Family Law Blog

In our latest Family Law Blog, Lawyer Kirstie Barfoot lists the primary sources of information about adoptions in NSW.

The Supreme Court last month made a decision regarding a child being adopted by a same sex couple. The adoption was being disputed by the child's birth parents on the grounds that the proposed adoptive parents were unwilling to commit to raising her as a Catholic.

There are parallels between family law, the involvement of parties in the Family Court of Australia and the adoption process, and a number of hurdles over which families need to jump to see a child be adopted into their family.

Earlier this week Australia announced additional adoption programs with Poland and Latvia. These programs, whilst helpful, don’t make it substantially faster or easier to adopt children from these countries, in circumstances where there is still a commitment to intra country adoptions in the first instance.

Australia now has the second-lowest adoption rate in the developed world and individuals and couples looking to adopt in Australia have historically faced a slow moving and expensive battle. Recent reforms, championed by Deborra-lee Furness, with the support of the NSW Government, may assist to improve the adoption process.

Adopting a child is an exciting time in a person’s life but excitement can turn to frustration and disappointment when you encounter delays and difficulties. This article outlines the processes and pitfalls you may come across in your adoption journey.

Everyone and their uncle has been putting in their 2 cents worth regarding the changes to family law violence legalisation; the women’s rights groups, the men’s rights groups, the children’s rights advocators, the media and a few others have joined the bandwagon. So I am not going to go over the whole changes again but I like to think that I am taking a commentators position, if you will, as the band wagon rumbles past.

Have you ever loved your partner so much you wanted to adopt them? Polo magnate, John Goodman who is facing a civil trial in the US over the death of a 23-year-old in a hit and run accident, did just that. A judge previously ruled that a trust Mr Goodman had set up for his two children could not be considered part of his financial worth if a jury awarded damages to the victim’s family. In an attempt to provide for his girlfriend, Mr Goodman has since adopted said girlfriend as his legal daughter, in turn allowing her to be entitled to a third of the family trust. An American Court has described the action as a new "twilight zone" for the legal system. It is very unlikely that we get such a twilight rezoning case as the Adoption Act of NSW and it’s mirroring counterparts from other states state that adoption applies to a child under the age of 18 or for a person over the age of 18 that was cared for as a ward or stepchild of the adoptive parent when they were underage.