN & NESTOR

In *Haden & Nestor*, heard by Judge M Neville, the mother sought to reopen final parenting orders. The core of the dispute concerned whether the children were at risk of harm due to exposure to further intractable parental conflict and the likelihood of any new orders being significantly varied from the existing ones.

The court was required to determine whether the threshold established in *Rice & Asplund* had been met. This involved assessing whether the level of parental conflict was so intractable that it placed the children at risk, and whether there was a real prospect that any new orders would differ substantially from the existing final orders.

Judge M Neville dismissed the mother's application, finding that the threshold for reopening the final orders was not met. The court's reasoning focused on the absence of evidence demonstrating that the children were at risk of harm from continued litigation or that any proposed new orders would represent a significant departure from the existing arrangements. The court noted that the existing orders were final and that the threshold for disturbing such orders was high.

Consequently, the mother's application was dismissed. Any application for costs was to be made within 28 days, and the matter was otherwise removed from the active pending cases list.