The reforms to Part VII of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth), introduced by the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act 2006 were wide-ranging. Among the most significant of those reforms was the introduction of a rebuttable presumption of equal shared parental responsibility and particular obligations placed on family courts to consider ‘equal time’ and ‘substantial and significant time’ arrangements where the presumption applies. Another important change was made to the ‘best interest’ factors – factors that a court has regard to in deciding what order would be in the best interests of the child who is the subject of a parenting dispute – which as a result of the reforms are now divided into ‘primary’ and ‘additional’ considerations.
In March 2009, the Family Court of Australia released the first report outlining the orders being made relating to how children “spend time with” their parents in both litigated and early agreement cases. The first brief covered cases finalised during the 2007-2008 financial year. This report now provides the same data for cases finalised during the 2008-2009 financial year. It is based on 1013 litigated cases and 2788 early agreement cases finalised during the 2008/2009 financial year in the Family Court of Australia. This report does not contain any data in relation to orders made in the Federal Magistrates Court or the Family Court of Western Australia and it does not attempt to compare the data and no conclusions regarding trends have been made.