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Guardians
The best interests of the child
A mother and father of a child are normally joint guardians.
The Court can appoint additional Guardians and in rare circumstances remove a Guardian.
There are occasions when a child is placed under the guardianship of the Court. People often refer to this as a child being a Ward of the Court.
Only Guardians can lawfully make the important decisions affecting the lives and development of children. Decisions must jointly be made where there are two or more guardians.
It is unlawful for a Guardian to make a guardianship decision unilaterally.
When guardians cannot agree then one or other of them can apply to the Family Court to determine the issue.
Common examples of guardianship disputes are: whether a child moves to another town or country to live (relocation), what school a child is to go to, The name by which a child is to be known, whether a child is regularly immunised or receives certain medical treatment.
It is important to know that even in situations where a guardian has little contact with a child that guardian has equal guardian status as the child’s primary caregiver.
The care-giving guardian’s view is not given greater weight just because the child is in their care. A decision is made purely on the basis of what is in the welfare and best interests of the child.
Day-to-Day Care and Contact
We used to talk about the care of children in terms of custody and access.
Some people talked of visitation.
We do not use these terms anymore because parents seemed to believe that only the custodial parent had the right and ability to make all the decisions about children. This has never been the case.
The decision-making rests with guardians irrespective of who has the care of a child.
To dispel this myth we have changed the terminology to try to reflect the law. We now talk about the “day-to-day care” of and “contact” with children.
Day to day care means care that is provided only for 1 or more specified days or part days.
Contact means all forms of direct and indirect interaction with a child.
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