Family Law and the Indissolubility of

There are few areas of public policy in the Western world where there is as much turbulence as in family law. Often the disputes are seen in terms of an endless war between the genders. Reviewing developments over the last 30 years in North America, Europe, and Australasia, Patrick Parkinson argues that, rather than just being about gender, the conflicts in family law derive from the breakdown of the model on which divorce reform was predicated in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Experience has shown that although marriage may be freely dissoluble, parenthood is not. Dealing with the most difficult issues in family law, this book charts a path for law reform that recognizes that the family endures despite the separation of parents, while allowing room for people to make a fresh start and prioritizing the safety of all concerned when making decisions about parenting after separation.

Patrick Parkinson is a Professor of Law at the University of Sydney and an internationally renowned expert on family law. He has played a major role in shaping family law in Australia. His proposal for the establishment of a national network of family relationship centers, made to the prime minister in 2004, became the centerpiece of the Australian government's family law reforms. He was also instrumental in reforming the child support system and has had extensive involvement in law reform issues concerning child protection. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his services to law, legal education, policy reform, and the community. Parkinson has published widely on family law and child protection, as well as other areas of law. His most recent books include Tradition and Change in Australian Law (4th edition, 2010) and Australian Family Law in Context (4th edition, 2009), among many others.

Preface	p. xi
Family Law and the Meaning of Divorce
Family Law and the Issue of Gender Conflict	p. 3
Fathers, mothers, and the gender war	p. 3
The turmoil in policy about parenting after separation	p. 8
The problem of trench warfare	p. 9
The growth in litigation about parenting	p. 9
Reframing the issues	p. 12
The indissolubility of parenthood and limitations on autonomy	p. 14
The Divorce Revolution and the Process of Allocation	p. 16
The indissolubility of marriage	p. 16
The emergence of no-fault divorce	p. 18
Giving marriages a decent burial	p. 21
The allocation of the children	p. 22
The clean-break principle and the goal of self-sufficiency	p. 25
Child support and parental separation	p. 34
The breakdown of the allocation model and the emergence of the enduring family	p. 36
The divorce revolution and the feminization of poverty	p. 37
The gender war and the enduring family	p. 39
Restructuring the family after separation	p. 41
Parenthood in the Enduring Family
Redefining Parenthood after Separation	p. 45
The movement toward joint custody in the United States	p. 45
Parenting plans	p. 47
Other linguistic formulations	p. 48
Europe: The continuation of parental responsibility after separation	p. 50
The meaningful involvement of both parents	p. 55
Beyond custody	p. 56
Resolving disputes about parenting decisions in the enduring family	p. 57
The idealization of the postseparation family	p. 61
The good divorce	p. 63
Reasons for the Demise of Sole Custody	p. 66
Changes in community attitudes toward parental responsibility	p. 67
Pressure from fathers	p. 69
The benefits of paternal involvement in the postseparation family	p. 73
Fairness between parents	p. 77
Children's views on time with nonresident parents	p. 79
The counterthrust - continuing the preseparation patterns of care	p. 81
The rise of shared parenting laws	p. 90
Shared Parenting: The New Frontier	p. 91
The growth of shared parenting	p. 91
Legislative support for shared parenting	p. 97
The move toward equal time: Developments in the United States	p. 99
The move toward equal time: Developments in Europe	p. 101
Shared care in Australian law	p. 104
Shared parenting and high-conflict families	p. 112
Children's views on equal time arrangements	p. 114
Shared care and traditional parenting arrangements after separation	p. 116
Parents Forever? Issues about Postseparation Parenting
Violence, Abuse, and Postseparation Parenting	p. 121
Patterns of violence within families	p. 123
The relevance of domestic violence to decision making on parenting after separation	p. 129
Intimate partner violence and legislation on postseparation parenting	p. 133
Presumptions against custody	p. 136
Presumption against unsupervised visitation	p. 138
Differentiating between kinds of family violence	p. 140
Current safety concerns	p. 143
When familial relationships can no longer endure	p. 145
Domestic violence: The need for a bifurcated response	p. 147
Relocation	p. 150
The dilemma of relocation	p. 150
The conflict in legislatures and courts	p. 153
Relocation: Between two meanings of divorce	p. 157
Beyond polarization	p. 162
Relocation and the best interests of the child test	p. 164
Reasons for relocation	p. 166
Should nonresident parents move?	p. 169
Should new partners move?	p. 171
Maintaining a meaningful relationship with the nonresident parent	p. 171
The difficulties of contact	p. 172
The burden of travel	p. 174
Divorce, cohabitation, and the enduring family	p. 175
The risks of relocation	p. 178
Determining public policy on relocation	p. 179
The Family Law System and the Enduring Family
Dispute Resolution for the Enduring Family	p. 183
Mediation as an alternative to litigation	p. 183
The paradigm shift in family dispute resolution	p. 184
The Australian Family Relationship Centers	p. 187
New approaches to in-court counseling services	p. 193
Competition or partnership? Mediators, lawyers, and the court system	p. 194
Adjudication for the Enduring Family	p. 197
New approaches to adjudication	p. 197
Denmark: The role of County Governors' Offices	p. 201
Reforming the adversarial system	p. 202
Adjudication in families with continuing high conflict	p. 205
Financial Transfers in the Enduring Family
Child Support and the Obligations of Parenthood	p. 211
Maintaining and creating ties between parents	p. 211
Child support and the divorce revolution	p. 213
Nonmarital families and the indissolubility of parenthood	p. 215
The public role in child support assessment and collection	p. 215
Revenue recovery, supporting children, and parent-child contact	p. 222
Devising formulas - the search for principle	p. 225
The ôcostsö of children	p. 228
The percentage of obligor income approach	p. 229
The income shares approach	p. 230
Community views on calculating the child support obligation	p. 232
Child support and shared parenting	p. 233
Child support and the interdependence of parents	p. 236
Spousal Support and the Feminization of Poverty	p. 238
The divorce revolution and the clean break	p. 238
Role differentiation in the modern family	p. 243
The economic consequences of separation and divorce for men	p. 246
Justifying spousal support in an age of no-fault divorce	p. 248
Reconceptualizing and reviving spousal support	p. 250
Compensation, income sharing, and the decision to end the marriage	p. 255
Spousal support as insurance	p. 258
Spousal support and property division	p. 259
The relationship between child support and spousal support	p. 261
Should spousal support be limited to those who were married?	p. 264
Diverging approaches and the meaning of divorce	p. 264
The Future of Family Law
Between Two Conflicting Views of Separation and Divorce	p. 269
Abandoning the Judeo-Christian view of marriage	p. 269
Bolshevik Russia revisited	p. 270
Wavering between two opinions	p. 272
The challenge of experience	p. 276
The irretrievable breakdown of divorce policy	p. 277
Toward new policies for the postseparation family	p. 278
Index	p. 281
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Family Law and the Indissolubility of Parenthood

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