Could you please, please get this story out there! We desperately need to stop this from happening again. This is the second time in the same court. Now two kids don’t have a dad; a mum, dad and family are left grieving. Just weeks ago, a 16-year-old young girl, devastated by her parents’ divorce, suicided in her old family home. The author is our DIDS solicitor. Contact details are below. This ...

Thank GOD we have DIDS in this country. 5 males a day, every day, suicide in this country. In Canada, it’s 9 a day. We are establishing links to start DIDS over there. ~~~ Andrew T. Renouf committed suicide on or about October 17, 1995, because he had 100% of his wages taken by the Family Responsibility Office, an agency of the Government of Ontario, Canada. He asked for assistance for ...

In his 1994 inaugural speech, Nelson Mandela said: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves: who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. ...

Well here it is, Saturday morning, and Warwick rang me for my article and I had nothing prepared. I was wandering around a shopping centre not particularly looking for anything, just in a bit of a daze. You see, sometimes things just get the better of me, and sometimes I just switch off. An interview I had recorded with Southern Cross Ten State Focus was just aired today, which was just ...

(A goodbye letter written by a mate.) Dear Jane, Even though it will probably take you only five minutes to read this, if you read it at all, it took me a long time to write it. It also took a lot of courage to speak my mind and my heart. I hope you don’t see this as an attack on you, it’s not. Forgive me for my anger, it’s necessary. ...

Wow, what a few weeks. Parkinson’s Taskforce Release of suggested reforms, Four Corners, Fatherhood Forum 05, The Lonefathers Conference, the Attorney General’s release of suggested reforms. Receiving a beautiful plaque from the Fatherhood Forum in Parliament House for our DIDs work.  My son telling me he is proud of me, my daughter sending me an email of how wonderful she thinks I am, doing the work I do. That she loves ...

In the coming weeks and months, we as mothers, fathers, children, grandparents and families await the Government’s answers to the proposed reforms within Family Law and within the Child Support Scheme. We have been waiting patiently, even though we have been experiencing the very same thing this grandmother (below) so graciously describes. We as responsible fathers have been supporting our children, and yet are denied the right to have a relationship ...

Today, the Sydney paper carried a story of a well-known identity, Rene Rivkin, who suicided weeks after splitting from his wife of 32 years. It was front-page news in most of the major papers. A local newspaper here carried a similar sad story of death. It was a well-known local radio announcer here. The newspaper here failed to say what had happened, only that the death was considered not suspicious. We, ...

Tonight is the start of the school holidays; I am allowed to pick up my son.  I feel extremely emotional about this, because I know only too well what it feels like when these times come for men who are deprived of the opportunity to spend time with their little ones. It took a court order to get to this point. What a shame, what a shame on this society, that ...

It is not the actual divorce that hurts families. It is the pain of finding guilt in one another as divorcing couples. The fighting, the yelling, the attacking of one another’s character is what causes trauma in children and friends. Some people’s mistake is to either marry the wrong person or think they have married the wrong person. The problem then so often lies in couples trying to blame the other ...

The Attorney General has released a discussion paper on Family Law Reform. Take the time, read it and put a submission in to: www.ag.gov.au Think about parallel parenting. Why can’t it work here? We are coming up to Christmas. Many dads won’t be seeing their kids for Christmas — someone else may be handing out their presents from under the tree this year. While you are having Christmas dinner or while you ...

(continued from part 1) The next question then becomes, why doesn’t this hard core group just pay up? Well of course, just as there are some taxpayers who will go to any lengths to avoid paying taxation, there will always be some who will adopt a similar attitude towards payment of child support. It is an unfortunate facet of human nature. But there are also wider issues involving such things as ...

It was fascinating to watch the media recently making a complete botch of facts (as per usual) in order to generate reader interest. This mangling of fact in favour of ‘readability appeal’ (fiction) happens all too frequently in our media — something that is costing us dearly as a society, as our perceptions of social reality become evermore distorted by the nonsense we read in newspapers. The recent reporting of child ...

While attending ANZAC Day dawn ceremonies just now, I was reminded of how little people understand the unknown/absent/single father from the poems that are read on ANZAC Day. I have re-written the originals slightly below, for those who are battling and those who have gone before, and for those who would like to understand the plight of the “unknown father” who daily still lays down his life. For The Fallen Laurence ...

Letter to the Prime Minister from The Lone Fathers Association of Australia Part Two The best interests of the child With a legal presumption of equal shared physical custody, a clear message would be sent by the Australian community to the divorce industry that a child is a human being with an inalienable right to equal parenting (including parenting time) by both its parents and a right to not have a ...

Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea Joy to you and me! Here we come, into the holidays. My two independent elder children will be off with their friends. I will see little of them. My youngest will be at his mother’s this Christmas. I am grateful it is a rotation, but I can find it a bit hard. We will all try to be together for a meal ...

Recently, I have been pondering the relevance of this statement in my own life. It has been a number of years since I separated, but I still struggle with a lack of vision for my life. It doesn’t really matter how you come to be separated from your children and their mother, I think at some time we all experience the same thing — a need to re-evaluate our vision for ...

A few years ago I was a happily married man — a beautiful wife, three sons, a home  that  was well on the way to being paid off, a job, and settled in the community.  We had just had our 10-year anniversary — a night on the town for the family.  A few bumps along the way, including some really tough surprises with our sons’ births, but everything was fine — ...

As I walked up the main street of Wollongong one day this week, I heard a voice cry out my name. It was an old friend of mine, whom I knew was now a single dad. He had experienced the full brunt of the Family Court’s injustice. His divorce was both painful and bitter. Simon had subsequently walked away from a very good job on the wharves and become another one ...

It is a well-known adage that evil triumphs when good men do nothing. The events of history testify to the truth of this saying. Yet, there are plenty of examples in history of good men accepting the authority of a tyrannical government. The apostle Paul was a Jew living under the dominance of a conquering nation, the Romans. Despite this, he taught that it was important to be obedient and submissive ...