A family lawyer has urged Australian women to get behind proposed amendments to the Family Law Act, which would abolish the default presumption of parents spending equal time with children.
While fathers’ rights groups have been around since the 1970s helping fathers to see their children, there are fewer organisations specifically for supporting separated mothers, one family lawyer has argued in an open letter to Australian women.
Mediator, arbitrator and accredited family law specialist Lynette Galvin said that “this shouldn’t be a gender issue, but it is”.
The exposure draft of the Family Law Amendment Bill became available to the public for consultation on 30 January this year — and is open for submissions until 27 February.
Ms Galvin has been a family lawyer for over 35 years — and has been practising since before the amendments and after the amendments, seeing their impacts.
“On behalf of the children of the future, I am asking all women who have anything to say to make those submissions, so that this time, the men’s rights groups are not the loudest voices to be heard.
Ms Galvin warned that “if women don’t get heard” now, a whole generation of children could be negatively impacted, and added that the 2006 amendments “favoured fathers over mothers”.