Home > Issues
> Fathers' Rights > Open Letter to the
Family Court of Australia |
|
Empowering Men:
|
Open Letter to the Family Court
of Australia
|
|
|
My name is Ash Patil, President of the Australian
Equal Parenting group called
Fathers4Equality.
I first of all wish to thank you for taking the time to read my correspondence.
I should start by declaring that being Australians, we (our membership)
recognise how lucky we are in having direct access to our politicians to express
our concerns about the counter-productive family laws in this country. We
realise that this kind of access is not available in all countries.
Our membership has focussed on supplying Member's of Parliament examples
on how
inneffective and misguided current Family Laws are, primarily via written
correspondence (letters), and via email.
We would like to request this same level of access to the Family Court,
including key staff, and in particular such access to the Family Court judges
across Australia.
(i) We believe that Family Court judges rarely get to see the true ramifications
of their child custody decisions, in most part because in the eyes of the
Court
a child custody dispute is successfully resolved when a decision is handed
down.
Judges however would greatly benefit by reading first hand of all the problems
that are created by an adversarial family law system that places little
practical emphasis on the benefits to children of maximising contact with
both
parents after separation.
(ii) Secondly, judges may not be fully aware of the implications of a pervasive
culture within the Family Law industry in Australia, that actively dissuades
fathers from pursuing arrangements that would be in the best interests of
the
child. This is because legal opinion and community perceptions are such that
fathers are lead to believe that they have no chance of a fair hearing within
the Family Court.
This culture denies Family Court judges from hearing credible arguments
for
greater fatherly participation in the lives of their children, because of
the
overwhelming and undeniable perception of bias against fathers.
We believe that Family Court judges would greatly benefit from reading about
the
very real problems created by this system (both directly and indirectly),
from
fathers who on the whole do not have the institutional support to appear before
the Family Court. Most separated fathers, either because legal aid is denied
them, or because of the overwhelming perception of bias, will never access
the
Family Court, however they are still nevertheless impacted by a resulting
culture created by the pervasive, sole-custody-centric, 'winner takes all'
approach adopted by the Family Court. This culture strongly suggests that
fathers and children are better served if fathers simply detach themselves
from
their children, and simply walk away.
We ask that in the true spirit of democracy, and in the promotion of a
transparent and accountable intrument of justice in this country, that Family
Law judges would be willing to become as accessible and as open to the currently
suppressed realities of family law in this country, as our politcians are.
Only good can come from such transparency, in particular for the children
of
separated families, whose best welfare currently receives much lip service,
but
whose interests can be better served by an open and trasparent system, which
can
better ensure that the gate-keepers of family law outcomes in the country
(ie,
the Family Court judges), are fully in touch with the full spectrum of community
realities regarding family law and its ramification, in this country.
I urge you to please escalate this request to the appropriate decision makers
in
the Family Court, and make available to our members the email addresses and
postal addresses for each key staff member of the Family Court, and for each
Family Court judge.
With Thanks
Ash Patil
PO Box 57, THIRROUL, NSW, 2515
30th Nov, 2005
| |
Webmaster |
|
Latest Update |
7 July 2015 |
|
|
