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What does the Family Court look at when assessing your matter?

The Hon. D Bryant, Chief Justice, Family Court of Australia said it doesn’t matter who their parents are as long as the children are in a stable, loving and caring relationship in which they are brought up.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/ssm-family-court-chief-justice-diana-bryants-plea-for-kids/news-story/b76fff682d5f998ddb958ce928c8f97d

Family Court judge enters same-sex debate

Family Court Chief Justice Diana Bryant in Melbourne yesterday. Picture: Aaron Francis
Family Court Chief Justice Diana Bryant in Melbourne yesterday. Picture: Aaron Francis
    • The Australian

Children need to be raised in an environment where they are ­surrounded by happy, loving ­relationships, and it does not ­matter whether their parents are of the same sex or heterosexual, says the nation’s most senior ­family law judge.

Family Court Chief Justice Diana Bryant, who has presided over many hundreds of disputes involving broken families in her 17-year career as a family law judge, said what children needed most was to be surrounded by ­stable, functional relationships. “What you want for children is a stable, loving and ­caring relationship in which they are brought up,” she told The Australian. “It ­really doesn’t matter who their parents are as long as they have all of those aspects, and if they do, there is absolutely no reason why there should be any discrimination in my view.

“What you don’t want children to have is to be living in a confected, dysfunctional relationship — whether it is two parents of the same sex, or two heterosexual people.”

In a rare intervention in a key debate, Chief Justice Bryant said same-sex marriage would have no effect on the way the Family Law Act applied to children. This is ­because the legislation applies in exactly the same way to married and de facto couples and their children, regardless of whether they are in a heterosexual or same-sex relationship.

“The Act applies equally to children of same-sex couples as it does to children of heterosexual couples,” Chief Justice Bryant said. “Apart from divorce itself, if the Marriage Act was changed it is not going to make any difference to the way in which the Act ­applies.”

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