Life Changing Injury: Buttered Sides -- More Rushes on the FCoA

More rushes on the new Family Law procedures.

One of the men reports that he got his judgement today and in a nutshell has actually gone backwards. He did get school holidays, but essentially made no progress.

It may be a little premature to say that is now in on the new legislation – and that nothing has changed. But in this father’s opinion:

Under the current system Jesus Christ would be lucky to get shared care - after all he turned water into alcohol and displayed uncontrollable rage with the money changers in the temple.

He feels it comes down to getting a good or bad psychologist. To quote the psychologist:

"It is better for a child to miss it's father than to break its routine".

The idea that a professional psychologist would write that the short term issues raised by a change in routine would be more important to a child (or children) than time with their father is intuitively insane.

Perspective and Expectations

A little perspective is needed here. To be fair, we do not know all the aspects of the case. Nor did this father say whether the case was heard in the Federal Magistrates' Court or the Family Court. The new procedures only affect the Family Courts, of course.
Most people are not aware of the difference. To the layman, the federal court is the federal court.

There is also the subtle and incorrect expectation that the new procedures will mean an assumption of equal parenting time, which is incorrect. For the first time, though, the onus on the courts may be to substantiate the reasons for single custody, or risk being overturned.
And it's a good likelyhood that this case, if heard in the Family Court, was not wholly under the guidelines of the new procedures. The first such cases will appear in a month or two; even later before any such cases are published as precedents.

Another of the unconfirmed rushes on the new procedures indicates that more fathers are succeeding more often. We will all have to wait and see a little while.
In the meantime, the lawyers will be looking for any conflicts or inconsistencies. That will mean a flurry of premature lawsuits just to test the waters at their clients' expense.

Buttered Sides

Forensic psychologists know which side of their bread the government butters.

Does it strike no one as strange the FMC hires a one of their own forensic psychologists, who is so anti-father? How convenient that now the Judge can now say "I support shared care but the psych does not and I have to follow him, my arse is covered"

This is how the low standards of the psychology profession affects all of us. And why everyone must take a stand publicly for more funding and higher professional ethics.

Interestingly an article in The Age today announced that Melbourne’s Monash University would be funded to train 50 more psych nurses, starting next year. It isn’t as if the government isn’t aware of the crisis in mental health. “Crisis” is exactly the word used by the government to explain why the new places were being funded.

But the fact remains that lawyers, police, social workers, and psychologists are being trained to enforce the farcical statistic that 8 out of 9 Australian men in relationships are abusive. --They're learning it in the colleges and TAFEs.

What difference will it make if 10,000 new places are made if all those trained are trained to prejudice as a professional standard and an expectation of their most likely prospective employers?

What a Judge would say if any a litigant had a brother who was a psychologist and
requested him to do our family reports? Would the word “impartial” finally be heard in the courtroom? (Or would the judge simply refuse to consider the report as relevant?)

Ingrained Prejudice

Institutional prejudice is deeply rooted. It does not instantly disappear because someone has a new vision or insight, or even because someone has the courage to change the procedures of the federal courts.

Institutional prejudice is difficult for individuals to fight because Who has the money and time to appeal?

In other countries, panels of judges review a sample of the judgments from courts at all levels other than the Supreme Court and may file appeals or overturn judgments because of even the appearance of inequity before the law. In Australia, the responsibility for the quality of justice remains with the individual, who must force an appeal.

In this case, unless there are technical legal grounds for an appeal, the appellate court may simply say, "The Judge in question, just followed what the psychologist said", and that is all they have to say, case dismissed!”

The magistrate or judge knows there is no oversight, and as was said, the forensic psychologist knows which side of the bread the government butters.

Remember there is no logic, no rhyme or reason, unfortunately it’s the law and "the law is an ass"

It will take generations to root out such base, deeply-ingrained prejudice from Australian society -- from all sides.

Startling and Strange Ideas

The most startling things are being said these days, too. Take a look at this from the CCH site:

"The interesting thing... will be to see whether family lawyers can become family dispute resolution practitioners and there does not seem to be any compelling reason why that should not be the case."
(from "First FRCs hit the ground running" published by CCH News The whole article was posted last week to the F4E forum.)

Dianne Bryant's Family Court Reforms may change the way the courts proceed, but she cannot force the lawyers and psychologists to suddenly have a sea change in their views.

It’s been said that in the new FCoA procedures, the judge is expected to become more a mediator and coach than sit in judgment of the evidence. It would be wonderful to see such a thing happen, but it would be against the years of training and experience of federal court judges.

The adversarial process is a comfort zone for these people. The have found that comfort zone because they essentially rule on who entertains them the most in the courtroom.

How do you change the comfort zone?

It will take generations to root out such base, deeply-ingrained prejudice from Australian society, professional conduct, and the legal system.