PARTIES SEEKS FOR COURT’S DETERMINATION ON WHERE THEIR CHILD SHOULD ATTEND SCHOOL
Montes & Booker [2020] FCCA 3601 (13 November 2020)
This is an interim proceeding determining where the child will attend school in 2021. The mother seeks a school closer to her home while the father seeks for a school that is of equal distance from where he and the mother lives.
Facts:
The child was born in 2015 and lives with the mother, he will be turning six which means that he is about to start prep. The child as at the time of the hearing is attending Suburb G pre-school three days per week.
The Father wanted the child to go to Suburb C School as providing structure, certainty and routine. From his perspective, the school at Suburb B, if not equidistant, was approximately in time an equal amount of travelling time from where the Mother proposed to work and from where he proposed to continue to live. He indicated that he worked in the city, and hence living in Suburb H, it was sensible for him.
However, on the morning of the hearing or during the morning of the hearing, the Mother's offer or the offer to her and her new partner for a property in the suburb close to Suburb B School was accepted.
Issue: Where should the child attend school?
Law:
- Family Law Act 1975 ss 60CA, 60CC
Analysis:
The court finds that if the child is enrolled at the Suburb C School as the Father seeks, it is going to be substantially more inconvenient for the Mother on a day-to-day basis. There are real advantages to Suburb C School. However, at the end of the day, that would mean that the child would be starting school at a school that is not close to where either his Mother or his Father is living.
Between when the child starts school and the trial, the child will be doing more school pickups and drop-offs from the Mother's home, and hence on balance there is an advantage to Suburb B School. In the court’s view, it is sufficiently close that it would enable the Mother and, indeed, the Father on the times that he is there to mix and meet other parents and children that will be in that local cohort. It is an advantage for a child to go to a school in the area to where the parents or a party lives, and that is the matter which in the exercise of my discretion and taking into account all of those matters sways me most significantly.
Conclusion: Court orders that each party do all acts and things and sign all documents necessary to enroll X at Suburb B School.
