The Family Division in the United Kingdom has recently published a toolkit for judges to write to children explaining why they made certain parenting decisions.
This is a foreign concept in Australian Family Law. Section 60B of the Family Law Act provides that one of the objects of the Family Law Act that applies to parenting decisions is to to give effect to the Convention on the Rights of the Child done at New York on 20 November 1989. The practice of judges writing to children falls within the ambit of children’s rights.
Section 68LA sets out the role of independent children’s lawyers appointed by the court but does not prescribe that the independent children’s lawyer must inform the child/children they represent of the result of any court proceedings.
Section 102NE sets out the principles for conducting child related proceedings. The first principle provides that the court is to consider the needs of the child concerned and the impact that the conduct of the proceedings may have on the child in determining the conduct of the proceedings.
In Australia the court when making a parenting order must apply the best interests of the child paramountcy principle. A parenting order is defined in Section 64B(2)(i) to include any aspect of the care, welfare or development of the child or any other aspect of parenting responsibility for a child, which arguably would give power to a Judge to write to a child to explain a parenting decision made about them.
I would be interested to hear whether anyone has been involved in a case in Australia where the Judge has written to the child/children after making a decision. It seems to be the more common practice that the independent children’s lawyer would (if appropriate) explain to the child any decision made.
This originally appeared on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/thoughts-judges-writing-children-explain-decisions-family-awyzio-pjj4c