Suzanonline,
The court does not check on the wellbeing of the child after it has made a decision.

About 90% of the time, the court makes the decision that the mother has custody of the child and the father pays money.

After years of feminist demonisation of men, the father is believed to be abusive, and it is safest that the child goes with the mother.

A certain amount of evidence is also coming to light that many mothers want custody, because they think other women will look down on them or gossip about them if they were not the primary parent.

So the mother has to have sole custody, or else other women will gossip that she is a bad mother.

What an inglorious situation in our feminist society.

Suzie I think that the strength of perceptions about DV being genderised will mean that implementation of the changes is very unlikely to be gender neutral. If proposed changes to the Family Law act which I referred to earlier go ahead then it will be far worse than perceptions.

A good investigation system should be in place to protect all children (and adult's) from ongoing abuse. It should not matter if the parents are in the process of separating or not.

In the context of family law there should be safeguards put in place to ensure that allegations can't be used to gain advantage for the accuser or unreasonably harm the accused. Stuff such as establishing patterns of residency, denying the accused access to finances, housing, clothes, tools needed for work etc.

R0bert

Early in 1975, Senator Lionel Murphy, Attorney General, euphoric veteran of a quixotic storming of ASIO and new champion of divorce Law reforms received a delegation of men and women concerned with the direction his new law was taking. I was one of the delegates.

The man was, as I understood, a mix of Politician and Lawyer in equal parts.

As a Politician he could not entertain that ‘the State and its instruments’ are the aggregate of citizenry and, for this, it or any of its instruments (being people), had no right to interfere with that intimacy of two people that we call ‘family’.

As a Lawyer he could not conceive a relation between two people outside a Law or any other construct of ‘The State’.

Our submission to him consisted in warning that if he proceeded with the ‘elimination of guilt’ without making provisions to safeguard the children of the marriage, the costs of easy divorce would be paid entirely by the children.

Facing that man with the trust of the major of our requests was then, as it is now, facing a person entrenched in untenable convictions.

The proposition to Mr. Lionel Murphy was and remains as follows:

<The State has no place in a consensual union of two adults>

< When a child is born, ‘The State’ must protect the new entity, being it one of its citizens>.

<The spouses, now parents, have hence the duty of care for the child until adulthood>

The propositions between the brackets have the following consequences.

If a dispute between parents or any event conducive to danger were to occur, ‘The State’ must order that the child be removed from the care of the two natural parents and given to the protection of a person in an institution paid in equal parts by the parents.

I am convinced that, as we parents are the ones who contrived and disrupted the family, we and not the child should be made to pay.

I am afraid though that cecity would make this, the only quasi-Solomon justice, unpalatable to both parents and Judges.

RObert, yes I agree, but HOW can judges make sure no one is lying for sure?
Sometimes abuse in a family is not obvious to anyone outside that family. I guess I wont be happy until people who break AVO's after a couple breaks up are dealt with more severely...

Vanka <"The court does not check on the wellbeing of the child after it has made a decision. About 90% of the time, the court makes the decision that the mother has custody of the child and the father pays money."

Really? Are you privy to ALL the child custody dispute reports then?

If the courts decide that children need to reside with the mother 90% of the time, as you claim, then maybe the kids have been found to be better off with the mother 90% of the time?

Are all family court judges feminist women, Vanka?
No?
Then how can all the decisions be the result of all these rabid feminists?

Are all parliamentarians feminist females?
No? (Not even 30% are female).
Then how is there this feminist conspiracy to make laws that assume all separated fathers are violent abusers, and all kids should stay with their mothers?

I think there is more than a little paranoia out there...

suzeonline wrote "Then how is there this feminist conspiracy to make laws that assume all separated fathers are violent abusers, and all kids should stay with their mothers?

I think there is more than a little paranoia out there..."

er...if you said feminocracy(as in image of democracy but actually facism under organized female control...an only female empowerment and continuation of, and protecting it matters...I think thats closer to the truth...no conspiracy here...just look at where money for nothing flows...child support, family support, child care and on...

and I think with time, looking at the trends...all politicians will be paid actors, all judges well trained tools, and whole show run by organized women who have iron control of the government...

so unless you are not a beneficiary of one or all above...then you must be living on a deserted island with no other women to instruct you on living well by approaching the right government department to start the gravy train process...or you know exactly whats going on and hiding behind false incredulous decency...

sam

Suxanonline,
I would think many people are under the illusion that the child would be better off with the mother.

Whether or not this is the case is another matter.

And of course there is mummy's little secret that has now come to light.

There have been more women in Australia paying child support in recent years, and many of these women were paying privately, and not having their child support payments taken out of their wages like most men.

When questions were asked about this, the answer has come out.

The women didn't want anyone to know, including their employer, that they were paying child support.

They thought it too embarasing if someone knew they were paying child support, and the father was looking after the children.

Many mothers also don't want the father to have custody, because other people would think of her as being a bad parent.

Mummy's little secret.

The situation has little to do with the welfare of the child, but more to do with the mother.

Best interests of the mother, with the word "child" being used as a smokescreen.