AIFS seminar series presentation

Dr Rae Kaspiew is a socio-legal researcher with particular expertise in family law and family violence. She is lead author on the AIFS Evaluation of the 2006 family law reforms. She managed the Legislation and Courts Project, one of the three main projects that contributed to the Evaluation research program. She was involved, with Associate Professor Juliet Behrens and Bruce Smyth from ANU, in a project looking at the experiences of parents after relocation decisions in the federal family law courts.

In addition to her role at AIFS, Rae is a member of the Family Law Council, a body that provides policy advice on the Family Law to the federal Attorney General. She is also a member of the Violence Against Women Advisory Group that advises the federal Minister for the Status of Women on the implementation of the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and on the editorial board of the Australian Journal of Family Law.

ABSTRACT

This Seminar will report on findings of a mixed-method research project that examined relocation cases litigated prior to the 2006 reforms to the family law system.

The study examined relocation cases decided in a two-year period prior to the introduction of the 2006 family law reform package.

The Australian Research Council-funded study was based on

• an analysis of 190 court judgments made between 2002 and 2004 in the Family Court of Australia (FCoA), and
• qualitative interviews with 38 parties to relocation disputes litigated in one of the family law courts between 2002 and mid-2005.

Findings from each part of the study are described, beginning with the quantitative component based on judgment analysis.

This is followed by an examination of the key themes from the qualitative data.

A key finding from the study is that most litigated disputes over relocation between separated partners occur in the context of conflict and fractured inter-parental relationships.

The evidence from the study about the types of cases where courts decide whether one party (usually a mother with residence of the child[ren]) should be permitted to move with the child(ren) suggests that relocation post-separation is more a product of conflict than the single source of conflict.