McIntosh Chambers

IT'S A NEW YEAR, 2011 and the children of separated families will soon be heading back to school!

To their credit, most separated parents can readily agree on what High School their child or children are going to attend but occasionally, parents have different ideas on what they want for their children.

During the second week of January 2011, the Federal Magistrates Court, Sydney, heard urgent applications to determine issues such as what school a child should attend.  Ms McIntosh appeared on Monday, 10 January 2011 for a Respondent mother on an interim application by the father for parenting orders.

The father in this case was determined for his son to attend a prominent high school which had a sports focus.  The mother made appropriate enquiries and assisted to facilitate the child to sit selection trials.  After several months of enquiry and discussion, the mother determined it was in the child's best interests that the son continue his education at a local high school in which his primary school was a feeder to that school.  The father, incensed by the mother's view, brought the issue for determination before the Court.

The matter was heard and determined in the mother's favour.

The Federal Magistrate decided that the child's best interests were best served by continuing his education with the friends and peers with whom he had grown up with since kindergarten.  The Court found the child to be a caring, sensitive and lovely boy and the continuity and stability was what the family most needed.  The Federal Magistrate agreed that the other child of the parties would benefit from the security of knowing where she was going to school in another year's time and also ordered that she attend the same High School with her brother.

Interestingly, Ms McIntosh submitted that although the orders were sought by the father as interim orders (being a part of a Initiating Application for Final Orders), His Honour should make them as final orders in that they were not the type of orders that should be revisited and marked 'until further order'.  His Honour agreed and the orders were made on a Final Basis.  (NB: the parties and children were the subject of Final Orders in 2004).