Amendments to the Family Law Act that changed the way the law addresses family violence in family law matters came into force from 7 June 2012…

CATHOLIC hospitals fear patients will use new anti-discrimination laws to demand abortions, vasectomies and IVF treatments now banned for religious reasons…

THERE should not be a specific criminal offence for a parent who kidnaps their child and takes them overseas, a Senate inquiry has recommended…

SUCH are the sensitivities of family law that when the Howard government amended the Family Law Act in 2006 it provided for a review after two years. The Rudd government has its own concerns; even before the Institute of Family Studies finished the review, Attorney-General Robert McClelland asked former family court judge Richard Chisholm to look at whether the law offers adequate protection from family violence. ..

FEDERAL Attorney-General Robert McClelland will today outline changes to the planned national regulation of the legal profession in order to address concerns from key stakeholders which threatened to derail the project. ..

THE Chief Justice of the Family Court has called for a radical change to the law to provide more protection to family members at risk of violence. In what could be a contentious proposal, Chief Justice Diana Bryant wants information …..

PRIME minister Kevin Rudd has flagged year-end changes to Australia’s child-support system, saying the present arrangements are causing many families angst. ..

THE shared parenting law introduced by the Howard government has resulted in more children spending time with both parents after divorce, but the numbers who do so are minuscule and most children still spend the majority of time with their mothers. ..

An Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) report, commissioned by the government, established that while the principle of shared parental responsibility was widely supported, it was often misconstrued as requiring 50-50 share time. ..

The review and its recommendations are at least as controversial as the four-year-old law, finding that shared parenting laws had been misinterpreted, and were never meant to give a 50-50 custody split to each parent…