Christmas holidays and the jolly season is soon upon us. For our Family Law Team at Adams & Partners Lawyers, this is a time where clients are seeking to resolve their parenting arrangements for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the Christmas holidays (including New Year’s Eve).
This is a special time for all families to enjoy some time together during the public holidays and school holidays. An opportunity to travel away from home with their children to the North Coast, South Coast, interstate and even overseas.
It is important when parents have separated that the children have the opportunity to share these special occasions with both their parents and their extended families. In most circumstances, parents can reach agreements between themselves to make this special times as easy as possible for the children. This allows for fluent changeover between households, multiple Christmas celebrations with each family and the children making memories with both parents separately at different holiday locations.
If parents are unable to reach agreement in relation to the time the children spend with each other during the Christmas holidays, they have a number of options:
- Obtain assistance from a Family Lawyer, such as our of our Family Law Team and Adams & Partners Lawyers to assist in negotiating Christmas holiday arrangements.
- Attend Family Dispute Resolution (also know as Mediation) to reach an agreement directly with the other parent with the assistance of a Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner (Mediator)
- Commence Federal Circuit and Family Court proceedings.
If you are at the stage where the only way to spend time with children during the Christmas school holidays is commencing Court proceedings (i.e. you have attended mediation with no agreement, there are urgent reasons for making a Court application, you have current Court proceedings), there is a time limit to make an Application for Christmas holiday time.
Rule 5.03 of the Federal Circuit and Family Court Rules (Family Law) Rules 2021 requires that the Application must be filed before 4pm on the second Friday in November if you are seeking for the Court to make Orders about the Christmas holiday period. In 2023, that date is 11 November 2022.
If you are having issues in organising the upcoming Christmas school holidays for your children, please make an appointment with our Family Law Team at Adams & Partners Lawyers and if you are a parent who needs to start Court proceedings, please make an appointment with a Family Lawyer immediately.
Written by Steven Ng
