No Change, No Reopening, No More Litigation Without Leave: Mother’s Mental Health, ADVO Breaches and Repetitive Filings Trigger Harmful Proceedings Orders

In Gaddy & Gaddy (No 3) [2026] FedCFamC2F 1245, Judge Suthers dismissed the mother’s application to reconsider final parenting orders. The Court found there had been no significant change in circumstances since the final parenting orders were made. Instead, the later events showed a continuation of the same concerns that had justified the original protective orders: serious mental health issues, lack of insight, ongoing persecutory beliefs, repeated ADVO breaches, bail breaches, police intervention, and litigation conduct that exposed the father to psychological harm and oppression. The Court also made a harmful proceedings order restraining the mother from instituting further proceedings against the father without leave, restricted her ability to file documents and email the Court, and directed targeted information-sharing with police and mental health services for welfare and safety purposes.

🧩 Facts and Issues

Facts:

The parties were the parents of three children, X, Y and Z. Final parenting orders had already been made in December 2022 after defended trial. Those orders placed the children with the father and gave him sole discretion about the children spending time with the mother, because the Court had found that although the children had meaningful relationships with both parents, the need to protect them from harm outweighed the benefit of time with the mother.

The mother later sought to reopen or reconsider the final parenting orders. By closing submissions, she sought fresh parenting orders for the children to live with her and spend supervised time with the father. The father opposed the application, arguing it was vexatious or failed the statutory threshold under s 65DAAA, and he sought a harmful proceedings order.

The original parenting decision had been based on findings that the mother had a long history of serious mental health difficulties, including psychotic episodes, hospital admissions, poor insight and non-compliance with treatment. The original findings also included that the mother had perpetrated family violence against the father, including physical assault and repeated breaches of an ADVO, and that her lack of insight created a material possibility of continuing family violence and emotional risk to the children.

The mother argued that circumstances had changed. The Court rejected that. Judge Suthers found her presentation remained substantially consistent with the concerns identified at trial. She continued to show dysregulation, persecutory beliefs about the father and his partner, denial of mental health difficulties, minimisation of family violence, and repeated ADVO/bail-related conduct.

Issues:

1. Had there been a significant change in circumstances since the final parenting orders?
2. If so, was reconsideration of the final parenting orders in the children’s best interests?
3. Did the mother’s later mental health admissions, ADVO breaches, bail breaches and police involvement support reopening the matter, or confirm the original risk findings?
4. Had the mother’s procedural conduct caused harm to the father?
5. Should a harmful proceedings order be made restraining the mother from commencing further proceedings without leave?
6. Should the Court restrict the mother’s communications with the Registry to protect the administration of justice?
7. Was information-sharing with police and mental health services necessary for welfare and safety purposes?

⚖️ Applicable Law – Legislation, Regulations, Rules

Family Law Act 1975 (Cth)

• s 65DAAA — threshold for reconsideration of final parenting orders; the Court must consider whether there has been a significant change in circumstances since the orders were made.
• s 102QAC — harmful proceedings orders.
• s 102QAG — leave process where a harmful proceedings order restrains further proceedings.
• s 114S — permission for the mother to provide the judgment to treating medical or allied health professionals.

Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia Act 2021 (Cth)

• s 95 — overarching purpose, including safety and efficient use of judicial and administrative resources.
• s 140 — power to make orders appropriate to the proceeding.
• s 192 — power to give directions about practice and procedure.

Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Family Law) Rules 2021 (Cth)

• r 1.31 — power to make orders in the interests of justice.
• rr 2.24 and 8.18 — relevant to managing prolix, scandalous, abusive, irrelevant or inappropriate material.

Mental Health and Cognitive Impairment Forensic Provisions Act 2020 (NSW)

• Relevant because some criminal charges involving the mother were dealt with under mental health/cognitive impairment processes rather than ordinary sentencing.

📌 Precedents Relied On

• Radecki & Radecki — binding authority on s 65DAAA; the Court must make findings about whether there has been a significant change of circumstances since the earlier parenting orders. If there is no positive finding of changed circumstances, that is the end of the matter.
• Ferreday & Layh — harmful proceedings provisions can spare children and carers from unnecessary litigation by requiring leave before further proceedings are instituted.
• Hays & Hays (No 4) — for harmful proceedings orders, proof of harm is not required; reasonable grounds to believe harm would be suffered may be enough, and expert evidence is not always necessary.
• Vasquez & Vasquez — relevant to the statutory framework for harmful proceedings orders and the meaning of harm, including mental or emotional detriment and oppression.
• Reeve v Fair Work Commission — cited by analogy regarding finite court resources and the need to protect court processes from being consumed by inappropriate or repetitive conduct.

🧠 Analysis

Issue

Should the mother be permitted to reopen final parenting orders where she claimed changed circumstances, but the evidence showed continuing mental health instability, ongoing family violence-related conduct, repeated ADVO breaches and harmful litigation behaviour?

Rule

Under s 65DAAA, the Court cannot reconsider final parenting orders unless it first considers whether there has been a significant change of circumstances since the making of those orders. The Court must make findings about what, if anything, has changed. If no significant change is found, the application must be dismissed.

A later event is not automatically a “change” just because it occurred after the final orders. If the later event is merely a continuation or manifestation of the same risks that underpinned the final parenting orders, it may confirm the original order rather than justify reopening it.

For a harmful proceedings order, the Court does not need to be satisfied that harm has already been proven to the civil standard. It is enough to identify reasonable grounds to believe that further proceedings would cause the protected person harm, including psychological harm or oppression.

Application

1. The mother’s case failed at the s 65DAAA threshold

The mother needed to show a significant change of circumstances since the 2022 final parenting orders. She relied on claims including risk allegedly posed by the father or his household, harm caused by her exclusion from activities and places, emotional harm to the children caused by her absence, and her asserted employment, daily functioning and engagement with treaters.

Judge Suthers rejected that case. The mother’s claims about the father were largely found unreliable or implausible, and unsupported by independent business records. Her assertions about effective treatment engagement were inconsistent with the ongoing evidence of mental health instability, limited insight, and recent difficulties engaging even with her own doctor.

The Court accepted that, if the application was dismissed, the children were unlikely to spend time or communicate with the mother in the foreseeable future. But that outcome did not displace the risk analysis. The Court held that the final parenting orders continued to appropriately balance the family’s competing interests in the children’s best interests.

2. The later events confirmed the original risk findings

This is the central point of the case. The mother did not show that the risk landscape had improved. Instead, the Court found that the later events were continuations of the same problems that justified the final orders.

The mother’s presentation remained substantially unchanged from the earlier findings. She continued to demonstrate persecutory beliefs, dysregulated behaviour and lack of insight. She had been found in breach of bail conditions and in contravention of ADVOs, had been incarcerated for a fortnight, and had been diagnosed with delusional disorder.

Judge Suthers made the point expressly: although the frequency and seriousness of manifestations had fluctuated, the relevant circumstances had not materially changed. The later events were continuations of the same untreated illness, lack of insight, family violence and dysregulated conduct on which the final parenting orders were based.

That is why the mother’s application failed. It was not enough to point to new incidents. The incidents had to show a material change in the risk picture. They did the opposite.

3. Mental health remained unresolved and connected to risk

The Court reviewed the mother’s mental health history, including prior psychotic episodes, hospital admissions, bipolar affective disorder with psychotic features, delusional disorder and difficulties with treatment compliance and insight.

Since the final orders, there was no evidence of improvement in the mother’s management of her mental health or insight. She had two further mental health admissions, including a mid-2026 episode on a day connected with Local Court proceedings involving ADVO and bail charges. She sent multiple messages to police, including a belief that police wanted her dead, was scheduled under the Mental Health Act, transported by ambulance and discharged with diagnoses including acute stress reaction, grief and delusional disorder.

The Court was also concerned that the discharge summary recorded no past medical history despite the mother’s long public mental health history, and that her psychologist’s letter appeared to amplify the mother’s narrative of being a victim of the father and “systems abuse” without recording past or current diagnoses.

This was important because the Court saw a risk gap: the mother appeared not to be receiving proper therapeutic and medical support, which placed herself, the father and the children at risk because of spontaneous and harmful behaviours that caused fear for the father and trauma for the mother.

4. The Court treated the mother’s family violence and police history as continuing, not historic

The mother’s post-order conduct included substantial police involvement. NSW Police material showed that within a 12-day period in early 2023 she sent over 100 text messages to the father and made 35 FaceTime calls. Other material showed ADVO contraventions, use of a carriage service to menace/harass/offend, stalking/intimidation allegations, bail breaches, and a s 14 mental health/cognitive impairment order affecting multiple charges.

The Court also referred to a police bail decision describing the mother as a recidivist regarding breaches of protection orders and bail conditions, with repeated ADVO and bail breaches.

Her attempt to vary or revoke an ADVO was described as inconsistent and rambling, reflecting delusional disorder and an inability to consider her behaviours as causing fear to others or as acts of coercive control.

This was fatal to the reconsideration application. The evidence showed persistence of the same family violence and risk concerns, not rehabilitation or protective change.

5. The father remained the protective parent

The Court found no persuasive evidence that the father had endangered the children. Contact services and informal family supervisors had withdrawn from implementing the final parenting orders because of the mother’s behaviour, not the father’s. The final orders had anticipated these difficulties by giving the father sole discretion to arrange time safely.

Judge Suthers found that the father had continued to act protectively through the ADVO framework and that there was no persuasive evidence, other than the mother’s implausible accusations, that he posed any risk to the children’s emotional, psychological or physical safety.

That finding directly answered the mother’s attempt to reverse the parenting position. The protective premise of the 2022 orders remained intact.

6. The Court dismissed the reconsideration application

Because there was no positive finding of significant changed circumstances, the Court held that the threshold inquiry ended there. The mother’s initiating application was dismissed.

The Court also recognised immediate safety and welfare concerns flowing from the judgment itself, because the mother would need to process a decision that did not align with her narrative. Directions for information-sharing were therefore made for welfare, safety, first-responder awareness, continuity of care and management of acute post-judgment escalation.

This is a striking feature of the case: the judgment was not only deciding the legal application; it was managing the risk environment created by the likely impact of the judgment on the mother.

7. Harmful proceedings order was justified

The father sought a harmful proceedings order. The Court accepted there were reasonable grounds to believe the father would suffer harm if the mother instituted further proceedings against him.

The father’s evidence of fear was accepted as plausible and frank. He had not responded by bringing contravention proceedings in the Family Court, instead trying to protect himself and the children through the ADVO framework. The Court found that he had continued to be a victim of the mother’s conduct, including recent ADVO breach convictions.

Judge Suthers found the mother’s persistent, fixated and dysregulated litigation conduct had produced voluminous documents advancing a spurious and unreliable narrative that she was the victim and the father was the villain. This exposed the father to more voluminous documents and caused him to feel oppressed.

The resulting order restrained the mother from instituting further proceedings against the father without leave, and the Court was not required to notify the father of any leave application or any dismissal of such an application.

8. The Court also protected its own administrative processes

The mother had sent persistent, repetitive and voluminous emails to Registry and Chambers. Judge Suthers discussed the issue with her, noted that she apologised but showed little insight into the effect of her conduct on the administration of justice, and then made directions preventing email addresses controlled or used by her from delivering electronic communications to Court email addresses.

The purpose was not to prevent genuine safety concerns from being escalated. The orders expressly preserved the ability for Registry staff to escalate communications disclosing apparent risk of harm to the mother, father, children, Court staff or any other person through security, welfare or emergency pathways.

The Court relied on its powers under s 140, r 1.31, implied power to protect its processes, the overarching purpose in s 95, and s 192 of the Court Act.

Conclusion

The mother’s application to reconsider the final parenting orders was dismissed. The Court found no significant change in circumstances. The father remained the protective parent, and the mother’s later conduct confirmed rather than undermined the original risk findings.

The Court also made a harmful proceedings order restraining the mother from instituting further proceedings against the father without leave, restricted further filings without leave, permitted the mother to provide the judgment to her treating professionals, directed information-sharing with police and mental health services, and restricted the mother’s electronic communications with the Court.

The matter remained listed for a costs hearing on 13 November 2026.

🧠 Take-Home Lesson

This case is a powerful example of the difference between new events and a significant change in circumstances.

The mother had many later events to point to: mental health admissions, police contact, ADVO issues, bail issues, fresh allegations, treatment material and lengthy submissions. But those events did not show that the risk had reduced or that the 2022 parenting orders were now unsafe or inappropriate. They showed the opposite: continuing untreated illness, lack of insight, family violence, dysregulation and inability to respect protective boundaries.

The case also shows how the Court can move from parenting risk management into litigation risk management. Where a parent’s continued proceedings and communications become oppressive, repetitive and harmful, the Court may use harmful proceedings orders, filing restraints, email restrictions and information-sharing directions to protect the other parent, the children, court staff and public resources.

The hard practical lesson is this: a parent seeking to reopen final parenting orders must show real, material change — not simply repeat the same narrative in larger volume. Treatment, insight, compliance with ADVOs, compliance with bail, stable behaviour, child-focused communication and credible independent evidence matter far more than long submissions accusing the other parent of being the problem.