Hiroma & Anor and Hiroma & Anor

FAMILY COURT OF AUSTRALIA

HIROMA AND ANOR & HIROMA AND ANOR

[2011] FamCA 75

FAMILY LAW – CHILDREN – With whom a child lives – Parental responsibility – Grandparents

APPLICANT:

Mr Hiroma Senior

APPLICANT:

Mrs Hiroma Senior

RESPONDENT:

Mr Hiroma

SECOND RESPONDENT:

Ms Cho

FILE NUMBER:

SYF

3591

2006

DATE DELIVERED:

21 February 2011

PLACE DELIVERED:

Sydney

PLACE HEARD:

Sydney

JUDGMENT OF:

The Hon. Justice Cohen

HEARING DATE:

13-14 August 2009;

14 July 2010;
7 September 2010;
23 November 2010;
17, 21 January 2011

REPRESENTATION

COUNSEL FOR THE APPLICANTS:

Mr Gibbons

SOLICITOR FOR THE APPLICANTS:

Christopher Levingston & Associates

COUNSEL FOR THE RESPONDENT:

Ms Black

SOLICITOR FOR THE RESPONDENT:

Anthony Ziade & Associates

COUNSEL FOR THE RESPONDENT:

Mr Watkins

SOLICITOR FOR THE RESPONDENT:

G A Lawyers

Orders

That A born … April 2002 (“the child”) shall reside with the mother.
That the mother shall have sole parental responsibility for the said child.
That the father and applicants shall spend time with the child:
(a)during school term from after school on Thursday to the commencement of school on the following Monday in each alternate week; and,
(b)during the Easter, Winter and Spring school vacation periods from after school on the last day of school term to 5pm seven days later; and,
(c)during the Christmas school vacation at times which are agreed between the mother, father and applicants and in the absence of agreement;
(i)from after school on the last day of school to 5pm 14 days later in each Christmas school holiday commencing in an odd numbered year; and,
(ii)from 9am on 3 January to 5pm on 17 January in each Christmas school holiday period commencing in an even numbered year.

IT IS NOTED that publication of this judgment under the pseudonym Hiroma and Anor & Hiroma and Anor is approved pursuant to s 121(9)(g) of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth).

FAMILY COURT OF AUSTRALIA AT SYDNEY

FILE NUMBER: SYF 3591 of 2006

MR HIROMA SENIOR

Applicant

And

MRS HIROMA SENIOR

Applicant

And

MR HIROMA

Respondent

And

MS CHO

Second Respondent

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

The mother and father married in March 2003 and separated in January 2005.
These proceedings commenced with an application for Children’s Orders by the paternal grandparents, who I shall call the applicants. They asked for orders which would have the child of the two respondents, A, who is now nearly 9 years old and was born in April 2002, live with them and see her parents for 3 hours each Friday and 8 hours each Saturday. At the time, the parents were not living together but were allied in opposition to the paternal grandparent’s application.
The mother, who is the second respondent, took an active part in the proceedings and sought that the child should mainly live with her but spend time with the father, the first respondent, each week from Friday afternoon until Monday morning and for the paternal grandparents to have “reasonable” contact with her; the suggestion being that they could see her when she is with the father by arrangement with him. The father originally supported the mother’s stance but was not committed to involvement in the proceedings.
Subsequently, the father instructed the same solicitors and counsel the mother had instructed to conduct the case for him and he and the mother jointly filed, in January 2008 pursuant to directions made in September 2007 through their counsel, Mr Watkins, a case outline in which they were more specific about the time the child should spend with the applicants and her father. They asked that she spend two weekends from Friday afternoon to Monday morning in each four weeks during school term with her father and one weekend in each four weeks from Friday afternoon to Monday morning with the applicants. They asked that the applicants be granted five days with the child during each school holiday period. There was also agreement between the respondents on the time at Christmas and on the child’s birthday that the grandparents should spend with the child. It is not difficult to appreciate that the father’s stance was taken after he had fallen out with his parents.
When the hearing commenced on 22 September 2008, the father had changed his mind. He had fallen out with the mother and reconciled with his parents. He was taking an active part in the proceeds and was represented by counsel. On 22 September, the father filed his response to the application of his parents for final orders. He asked that the child live with his parents, that all four parties share parental responsibility for the child’s upbringing, that he have time with the child in each alternate week during school term from Thursday evening to Saturday evening and in each school holiday period for one week and that the mother spend time with her in each alternate week from Thursday evening to Saturday evening. I do not know whether or not this was intended to eliminate contact between the child and the mother during school holidays, but it did not provide for much contact between the child and her mother.
By 25 September the father had changed his mind and sought different orders. He asked that the child live with him and that he and her mother share responsibility for her long term care welfare and development. He wanted the mother to spend time with the child from Thursday evenings to Saturday evenings during school term, as before, but also to do so during one week of each school holiday period. He wanted his parents to spend each alternate weekend from after school on Thursdays to 6.00pm on Saturday with the child. This intimates that they would have no school holiday right to see the child. Of course, they could see her with the agreement of the father, who had not fallen out with them, but indicated he had asked for the orders on 22 and 25 September while bearing in mind the fact that in the past he had fallen out with his parents.
At the hearing in September 2008 a disturbing aspect of these proceedings emerged. For the first time the father disclosed to the Court that he had commenced to live with Ms P in early 2008 and had married her in April 2008. The mother only became aware of the marriage a short time before the Court became aware of it. As Ms P made clear in her affidavit filed for the father in court on 22 September 2008 when she said “I have met [the father’s] parents”, the relationship between the father and the applicants must be troubled. That between the father and his wife also became troubled.
Shortly after what was then thought to be the final day of the final hearing in August 2009, the father and Ms P separated. Nobody told the mother of this until Ms P told her on 20 February 2010. The father now lives with his parents. He has been living there since the separation, although he was overseas in Japan from the end of May 2010 to the end of July 2010. That he was overseas was hidden from the mother by the father, the applicants, and members of the father’s family, especially Ms O, the father’s sister, until after the father returned from his trip. That he had returned to live with the applicants in late 2009 had also been hidden from the mother by the father, the applicants and Ms O.
This is a matter which is of great significance because it indicates that co-operative parenting will not occur. It cannot occur unless all those involved are open and candid with one another. It is most disturbing that the mother also learnt nothing about the father’s situation from the child who was old enough to know.
Since 28 May 2009 the father has sought that the child live with him, spend alternate weekends with the mother from Thursday evenings to Saturday evenings, one week in each of the short school holiday periods with the mother, Mother’s Day, and Boxing Day with her and two weeks during the Christmas school holidays with her, and that the child spend each alternate weekend from Saturday morning to Sunday evening and each other Sunday with the applicants. Thus, for as long as the father lives with his parents, the child would effectively live with them and have two days contact with the mother during school term in each fortnight, one third of the Christmas Holidays with her and three other weeks during school holidays with her.
If the father decides to live independently of his parents, who the child continues to really live with will probably be the subject of arrangement between the father and his parents. There seems to me to be a tactical element in the orders the father seeks; one to assist his parents have de facto residence of the child.
The applicants’ latest claim is to have the child live with them from Monday to Thursday of each week, with the parents sharing the balance of time with her equally on alternate weekends commencing after school on Thursday to Monday morning. This is the current interim arrangement between the parties. The applicants submit that I should make an order for equal shared parental responsibility, whereas Mr Millar for the father asserted that no parental responsibility order should be made, thereby leaving s 61C of the Act to determine parental responsibility, which would repose with the father and mother.
The applicants also ask that I make an order to take account of the possibility that the father will move away from the applicants’ home. In that case, they want the mother and father to decide, jointly, on the time the child spends with them.
The applicants are of Chinese descent and the paternal grandfather is actually a Hakka. He and the paternal grandmother were born in Indonesia. They married there. The paternal grandfather is aged about sixty-four years and the paternal grandmother is eight years younger. She can understand Mandarin and speaks it a little. Neither can speak the mother’s native language which is Cantonese. Their first language is a Javanese dialect of Indonesian.
Both the mother and father speak English as their first language. The father was born in Australia, the mother was born in Hong Kong. When the child was born the mother was a little more than seventeen years. Her birthday is December 1984. The father was born in June 1984 and is six months older than the mother. The mother and father did not marry until the child was nearly one year old. They married in March 2003 and separated on 18 January 2005.
The applicants are the proprietors of a very large and obviously successful business. The business premises are at M, but they live in a large house in S. They seem to have devoted their lives to the business and spend most of their time at its premises. Their outside interests are centred around their religious affiliations. They are Christians who attend two churches each Sunday. They seem to me to have very conservative attitudes and views which are conditioned by a fundamentalist approach to the teachings of their religion.
Despite the paternal grandfather’s tendency to deny it, they are quite judgmental and strictly adhere to what they regard as proper conduct. Their view is narrow and obviously based on the concept of Christianity yet, one of its principal concepts; forgiveness, did not feature when they failed to attend the father’s wedding to Ms P in April 2008 despite having been invited. The father originally gave a false reason for their non-attendance but ultimately said they chose not to attend because he had fallen out with the applicants. Obviously, the father’s sister, Ms O, and her husband sided with the applicants.
The impression I was given by the paternal grandfather is that he is extremely controlling and will not tolerate any attempt to challenge his authority. He seems to control his wife and daughter despite the fact that his daughter is both married and very controlling herself. There is no doubt that the father’s sister seems to exercise control over family matters where her father does not or has left them to her. She will as she has already, if given the chance, impose her will on the father and mother.
Although it is obvious that, at times, the father has attempted to throw off this chain of control, he has ultimately submitted to it. He now works for his parents at a lesser wage than he received from his prior independent employer. The father is aged twenty-five and is a mechanic by trade. This, no doubt, suits the applicants who maintain a substantial number of vehicles.
The father’s character and motives in these proceedings are of great significance. He was a very poor witness who attempted to fabricate when confronted with questions he saw as awkward or unfavourable to his case and usually left himself in a situation where his lies were transparent. He is not, in my assessment, a completely neglectful or unloving father. It can be said that he has largely failed to act as a responsible parent to the child, but one must bear in mind his age when he became her parent. He gives me the impression that he has matured since then. However, an aspect of his character is of great concern. When he tried at times to escape his parent’s yoke he failed. I regard him as now being under their influence to such a degree that he is really under their control.
Two aspects of his evidence confirmed the impression I otherwise already had formed. One is that when asked on Wednesday 3 June 2009 about who would make decisions about the child’s long term care if the orders were made which he sought, he assumed he had sought orders that parental responsibility for the child’s long term care, welfare and development would be shared between his parents, himself and the mother. I do not think it was a coincidence that, earlier in that day’s hearing, the applicants had provided me with a minute of the orders they were seeking which included “that the grandparents have equal shared parental responsibility for [the child] with the parents”.
However, the father’s claim, first put to me on 25 September 2008, was that he and the mother “share the responsibility for the long term care and welfare and development” of the child in circumstances where he was seeking that the child mainly live with him and his then wife, and stay with his parents only on two nights each fortnight. The claim that the child live mainly with him is highly likely to have been a tactical one whereby he intended to allow his parents to play the major part in the child’s upbringing if the tactic succeeded.
He seems to be controlled by his parents, especially his father. He is likely to do as his father demands if he is given time with and any control over the child. The most recent apparent difference between him and his parents in orders being sought is highly likely to be nothing more than a tactic to convince me he is acting independently of them when he is not.
The mother impressed as being candid in her evidence and as demonstrating insight in her approach to the child and the other parties. When she engaged the police to assist her in taking the child from a daycare centre, where the grandparents had enrolled her, she told the police that the applicants were powerful and authoritarian. I regard that as a fair description of them. They were powerful by comparison to herself and are authoritarian by nature. The father had told her his parents were also very unforgiving. No better example of this could be provided than the fact that the applicants did not attend the father’s wedding to Ms P because they wanted the father to reconcile with the mother. They fell out with Ms P because he would not do so. They did not seem to contemplate the possibility that the mother would not have the father back. They were obviously more interested in the precept that marriage is for life than in the happiness and emotional health of their son, and did not appreciate that the child would probably be worse off living with both parents together if they were ill matched and unhappy. They are likely to resort to similar thinking in raising the child if they are given authority to make decisions which affect her or if she lives for significant time with them. This is a matter of serious concern.
When the child was born the father had not told his parents about her. His pattern of secrecy seems to stem from fear of his father. The mother and father were still at school, and the father was living with his parents. The mother’s mother lived in Hong Kong at that time although she now lives in Sydney. The mother took the child to her mother there with the intention of having her mother care for the child. The mother left the child with her mother and, after a week, returned to Australia so she could complete her HSC. She commenced living in the father’s parent’s home with the father. After a while the parents told the applicants of the child’s existence.
Neither the applicants nor Ms O accepted the parents’ word that the child was the father’s child. They accepted that, if she was, she should live with the parents in their home, but insisted that the parents should marry and that DNA testing should be done to establish the child’s parentage. Testing proved what the parents had told them, that the child was the father’s child and, in November 2002, the mother commenced to live with the father and the child in the applicants’ home at S.
Once this occurred the applicants gradually supplanted the mother and father in providing for the child’s immediate care. The mother looked after the child in the beginning, while the applicants were at work, but when they returned to S in the evening they would take the child from the mother. The mother allowed this because to refuse would be disrespectful to older family members. The child slept in the applicants’ bed. In January 2003, they took the child on a holiday overseas without the parents. They pressured the mother to stay and work in the business. She worked long hours. While she did the paternal grandparents, mainly the grandmother, cared for the child. In March 2003, the parents married and in April went on their honeymoon leaving the child with the applicants because of pressure from the applicants. In late May 2003, the applicants married daughter, Ms O, gave birth to a daughter, T. She and her husband moved into the applicants S home in late 2003. In November/December 2003, the applicants took the child on an extended holiday in Asia because she had become so attached to the applicants. The parents did not go on that holiday.
This did not mean that the applicants solely cared for the child. Care was shared by all four parties. On 18 January 2005, the mother left the family home because she felt stifled in it and was not getting along with the father. Until then, the applicants, in the mother’s words, “often took [the child] away from me as if she was their own child”. She had been treated by the applicants as though she had no rights. She was not even permitted to have a house key. The father remained. She did not take the child with her. She did not see the child again until September 2005. From September 2005, she would spend time with the child each weekend by taking her out, away from the applicant’s home and their M business, where the applicants spent their time every day except when they went to two churches, one on Sunday morning and another on Sunday afternoon.
In 2004, the child commenced attending a daycare centre at M. The mother enrolled her there. The applicants made her pull her out. In January, T started at the same centre, and the applicants re-enrolled the subject child. They would attend at much the same time, and were being cared for together by the applicants and Ms O when the child was not in the mother’s care. Even when Ms O and her husband moved out of the family home in May 2005, T remained with the applicants on three or four nights each week.
The mother had been in a very difficult situation at the time of separation. She had had a serious accident in mid December 2004. She was hospitalised for two weeks. She had been working in the M business before her accident. While in hospital, the applicants only brought the child to see her twice. She was discharged on 29 December 2004, and returned to the S home. Her medical advice was to remain at home and not go to work. During this time the father told the mother that the applicants did not want her to continue working for them. Despite living in the S home, from her discharge until she left the home on 18 January, she only saw the child once. She must have spent most of her time, while the applicants and the child were at home in her bedroom. She may have been depressed. She was, after all, only aged 20 and had been raised in a culture where the young respect their elders. These elders where authoritarian, successful and powerful and believed they had God on their side.

The mother was obviously being shut out from the family and from the child. In January 2005, the applicants who share a birthday were going out to celebrate it with the rest of the family in the evening. The mother was not invited. When she left the next day she tried to take the child but the applicants would not allow her to do so. She had otherwise made appropriate preparations to leave. The most important being that while she had been recuperating from her accident she had obtained another job, something she needed to do in order to regain her independence and self-respect.
In July 2005 and August 2005, the applicants had two holidays. An extended one overseas and a shorter one in Queensland for a week. They took both T and the subject child A. They did not seek the mother’s permission to take A.
About three weeks after the mother had commenced to spend time with the child once each week, the father left his parent’s home after falling out with them. He did so because he wished to be independent, and not be controlled by his parents. He did not wish to work in their business, or to attend university to gain the business qualifications the applicants regarded as advantageous for such work. He did not take the child with him. He did not speak to his parents for some time and, it can be assumed, saw little or nothing of the child.
Between September 2005 and February 2006 inclusive, the mother spent time with the child once each week for four hours. From March 2006 until the end of July that year this time was increased to seven and a half hours once each week. The mother would see the child and sleep at the applicant’s home on Friday night, but not in the same room as the child, and go out with her on Saturday. When the child was with the mother, she was always conscious that she must be returned to the applicants on time, and felt she would get into trouble if she was returned late. On two occasions between December 2005 and February 2006, she did not return the child at the usual time but kept her overnight. She informed the applicants of this intention in advance. When, in May 2006, the child was ill, the mother and her mother visited her and stayed the night. The applicants asked the mother and her mother to remain to help look after her. They said they had to go to work. The mother visited her on the next two days but was told by the child, who was the conduit for communication between the adults because neither side spoke the main language of the other side well, that she was not permitted to stay overnight.
In June 2006, the applicants took the child on a church retreat to Perth for a few days. When in about mid 2006 the applicants enrolled the child to commence school in M near their business, the applicants simply informed the mother that they had enrolled her at a Catholic school, without telling her what its name is or where it is.
In early August, the parents decided to do something to wrest the child from the applicants’ care and control. They went to the police. As might be expected nothing came of it or the police referral to DOCS. When the mother had first separated from the father, she sought legal aid but was advised, erroneously in my view, that she had no prospects of gaining the child’s custody.
It is of some significance that the paternal grandfather, in his first affidavit filed when he was still in conflict with the father expressed extreme concern for the child’s well being in the event that the father might succeed in opposing the applicant’s application. In the time after the father fell out with his parents, he is said in this affidavit to have had no interest in the child since ceasing to live in the S home and to have failed to visit her. Even on her birthday, he only visited for an hour and, according to his father, “he had no idea on how to look after [the child]”. The applicant grandfather says that by August 2006 the child had become much closer to the applicants than either the mother or father and was also very attached to T. I regard this as likely to have been the situation.
No doubt as a result of the mother’s attempt to use the police to gain custody of the child, the applicants commenced these proceedings. The regime sought by their application would allow little opportunity for the parents to develop a parental relationship with the child. Although the applicants accepted in the application that the parents should be entitled to make the decisions of importance in the long term needed for raising her, they wanted the child to see her parents for three hours on Fridays and from 10am to 6pm on Saturday. They wanted to be solely responsible for her day-to-day care.
On 17 August 2006, the matter come before a judicial registrar who made orders, by consent, for the child to remain in the primary care of the applicants but spend time with the mother each week from Wednesday after day care to Saturday evening at first, then Sunday evening and that the father see the child by arrangement with the mother. These orders were intended by the judicial registrar to last only until 12 September 2006.
On 12 September, the Judicial Registrar made an order until further order that the child live with the mother from after day care each Wednesday until 6.00pm on the following Sunday of each week but otherwise live with the applicants. This continued to be the situation until 23 January 2007, when the Judicial Registrar permitted the applicants to send the child to a Catholic Primary School pending further order, but did not alter the child’s living arrangements.
The child had become close to Ms O by this time. At a parent teacher meeting in mid February 2007, the father and mother and Ms O attended. The child seemed confused over whether the mother or Ms O was her mother. She said to her teacher when the teacher asked her who Ms O was “This is my mummy teacher”. Ms O, without informing the mother or father, then applied for, and obtained the role at the school of “Class Parent Liaison” which further confused the child. At a parent teacher reading workshop in March, the child did not know whether to ask the mother or Ms O to take her to the toilet. On 29 March, the School Principal sought clarification from both Ms O and the mother about which of the two was responsible for the child. Ms O had commenced to behave as though she had authority from the applicants to make decisions for the child and represent the applicants. No doubt she did.
When, in April 2007, the mother made a birthday party for the child she invited the applicants who did not attend. The child told her that the paternal grandfather had said that they would not come because the mother had made the party and it would be “boring”. The applicants gave the child a birthday party on another day.
By about this time the mother not only saw the applicants as wishing the father and herself to be removed from the child’s life, the child commenced to express a belief that she and T were sisters and should act like sisters. The mother also noticed that the child was not being encouraged to be independent by the applicants. The applicants were in the habit of making decisions for the child which the child should have made for herself, and the child would accept the situation. When she was with the mother she had difficulty in making decisions she should have made. They would also second guess the mother. For example, when she bought sport shoes for the child, they bought her another pair.
By 26 July 2007, the father had still not spoken to his parents since leaving the S home in September 2005. The only time the applicants had since seen him was during court appearances. By mid 2007, the child was still calling Ms O “mummy” or “mum”. She was also calling the mother “mum”. When, in June 2007, the child won awards and ribbons at the school athletics carnival, the applicants and Ms O collected them from the school and only allowed the mother to have access to them for one day. When her school report was available later that month, Ms O collected it and did not tell the mother about it. This is despite the mother’s involvement in the child’s school life and the school’s apparent understanding that Ms O had no right to take the mother’s place.
In the latter part of 2007, various minor incidents occurred which seemed to the to indicate that Ms O was more and more making decisions for and about the child in place of both the applicants and the mother. She even argued with the mother that the applicants should have the original of the child’s end of year school report rather than the mother. This seems to have been at the behest of the paternal grandmother, who was becoming more and unwilling to discuss anything with the mother, who was always respectful, courteous, open and willing to talk with the applicants about matters concerning the child. She was forced to speak to her through Ms O as intermediary, despite the fact that both applicants, despite their poor English, could understand the mother’s English because she spoke carefully to them. By this time, the mother noticed that the child was being increasingly concerned not to do anything to upset the applicants and to live up to their standards.
T commenced at the same school as A in 2008. When A started the new school year there was a Family Welcome Night in late February 2008. The child informed the mother that the applicants would only attend on the condition that she would go with, and sit with, them. As it was a Friday; a day when the child was to spend time with the mother, the child went with the mother. The applicants did not attend. They had earlier failed to attend more than one function which they were expected to attend. The mother attended in each instance.
In mid March 2008, the child called the mother “gu gu”, the Indonesia dialect for “aunty’. This rightly disturbed the mother who feared, in my view justifiably, that the applicants were influencing the child to view Ms O as her mother figure in place of the mother. On 27 March, the School Principal told the mother that Ms O would be attending the child’s parent teacher interview on 31 March. Neither the applicants nor Ms O had told the mother about such an interview.
By 29 March 2008, the father must have reconciled with his parents because he called the mother from their home to dictate a change in the arrangements for collecting the child on Wednesdays. On Saturday 26 April 2008, the mother and father commenced an arrangement whereby the father had regular, rather than occasional time with the child. The arrangement was that he would take the child each alternate weekend from 5.30pm on Friday and return her to the applicants at their M business at 6pm on Saturday.
On 10 September 2008, the mother learnt that the father had changed allegiances in the proceedings, and was now apparently supporting the applicants. Since he fell out with his parents the father had not commenced to see the child regularly until January 2008. The parents agreed that the child would spend Friday night until Saturday night each week with him, and that he would return the child to his parents. It soon became apparent to the mother that she could not see the child on weekends. She pressed the father to alter their arrangement for his contact with the child to each alternate week.
On reconciling with the applicants, the father returned to work for them part-time and in September 2008 intended to move into a home close to them by the beginning of November 2008. Despite his remarriage to Ms P, he and Ms P not only planned to move so they could love closer to the applicants, they planned to go to live with them in mid 2009.
The father, by then, supported the applicants in preference to the mother in relation to the child’s living arrangements despite realising that his parents’ cultural norms were different to those in Australia and to those he himself adheres to and that, in particular, as he said, “my parents have had different attitudes to the roles of children and parents”, no doubt meaning that his parents believed that children, of no matter what age or whether or not they are adults, should be obedient to the family patriarch and recognising that, again in his own words, “it was more my sister who was bringing up [the child]”. He seemed to feel that his change of allegiance in relation to her parenting was justified because his sister had moved from the family home “and [the child] now has the full attention of my parents”.
Once the father returned to work for his parents he saw much more of the child because the child would go from school on Monday and Tuesday to the business at M, where the applicants and he worked. The father’s affidavit sworn 28 May 2009 asked for orders that the child live with him and spend from Thursday evening to Saturday evening each alternate week; that is only two days each fortnight, with the mother. It is clear that he was really seeking such orders for the benefit of his parents who would become the child’s defacto parents.
He commenced living with his parents on his separation from Ms P in about August 2009. He went overseas from May 2010 to the end of July 2010. On the father’s return from overseas, the mother ceased to agree to the child spending Friday evening to Saturday evening with the father each alternate week in view of the fact that he went overseas without informing her, thereby forfeiting his time with the child to the applicants rather than to the mother as the orders which were in force required. She still did not know he was living with his parents and had separated from his wife. The father saw the child in the part of each week when she resided with the applicants. The mother believed he would visit the child there. Thus, to the date of hearing the child spent three days and nights each week with the mother, four with the applicants and was available during those four to the father.
The father had deliberately misled the mother about the time he was overseas in 2010. In May 2010, he told her he was going to be undertaking a three week course and would not be able to collect the child for his contact. He said he would arrange for someone to collect her. Ms O did so, and the mother was assured she was taking the child to stay with the father, who she also assumed was living with his wife. In fact, Ms O was delivering the child to the grandparents while the father was not there to see the child in defiance of the interim orders which were in place. The applicants and Ms O were as complicit in deceiving the mother and breaching the orders, and the spirit of the orders, as the father. In the circumstances, the mother was quite justified in terminating the arrangement with the father.
The matter came before the Court on 14 July 2010. The mother applied to re-open the evidence once she discovered that the father was no longer in his previous marital relationship, something he had relied on in his case. The mother, through her counsel, had requested the father’s solicitor and the applicants’ solicitor to inform her where the father was. She did not know he had returned to live with the applicants and did not know he had gone overseas. A measure of the father’s deception of the mother and the applicants’ lack of ability; really willingness, to collaborate with the mother in raising the child and to be open and candid with her rather than engage in tactical ploys designed to suit their perceived advantage without consideration of the child’s needs and the need to maintain good relations with the mother for the child’s sake, is their completely dishonest and deceptive response to the request.
Both solicitors informed the mother that they had no instructions on where the father was. At the hearing in January 2011, the evidence which emerged clearly disclosed that on this, the applicants were lying. He was in Japan on a combined holiday and business trip for the father’s business. He was buying equipment for the business the paternal grandfather owned and managed.
There have been three Family Reports by a very impressive and authoritative family consultant, Mr L. The first is dated 29 June 2007. When he saw the child, who was then five years old, she appeared to him to be “bright, confident and comparatively emotionally self sufficient”. She said she sleeps with her “sister [T]”. Mr L noted that of the adults he saw her with, namely the mother, the father, the applicants and Ms O, the strongest attachments were to her mother and her maternal grandparents and that she had a “sibling like relationship” with T. Mr L said something which deserves to be repeated because of its essential truth and because it might be in danger of being overlooked, despite it obviousness. It is
“I am concerned about the impact on [the child’s] source of self and self worth, if she were not to be brought up primarily by her mother, when there does not appear to be any compelling reason why this should not occur”.
Importantly, he added:
“I am also mindful that, in other jurisdictions, children are only removed from the primary care of a parent in situations that represent threats of emotional and/or physical harm. There is no suggestion that [the child] either has been, or would be, so threatened in the care of her mother. Having said that, I am mindful that in some cultures it is not unusual for a child to be primarily cared for by grandparents. Nevertheless, perhaps the more decisive consideration in this matter is whether or not the paternal grandmother undermines the relationship between [the child] and her mother, as has been suggested by her parents. Based on the paternal grandmother’s interview it appeared to me that the paternal grandmother has been less than cautious in her response to [the child’s] comments and questions about her mother”.
He recommended that the child live with the mother and spend time with the applicants and that the mother have sole parental responsibility.
Mr L’s next report is dated 26 February 2008. The most disturbing aspect of it is that the paternal grandmother, despite her then most recent application being that the child spend about equal time with the applicants, and with the father and mother, expressing the view that the child really should live with her. She told Mr L that she planned that the child would eventually live with Ms O.
It seems that by this time the father was at least prepared to say “Hello” to his parents. Neither of the applicants suggested that the child should ever live with him, but the paternal grandfather supported his wife in the belief that in the future the child should live with Ms O. The father was concerned that Ms O and her husband, who I know virtually nothing about, had assumed parental roles in the child’s life, and that Ms O has a strong influence on the applicants.
The child seemed to Mr L even more guarded than when he previously saw her about family issues and her relationships with family members, even though she was not six years old when seen. She was particularly concerned to protect her paternal grandmother and saw her own history through the paternal grandmother’s eyes. The child volunteered that she had been coached in what to say to Mr L by her paternal grandparents and Mr and Mrs O.
This, to me, is a demonstration of the danger to her that will be involved in living with the father and/or his parents, and in other than sole parental responsibility in the mother. The mother will not only not know the truth about matters which might affect the child’s welfare, because not even the child will tell her because of pressures from the father and his family, she will not be in a position to make decisions for the child’s future without having to make them based on deception by the father and his family, and without their input being calculated to meet their needs rather than those of the child. Mr L did not alter his opinion and recommendations from those disclosed in his earlier report.

Mr L’s final report was made on 14 January 2011, although it is dated 14 January 2010. On interviewing the father he noted that although he had appeared to reconcile with his parents there were “continuing tensions between them” relating to their expectations of him. He told Mr L that although he has been more involved in the child’s life since returning to live with his parents, despite living in the same home as the child, he does not see her very much and that his mother undertakes most of her care. This seems to create a strong inference that his claim, which was mostly by this time and still is to be her principal carer, is simply a sham designed to assist the applicants to achieve what they want, which is to be the child’s principal carers. The probable reason the father does not see the child very much is that he works only two or three days each week for his parents, at M, whereas the parents spend the days the child is in their care with the child at M or at church and only really use S as a place to sleep.
Mr L noted that the child was more overtly affectionate toward the father than he had previously observed. She seemed to derive more pleasure from her closeness to him. Of the child’s interaction with the mother, he said it was “a comfortable, relaxed and normal mother-daughter relationship” and that she was “at ease” with the mother’s defacto spouse. When seen with the applicants Ms O and Ms O’s three children, she oriented herself toward the children and acted like a “big sister”.
Mr L made a very significant point in evaluating the child’s situation. It is that the child experiences it as “fragmented, unsettling and ‘abnormal’”. He said she “would feel more secure, have a stronger, more integrated sense of self and a stronger sense of entitlement, if she were to belong to the family structure with more definite boundaries and role definition than she currently experiences”. Even more importantly he concluded that “the continuation of the current equal time arrangement, as proposed by the paternal grandparents, would be inconsistent with [the child’s] current emotional and development needs, as would the father’s proposal which would effectively marginalise [the mother] as parent”. He noted that only the mother “appeared to recognise and understand [the child’s] need to belong to a more definite and normal family structure and the connection between these factors and [the child’s] emerging sense of self”.
Mr L felt that the child’s attachments “have assumed increasing layers of complexity and enmeshment”. He was concerned that her sense of responsibility toward the paternal grandmother was more than that which a child might have with a parents and that the child’s relationship with T is “even more sibling-like” than before. He regarded the mother as “genuinely” recognising the child’s need “to continue to maintain meaningful relationships with all of” her attachments. Mr L showed little doubt in his opinion on what is best for the child. He said that if the child was “to live primarily with her mother [she] would be more likely to develop clearly defined sense of self and learn to be more assertive whilst maintaining important relationships with the father, her paternal grandparents, her aunts and her cousins”. It is germane that he appreciated that the child was tending to lose her sense of individuality as a result of spending so much time with the father’s family. He departed from his earlier recommendations by recommending that the child should spend time, “perhaps from Thursday after school to Saturday at 6pm” with the father and “perhaps from Saturday at 6pm to Monday morning” in each instance once each fortnight, but otherwise live with the mother and spend some week during each of the three shorter school holiday periods, and weeks during the Christmas holidays with her paternal grandparents and her father.
Currently the mother lives in a two bedroom home unit in M with her defacto husband, Mr V. Mr V is an accountant aged about thirty-four years. He has lived in Australia for some years, but is half European and half Asian. He appeared to me to be well disposed toward the child, and to continuing to be a surrogate father to her. He impressed me as very suitable for that role. He and the mother have continued their relationship since about September 2007, although they have not lived together long. Their relationship appears to be stable. They plan to marry.
The mother moved to M with Mr V because it was appropriate to live there in view of the child’s school and the location of the applicant’s business. The mother has a stable employment history. She works as a purchasing assistant. She currently works thirty-two hours per week. Her working hours fit her time with the child. If the child lives with her for longer periods, she has already arranged to work at suitable times; i.e., to start at 9.30am and finish at 2.30pm each weekday. She has only occasionally needed to use before or after school care which is available.
The applicants’ case is essentially that early in the child’s life the mother acted in her own interests, and according to her own needs and absented herself from the child’s life, but the applicants have always acted responsibly and have provided the child with essential care and have been her most constant and long term carers who have provided a stable family life, a high moral example and family relationships, which have developed so that they are now the child’s main attachments. They have cared for her from the time she came to live with them and T is like a sister to the child. The applicants also can provide for the child materially, spiritually and educationally, and place high value on education including tertiary education. Accordingly, the child should spend from Monday to Thursday evening each week with the applicants. The parents should share the balance of her time by taking her from Thursday evening to Monday morning in each alternate week.
The father’s submission is firstly that there should be no parental responsibility order because there are not many things which the parents will have to decide for the child’s long term care and the parties are unlikely to fall into conflict over them. Mr Millar, counsel for the father, correctly assumed that if there is no responsibility order, the Act will invest that responsibility in the parents equally, but not give the grandparents any say over the long term care.
Mr Millar criticised Mr L and accused him of being an advocate for the mother rather than an independent expert. My assessment is that Mr Millar has erroneously confused Mr L’s favourable opinion of the mother’s case with bias. He submitted that the arrangement which has existed for the last four years has been secure and stable and should be continued.
I do not accept, as Mr Millar submitted, that Mr L has failed to weigh likely adverse consequences for the child of adoption of his recommendations in these circumstances. I do not accept that criticism of Mr L is justified.
Mr Watkins for the mother said that Mr L’s recommendations were justified on the evidence and well considered and that the solution he arrived at is the best to advance the child’s welfare. He also pointed to the fact that the father was really acting as the agent of his parents in these proceedings, but that the Court must consider, in addition, what the result of a further falling out between the father and his parents might be and whether the applicants, or even Ms O by default, will have a say in the child’s care, rather than the child’s parents and whether the child should really live with her grandparents or aunt rather than her parents. He submitted that because of the relationship between the father and his parents and sister, and the lack of likelihood that they could be trusted to be truthful about important matters, they are unlikely to be able to cooperate with the wife in making decisions about the child’s future welfare, so there should be a grant of sole parental responsibility to the mother.
Part VII of the Family Law Act is a code for determining the orders which are to be made when parents and others who seek involvement, or are involved, in a child’s life cannot agree on all the decisions necessary to raise the child properly. One must appreciate the objects of the Family Law Act in order to properly determine what parenting order to make. Section 60B requires the Court to seek to ensure that children grow up with the benefit of both parents having a meaningful involvement in their lives so far as is consistent with their best interests and that children receive proper parenting, which is adequate to help them achieve their full potential. The Court must ensure that parents fulfil their duties and meet their responsibilities concerning the care, welfare, and development of their children. There is also a requirement to prevent physical and psychological harm and the like.
It is noteworthy that s 60B concentrates on parents. It does not eliminate the possibility of others such as grandparents being involved in the lives of children as a consequence of orders of the Court. The basis for the objects of the Act are the principles that each child, unless it is in the child’s best interest to provide otherwise, ought to know and be cared for by both parents and has a right to spend time on a regular basis with, and communicate regularly with, not only both parents but others such as siblings and grandparents who are significant to them, and the parents should jointly share the duties and responsibilities of raising their children. These principles are highly relevant in these proceedings and should not be submerged by relatively insignificant detail. Another principle is that children have a right to enjoy their culture. This includes the right to do so with others of the same culture. Finally, the Act imposes the principle that the parents should agree about the future parenting of their children.
Of the last mentioned principle, it is fair to say that the Court’s processes encourage agreement between parents. By the stage when a judgment is being written after a highly contested hearing where the orders the parties seek differ greatly in effect, and where the parties have been critical to the point of condemnation of one another’s character, parental ability and actual parenting, there is very little agreement between the parents and other parties and little likelihood of gaining agreement despite the Court’s unremitting efforts to encourage it.
The most fundamental section of the Act is s 60CA. It provides that in deciding whether or not to make a particular parenting order in relation to a child, the consideration which must be paramount in the decision to be made is that of the child’s best interests. This does not mean other considerations such as the needs and wishes of the parents and other parties to the proceedings are to be ignored or cannot make a difference. It means that there must be very compelling circumstances for them to make a difference.
Here, the parties have not agreed to an order for equal shared parental responsibility. The grandparents seek such an order. The mother asks that sole parental responsibility reside in her. The father seeks no order for parental responsibility and leaves it to the Act by s 61C, to invest parental responsibility. The rebuttable presumption to the effect that shared parental responsibility best promotes a child’s welfare which is imposed by s 61DA of the Act when making parenting orders is sought to be rebutted by the mother.
Because there may be a parenting order giving the parties equal shared parental responsibility, s 65DAA is given effect. It requires the Court to consider whether it would be in the best interest of the child, and practical for her, to spend equal time with each parent. If it is both, the Court is required to consider making an order for equal time with each parent.
If an order for equal time is not made, the Court must consider whether it would be in the child’s best interest to spend substantial and significant time with each parent and whether such an order is reasonably practicable. If it is, the Court must consider making an order which achieves this. The Act determines the meaning of “substantial and significant time”. Orders can only achieve that if they allow a child to spend weekends, holidays, weekdays and periods when the child is not on school holidays with each parent and also allow each to be involved in the child’s daily routine, and to take part in special occasions and events which are significant to the child and allow the child to take part in events which are significant to each parent.
In deciding whether it is reasonably practical to spend either equal time or substantial and significant time, the Court is required to consider the distance between the homes or proposed homes of the parents, their capacity and future capacity to implement the arrangements involved in achieving equal or substantial and significant time, the parents ability to communicate and resolve problems which could arise in implementing the arrangements, the impact the arrangements are likely to have on the child, and any other relevant matters.
Section 65DAA does not appear to me to apply directly to considerations relevant to people seeking parenting orders who are not the subject child’s parents. It must, however, apply to such people incidentally when the considerations it requires are applied to the parent in instances when a parent is also seeking parental orders. Nowhere in the Act is “parent” extended to other than natural or adoptive parents although “parenting orders” can be made in favour of non-parents. The Act clearly seems to put an emphasis on the benefit a child will have if it is cared for by its parents, rather than, say, its grandparents, if there are no substantial reasons why the child should not be brought up by its parents or, at least, one of them.
Section 60CC prescribes the manner of determining what is in a child’s best interests. Before one can consider an equal time or substantial and significant time order, one must decide where the child’s best interests lie. Best interests requires two types of consideration which the Court must undertake. There are two matters, called primary considerations in s 60CC(2), which are the most important considerations. There are 13 matters, called additional considerations, which are listed in s 60CC(3). I shall deal with the consideration required by s 60CC in the order in which they appear in that section of the Act. The primary considerations do not necessarily outweigh the additional considerations. If they did, there would be no point in providing for additional considerations.
The first primary consideration is the benefit to the child by having a meaningful relationship with both her parents. On the evidence, despite the father’s lack of commitment to her, I do not regard it as reasonable to regard the child as likely to be better off if she has less than a meaningful relationship with the father. The only way she is likely to be able to develop such a relationship with him is to restrict the influence of the father’s parents and sister on him. The only practical manner of reducing the influence of these people is to limit their time with the child and to limit his and his family’s power to make decisions for her future care; being extremely powerful reasons to transfer her residence to the mother and give her sole parental responsibility.
Because the mother feels responsible for and committed to the child and her welfare, and is much more active as a parent to the child than the father, it is essential for the child’s welfare that a meaningful relationship between her and the child is fostered by the orders of the Court. In my assessment, if the father, and through him his parents and sister, and/or the paternal grandparents continue to hold a position where they have substantial influence over the child, her relationship with the mother will probably be undermined. At present the grandparents and Ms O have not intentionally set about doing this because they believe in the sanctity of marriage; in their son’s case his first marriage, and hope he and the mother will reconcile. If the mother remarries, as the evidence indicates she will to Mr V, soon, there is a very significant and unacceptable risk that the applicants will then turn more against her and that they and Ms O will do things which are calculated to distance her from the child.
The other primary consideration, the need to protect the child from physical and psychological harm by exposure to or being subjected to abuse, neglect or family violence does not arise from the facts of these proceedings. Abuse in this context is defined by the Act to be limited to physical abuse and does not include psychological abuse.
The first additional consideration is the views the child has expressed at matters relevant to any weight which should be given to them. A very relevant view the child has expressed is that expressed to Mr L that she would like to live as a family with the father and mother. She did not include the grandparents or Ms O in this hope, so appears to feel a greater need to live with her parents than the father’s parents or sister. Despite this, she expressed views which indicate she is confused about who her parents are and indicates she regards T more as a sister than as a cousin.
I regard all of these expressed views as important because of the background facts and the child’s age. However, the effect of weighing them should not necessarily be orders which reinforce them. I think it will be in the child’s best interests to gain a clear understanding of the difference between her parents on the one hand and the other members of her father’s family who have tendencies to usurp the parents’ role in her life. Yet it will be important for her future wellbeing to ensure that she is able to gratify her need for those to whom she has grown close, although they are not really her immediate family. This group comprises of her paternal grandparents and T. It is not suggested by Mr L that Ms O is part of this group. Nevertheless, as Mr L said, she needs to experience “a family structure with more definite boundaries and role definition than she currently experiences”.
The nature of the child’s relationships is really shown by her expression of her wish to live with her parents. She must feel closer to them than to the other adults in her life. She also feels very close to T and probably to her other younger cousins who are Ms O’s children.
It is highly significant that the child’s relationship with her mother was seen by Mr L to be optimal, that is, “relaxed and normal”. The Court cannot allow this situation to be undermined if the child’s best interests are to be guarded. It is also important that she felt affection for her father when recently seen by Mr L. This situation, too, must be preserved in the child’s best interests. Equally as significant is the fact that when the child was seen with the applicants and Ms O, she distanced herself from them, so does not appear to need them to be closely tied to her.
There is no indication that the mother might be unwilling or unable to facilitate and encourage a close relationship between the child and the father. I have some misgiving about the father’s commitment to the same situation between the child and the mother because I hold the strong view that he is not very committed to the child himself and his attitudes and actions in relation to the mother’s relationship with the child are guided by his own needs, in particular his need to either challenge or comply with his parent’s demands. Now that he has reconciled with them, he is likely to simply do whatever they wish in parenting the child.
The change in parenting arrangements which is sought by the mother is more likely to advance the child’s welfare. She will become less dominated by her paternal grandparents and live in a situation which will seem to her not only more normal because she will be raised by her parents or at least one of them, not by an aunt or grandparents who do not focus their life around their home, but around their business and churches. If this occurs, the child will see less of her cousin T to whom she is very close. This will not necessarily result in harm to her because she will be more than compensated by the presence in her life of her mother. Her father is likely to remain as uncommitted to her as he has always been.

The mother has moved to M to be close to the child’s school. The grandparents and father live at S, but spend most of their waking time, except on Sundays, at the business in M. The evidence discloses nothing to indicate practical difficulty or exposure could interfere with the child’s right to maintain personal relations and direct contact with both parents, as well as with the paternal grandparents, Ms O and T who also attends the school which the child attends.
The applicants are financially very substantial. There is every reason to believe that they can provide for all the child’s material needs. The father will be able to as well, provided he remains subservient to his parents who will, if he does, support him and meet any financial obligation he has to provide for the child. He does not work full time for his parents. He is a mechanic and is employed by them. If he falls out of favour with them, he is likely to be able to find full time work with a sufficient income to provide for the child’s material needs in the periods the child is in his immediate care.
The mother has been in constant employment as a purchasing clerk for some years. She is conscientious and appears to me to be likely to retain this employment. Her defacto husband is also in regular employment. I have no misgiving about the mother’s ability to provide for the child’s material needs.
The mother’s case, in part, is that the applicants are uneducated, ignorant, have been in Australia for more than 20 years yet cannot speak adequate English and are unlikely to be able to provide for the child’s intellectual needs. She says that they will discourage her, or at least not encourage her, to gain a good education, especially a tertiary education.
I do not agree. Ms O has university qualifications and one of the sources of the father’s dispute with his parents was their wish for him to gain a university degree and his refusal to do so. Despite their relative ignorance in some areas, the applicants are not ignorant about business and have made a remarkable success of theirs. That they appear to be rather basic and are uneducated and do not speak English as well as they should masks real ability in areas in which many members of the public are more ignorant. In any event, I have little doubt that they would encourage the child to gain a good education. They sent the father to a private school and wanted him to have a good education. The school they chose for the child seems to have done a good job with her, so was well chosen. I share no doubt that the mother will encourage the child educationally. She is very ambitious for her in this respect. I am not confident that the father feels sufficiently responsible for her to bother to encourage her in this direction.
It is in the field of emotional needs where I think the residential choice for the child is most critical. If she lives with the mother, her emotional needs are highly likely to be met. The mother herself will not only provide the parenting and attachment that the child needs most, she is conscious of the child’s needs in relation to the father, the paternal grandparents and T, and will meet these as best she is able. The father is most likely to do what his parents want him to if the orders he seeks are made. Thus, to make these orders will be little different in effect from making the orders the applicants seek.
If the orders the applicants seek are made they, in my view, will gradually cede the care intended by such orders to repose with them to Ms O. Additionally, they and Ms O will probably try to distance the child from the mother and, if they fall out with the father, from him too. This will put the child’s emotional health at risk according to Mr L, whose views on this I accept.
To attain the optimal psychological result for the child she needs to be cared for by the mother who will allow her to emerge from the confusion and enmeshment she is currently constrained by as a result of the applicants’ and Ms O’s attitudes and care.
Although to a Westerner it might seem that because both sides of the child’s family are really Chinese, there is little cultural difference. In fact, the applicants are from Indonesia who do not speak the same language as the mother and her mother who are Cantonese originally from Hong Kong. They are very different in background and culture, especially because the applicants are also fundamentalist Christians. As the parties put no evidence before me about cultural and religious lifestyles and culture and traditions, except to the effect that the applicants attend two different churches each Sunday and that their social life is dependent on their church associations, all I can provide is for the child to spend enough time, at appropriate times, with each side to ensure she understands and feels part of the lifestyle, cultures and traditions of both sides of her family.
I am convinced that the mother has attitudes to her responsibilities as the child’s parent, and has attitudes to the child which will ensure she will endeavour to do her best to ensure the child is raised with the best chance of leading a happy and meaningful life that her inherent characteristics will permit. Although it may seem that, at first, the mother did not demonstrate sufficient responsibility and commitment to the child, one should not overlook her age, the circumstances she was in, being a school girl with a young baby and no family support and no financial support in Sydney, where she felt trapped in an unwanted unhappy relationship with the father and was overborne by his controlling and in control parents and sister. She simply did what she had to do, and should have done, to maintain her emotional health and integrity. She has emerged from that difficult period and has also matured into what I regard as a capable and responsible parent who will be an excellent role model for her daughter. The father has not developed a sufficient degree of responsibility as a parent to emerge from the control of his parents in that respect, or to become sufficiently concerned about the child’s welfare to start to give more precedence to her needs by comparison to his own.
There has been no family violence or family violence order. All those involved are considerably above resort to that type of behaviour.
It is nearly always preferable to make orders which will be least likely to lead to the institution of further proceedings relating to the child. I shall endeavour to make such orders in this case.
There are no facts or matters which are of relevance and of sufficient importance to have the potential to make a difference to the orders the Court might make which have not already been mentioned.
A weighing of all the matters I have mentioned leads to the clear conclusion that the child should live with the mother and spend time with the applicants, T and the father.
The most important decision in implementing this conclusion is to determine how much time the child should spend with the applicants, T and the father. The problem I have in doing this is created by the need the child has to avoid or escape from the control, and with it the adverse influence of the paternal grandparents and Ms O, and therefore the benefit to the child of restricting her time with these people and her need to spend time with her father, and T and her other two cousins and to a lesser extent her paternal grandparents.
I am conscious that Mr L has recommended that the time she should spend with them be from Thursday after school to Monday morning before school in each fortnight during school term, half of each term holiday period and for two weeks during the Christmas holidays. It is implicit in this that the father and grandparents will always agree on how to divide their and T’s time with the child, and that much of the time will, in any event, overlap because the father lives with his parents, and T and her siblings spend much of their time with their grandparents. I am not convinced that this will remain the situation, but I regard it as more probable than not that it will into the foreseeable future; until the child is old enough to determine who she spends time with and when she does so. As I otherwise regards Mr L’s recommendation regime as the best compromise to promote the child’s welfare, I should and shall adopt it and make orders accordingly.
Because the father is likely to be over whelmed by his parents’ and sister’s wishes in making decisions for the child’s future, and is not committed sufficiently to her welfare when it conflicts with his self interest, I am satisfied that the mother should be granted sole parental responsibility. That fact alone rebuts the presumption that it would be in the child’s best interest for the parents to share parental responsibility equally. Because of the relative lack of conflict between all those involved in these proceedings, I do not think it is the child’s best interests to make further orders which really take away the responsibility of those involved with the child to make suitable arrangements for her care. I am confident the parties can make all the subsidiary arrangements necessary to make the orders I shall make effective to advance the child’s care.

I certify that the preceding one hundred and eight (108) paragraphs are a true copy of the reasons for judgment of the Honourable Justice Cohen delivered on 21 February 2011.

Associate:

Date: 21 February 2011

[2011] FamCA 75

21 February 2011

Key Legal Topics

Areas of Law

Family Law