The rules just changed. Here's what fathers need to know.

For two decades, every property and parenting matter in Australia ran through the same opening line: the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility. Section 61DA of the Family Law Act. Six words that anchored a generation of negotiations.

As of 6 May 2024, those words are gone. Repealed. The presumption no longer exists.

For most fathers I've spoken to since, the question is the same: does this make my situation worse? The honest answer is: it depends on what you do in the next ninety days.

The presumption was never the thing keeping you in your kids' lives. The strategy you brought to the table was. That hasn't changed.

What actually changed

The court's only test now is the best interests of the child. That sounds woolly. It isn't. The Act lists six factors, and the first one is the safety of the child and each person caring for the child. The second is any views expressed by the child. Read those two together and you'll see the shape of the next decade of parenting cases.

What it means in practice

You can no longer walk into a first conference and assume 50/50 is the starting point. It isn't, and it never quite was. But now the legislative scaffolding has been removed. Three things matter more than they did six months ago:

1. Documented involvement. School pickups, medical appointments, the meals you cooked, the homework you sat with. Not because the court wants a scrapbook. Because the new test asks who has been doing the parenting. Show them.
2. De-escalated communication. Every text, email, and OurFamilyWizard message becomes evidence under the new factors. Write each one as if a judicial registrar will read it next week. Sometimes one will.
3. A written strategy by week two. Not “let's see how mediation goes”. A document with named outcomes, timeframes, and contingency plans. We do this on day one at Forge, for a fixed fee, because the men who skip this step are the ones still litigating in 2027.

What this isn't

This isn't an attack on fathers. The reforms came out of decades of safety research, and most of the changes (anti-violence framework, child voice, simplified language) are good policy. The presumption was a blunt instrument that produced rough justice in both directions.

But “good policy” and “I just lost the negotiating frame I assumed I had” can both be true at once. If you're in the middle of a separation right now, both things are true.