Don’s Family Law Blog

The Courier Mail reported on the weekend that Brisbane is the divorce capital of Australia, based on the Federal Magistrates Court 2008-2009 Annual Report.

`Celebrity’ demographer, Bernard Salt, was trotted out to attempt to explain the anomaly.  Alas, it’s not a particularly interesting story.

 The number of divorce applications filed in each city as stated in the article did not take into account that the greater Melbourne and Sydney areas are serviced by 2 registries each (Melbourne and Dandenong and Sydney and Parramatta) while Brisbane has only 1 registry.

If the figures for each of the 2 supporting registries in the southern states are combined: Melbourne/Dandenong (12,373), Sydney/Parramatta (12,251) then it seems Brisbane (9,894) has been crowned unfairly.

Some interesting quotes have been circulating from a Full Court judgment in an appeal from a Family Court judgment.

Taking inspiration from Donald Rumsfeld (known unknowns and unknown unknowns etc) the trial judge stated:

“In other words, as a general forensic rule the usual is more likely to occur than the unusual but the unlikely sometimes happens though not very often.  Once the likely is rejected then the unlikely may be more likely to be true.”

The judge also wrote:

“a reasonable starting point is the supposition that husbands do not normally cheat former wives out of their fair share of the property.”

Too true!

The word is out, about a Brisbane family lawyer who provided a drinking bottle full of vodka in his 13 year old’s school lunch box.  Welfare authorities are not investigating as it has been explained that the vodka was ‘contraband’ placed in the refrigerator belonging to an older child.

Would like to have seen the face of the 13 year old on the first swig.