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The evolution of family conflict resolution
While resolving family conflict predominantly occurs in the court system, there has been an evident shift towards family lawyers encouraging alternative resolution methods, including family therapy and parenting coordination.
Grace Robbie
Gabriella Pomare is a partner at Norton Law Group and was a finalist for Lawyers Weekly’s Partner of the Year Awards in the Family Law category in 2022 and 2023.
When Pomare first began practising within family law, she immediately observed a strong emphasis on resolving family conflicts through court proceedings and said “there was a big focus on court process, getting in whacking on an interim application.”
Given how financially burdensome, time-consuming, and emotionally draining court hearings impose on families, there’s been a noticeable change in how lawyers in this field handle family conflict resolution.
Increasingly, there’s been greater encouragement towards families utilising alternative dispute resolution methods, which offer families more efficient and less taxing pathways to resolution.
“It’s no longer we go off to a lawyer, we write up some orders or we’re off at court and judges deciding. It’s having different tools and mechanisms in place to resolve that dispute long term,” Pomare said.
“There are so many other practices and resources we can use as well to help families resolve their disputes.
“So, when initial letters go out and when we advise clients, we talk about things like parenting coordination, family therapy, mediation, collaborative practices, and using each of those different processes and resources together and jointly so that partiers can resolve their disputes on their own.”
Alternative dispute resolution methods prove highly advantageous for families navigating conflict, fostering a supportive environment that facilitates clear and effective communication between parties, thus better serving their interests. Moreover, these methods are significantly more cost-effective, efficient in terms of time, and offer greater flexibility, ultimately enhancing the overall experience for families involved.
Due to the evident advantages, research from the Australian Institute of Family Studies on post-separation parenting arrangements indicates that only “about 3 per cent of separated parents use courts as their main pathway to making parenting arrangements (based on a sample of about 6,000 separate[d] parents about 18 months after separation).”
The AIFS research also revealed that “16 per cent” of the separated parents they sampled used “family disputes resolution services or lawyers.”
With decades of experience in family law, Pomare reflected on the evolution of alternative dispute resolution methods, emphasising their significance and utility and stating that “they are important, they are useful, they are the way of the future.”
She delved into parenting coordination, highlighting its focus on the child’s interests and its close involvement with families in areas such as “communication and the implementation of orders.”
Pomare observed: “A lot more lawyers are becoming trained now in parenting coordination, which I think is excellent because it’s such a useful resource.
“Because it might be, for example, that six months later or a year later, parents can’t get along. They no longer can jointly interpret what final orders were meant to have said or school holidays can’t be agreed on.
“So a parenting coordinator will work closely with them to work through those issues, to help them co-parent better, and it might be to even monitor emails.”
Pomare reflected on a specific family she advised, illustrating the positive impact of utilising parenting coordination on their communication dynamics.
“I had a family I worked with recently, high conflict emails, back and forth. Nobody actually paused and reflected on what they said. They just started sending nasty emails. And the parenting coordinator got on board and said, how about you send that email to me, I’ll read it and then I’ll flick it off,” she commented.
Although alternative resources offer significant benefits to many families, Pomare noted how there are situations where they may not be suitable, necessitating the need for the court system.
“There’s a need for court, there’s a place there for it,” she said.
“And obviously, when something is urgent or complex or violence is involved, we need the court, and some parents need judges to make decisions.”
The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Gabriella Pomare, click below:
