Forum
Children in Family Law: Moving beyond the 'Best Interests' rhetoric
Lawrie Moloney
Senior Research Fellow, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne; Adjunct Professor, School of Public Health, La Trobe University, Melbourne VIC
PP: 161
Abstract
When I work as a family law mediator or, more technically, as a family-dispute resolution practitioner, I sometimes imagine the struggle to resolve issues around parenting and property as if it were a struggle to loosen knots.
In challenging cases, it can feel like working with the sort of multilayered knots that a child might create, tied over and over to maximise the chances that everything will remain secure.
In parenting disputes that occur after separation or divorce, children's interests are tangled up inside the knots - though it is not, of course, the children who are responsible for the tangle.
Dispute practitioners need to know how to soften the edges of the fight so that knots can begin to be loosened. Only then, can each child reemerge as an individual that his or her parents can again start to see and appreciate. A child needs to be seen before his or her 'best interests' can be considered - before his or her individual needs, perceptions, and attachments can become part of the dispute-resolution equation.
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