Understanding the Family Law Amendment Bill

The goal of these changes is to reduce waiting times in the court system and make it easier to get support services.

One of the big changes is to the parenting order framework. The bill fine-tunes the list of ‘best interests’ factors that help decide what is best for the child.

Significantly, it removes the idea that parents should automatically share parental responsibility equally. Now, the law allows for more flexibility to decide parenting arrangements based on what’s best for the child.

The bill also makes it clearer when a court can change an existing parenting order. It also improves the sharing of information about family violence, child abuse, and neglect risks in parenting cases before the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, and the Family Court of Western Australia.

Another change is that what has been previously called ‘The rule in Rice & Asplund” has now become part of the Family Law Act.  This significant change means that if the Court is asked to change a final parenting order, they must first consider if there has been a significant change in the child’s circumstances since the order was made. 

This means, if you have a final order in place for equal shared parental responsibility, you should not think this change in legislation opens the door to go back to court to change it.  If you think there are grounds to change the order, seek legal advice because there may be costs order consequences if you are not successful.