What is ‘parental responsibility’?
What is “parental responsibility”?
The purpose of “parental responsibility” is to allow the child to achieve their full potential as a person by the involvement of both of the children’s parents in the child’s life. How do the parents fulfil that responsibility? Parents are expected to maintain the child until the child reaches 18. Also, until that time the parents have the authority to make decisions regarding the child’s major long-term issues, including:
- Name
- Education
- Religious and cultural upbringing
- Health
- Living arrangements
As well as making decisions in respect of the child’s day-to-day care, welfare and development, which includes:
- The child’s manner of dress
- The child’s diet
- Discipline of this child
- The people the child associates with
- What the child can view on TV, bed time, etc
The presumption:
The Family Law Act says that the court must apply a presumption that it is in the best interests of the child for the child’s parents to have equal shared parental responsibility (ESPR) for the child. This is unless there are reasonable grounds to believe that a parent has engaged in abuse of the child or family violence. Furthermore, if the court is satisfied that it would not be in the best interests of the child for the parents to have ESPR.
When parents have ESPR they must make joint decisions in relation to major long-term issues affecting the child, but each parent can continue to make their own day-to-day decisions.
Challenging the presumption:
If the presumption of ESPR does not apply or is rebutted, then the court may decide that one parent has “sole parental responsibility”, which means the parent with sole parental responsibility can make unilateral decisions about major-long term issues such as health, education and religion.
What about a combination?
However, in some cases, the court has made orders for the parents to have ESPR for all issues except for one or two specific issues which one parent has sole responsibility for. This might be appropriate in cases where, for example, the parents do not have good communication. This is where the child has specific medical issues which require decisions to be made regularly about significant health matters such as surgery and other invasive treatment. The court may decide that it is appropriate to expect the parents to make joint decisions about other issues like education and the child’s name. This is because they are usually one-off or infrequent decisions. However, the level of conflict involved in requiring the parents to frequently communicate and make decisions about health issues might not be in the best interests of the child.
An example:
In a recent case the father challenged on appeal the validity of an order made by the trial judge which provided for the mother to have sole parental responsibility for the child, except for all decisions in relation to the child’s name, religious upbringing, and any significant changes to the child’s living arrangements. The orders also required the mother to consult with the father about the issues she had sole responsibility for, but she had the final say if there was no agreement.
The trial judge had determined that the presumption of ESPR did not apply. The reason being, because the father had perpetrated family violence on the mother during the relationship. Also, that the parents did not have the capacity to communicate with each other usefully about matters of significance to the child. The judge held that there was, therefore, a requirement for one parent to have the capacity to make decisions.
The full court on appeal held that the Family Law Act permitted orders to be made which provide for parental responsibility for some long-term issues to be shared, while others are not. Additionally, parental responsibility for some issues could be shared equally while others are not shared equally or not shared at all. Further, the full court held that even though the presumption of ESPR did not apply, the judge could still make orders for some or all aspects of parental responsibility to be shared equally.
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