Legal Aid Victoria recently invited feedback on proposed changes to it’s Family law eligibility guidelines.

Legal Aid’s summary of the proposed changes is:
•    more funding for independent children’s lawyers to assist judicial officers and  protect the rights and interests of  some of the most vulnerable children in our community  – those whose parents are in dispute about their living arrangements in the Family Law Courts
•    more funding for early intervention services, including RDM and early negotiations, for both children’s and some property matters, to provide early resolution of disputes and to relieve  parents and their children of the burden of undergoing the sometimes lengthy, always traumatic and potentially damaging experience of protracted legal proceedings
•    more stringent eligibility funding criteria for parents who are unable to resolve their disputes through RDM services, so that funding for court proceedings goes to those most in need, whose disputes are serious, and whose children are most at risk
•    more funding for enforcement proceedings so that when orders are made, parents can rely on them, thus preventing further trauma to children.
These proposals reflect a renewed and revitalised commitment to the protection of children at risk of harm and to early intervention services, and involve a general policy shift from funding for parents to funding for children. They also require practitioners, in-house and private, to shift their thinking from an automatic assumption of litigation funding post-RDM to a greater commitment to resolving family disputes at an earlier stage, which will involve them taking more responsibility for considering the ongoing merits of their client’s position at significant points during the life of a case.

Submissions are now closed, but the discussion paper is still available on the Legal Aid website at http://www.legalaid.vic.gov.au/3334.htm

Source: Victoria Legal Aid website

The report from the National Alternative Dispute Resolution Advisory Council (NADRAC) advises the Government on improving the integrity of ADR.
Lawyers need better training and legal professional bodies need to amend their codes of conduct to better define the standard for lawyers participating in ADR, the report said.

NADRAC had noted in a 2009 report that “where concerns have been raised about the conduct of participants in ADR, they seem most often to be about the conduct of some lawyers”, and things have not changed, the current report suggests.
“Some lawyers are alleged to exhibit undesirable behaviours in ADR processes, such as tightly controlling the communication processes, limiting the disputants’ direct participation and unduly focussing on legal argument and issues,” the report said.

Lawyers’ behaviour in the ADR setting is sometimes reflecting and promoting an adversarial culture and a lack of understanding of ADR, it said.
The current report recommends better training for lawyers.
“In NADRAC’s view, these behaviours are most effectively addressed through further training and education for legal practitioners and law students,” said the report.
“Further training of lawyers would be desirable to change thinking from a rights-based to an interest-based approach when participating in ADR.”

The report said lawyers need to be reminded to advise clients of available ADR options, their respective benefits and consequences, and that ADR processes, such as mediation, do not determine rights.
It suggests lawyers should advise that, even if the process is required by legislation or an order of a court or tribunal, a resolution cannot be mandated.

Legal professional bodies, too, did not escape attention in the report. Codes of conduct need to be amended to better define standards of lawyers participating in ADR, it said.
“For example, the Law Council of Australia and Law Society of NSW have already issued guidelines for lawyers involved in mediation.
“It is important that the national reform of the legal profession does not omit or minimise the responsibility of lawyer to assist their clients to resolve disputes  and maximise their use of ADR.”

Attorney General Robert McClelland commissioned the report to recommend legislative changes to maintain the integrity of ADR in Australia. He today welcomed the report, called Maintaining and Enhancing the Integrity of ADR Processes: From Principles to Practice Through People.
“We have an evolving culture in Australia of resolving disputes outside of the court system,” McClelland said.
“More and more people are choosing this option. Alternative dispute resolution is becoming an increasingly prominent feature of the way Australians access justice, and it  is important to ensure the services that support them are consistent.”

The NADRAC report also discusses issues around about confidentiality, inadmissibility, immunity and conduct obligations of all others involved in alternative dispute resolution.
NADRAC consulted extensively in developing the report through discussions with family law experts and two public consultation processes  which resulted in more than 40 submissions.
“NADRAC’s report will encourage greater use of alternative dispute resolution as an effective mechanism to resolve disputes,” said McClelland
NADRAC is an independent non-statutory body that provides policy advice to the Attorney General on ways of resolving or managing disputes without the need for judicial determination.

Source: The New Lawyer Newsletter

Article:

More mothers are paying child support to fathers than ever before.

Figures released by the Child Support Agency show that just over 100,00 women were paying maintenance in December last year, accounting for 13.3 per cent
of all parents registering their payments through the agency.
More than 50,000 fathers are registered with the agency as full time custodial parents.
“The increase in the number of mothers paying child support is a reflection of the general societal trend of more women in the workforce, with  many receiving higher incomes,” said the agency’s director of parent support services, Tina Brown.
The increase in shared custody since 2006 has contributed to this because mothers who earn more than fathers are required to contribute to costs even in a 50-50 or 60-40 custody split.
ABC sports broadcaster Debbie Spillane paid maintenance to her former husband, Roger Gold, for 16 years after they agreed that he would be the primary carer of their daughter Jemima, who was then two. “It was a simple case of logistics,” Spillane says now. “I was working shifts,  my partner had more nine-to-five hours and did more of the preschool runs, whereas I was working breakfast or long weekends.” While Spillane’s custody arrangements were seen as “weird” in the 1980′s, the number of mothers paying maintenance has almost doubled in the past decade. In 2001, there were 58,367 children receiving child support from their mothers. By 2009, the agency had 103,109 cases being paid by mothers. But mothers who don’t have custody of their children are still stigmatised, says Cathy Noble, a social worker who lost custody when her daughter was eight. Non-custodial mothers can be “so isolated because of the stigma,” she says. “People wonder what’s wrong with you.”
Mothers appear to default less often on their maintenance than fathers – 20.9 per cent of mothers paying maintenance in 2009 had debts,  compared to 33.5 per cent of fathers.
A long term study of 60 separated Melbourne families, conducted by The University of Melbourne’s law school, is tracking 11 mothers liable to pay child support as part of its sample. In a report published in the current issue of Family Matters, the journal of the Australian Institute of Family Studies, the researchers found that many of the mothers in their sample preferred to pay for their children’s costs directly rather than pay all money directly to the father as primary carer.