Evaluation of the 2006 Family Law Reforms
Australian Institute of Family Studies
Report summary
What happened after the 2006 Australian family-law reforms, including patterns of care time and reported child wellbeing?
Sixteen percent of the 7,718 children in the care-time analysis were in shared care, defined as 35% to 65% of nights with each parent. Children in shared care were reported as doing as well as or better than children spending 1% to 34% of nights with their father. Fathers reported somewhat higher wellbeing in shared-care groups; mothers generally reported no significant difference between those groups.
Recent international work distinguishes broad supported principles from claims that cannot validly determine an individual child’s arrangement.
Researchers' conclusions
The evaluation found no simple one-size-fits-all result. Shared care was functioning well for many families, while safety concerns, violence, conflict, and the circumstances of individual families remained essential to interpreting outcomes and the broader reforms.
This is a plain-language summary of the researchers' conclusion. It is not advice for an individual family.
How the report was produced
Consensus statements compare the reliability and limits of research tools with the far higher stakes of individual legal decisions.
What this paper supports
Reasonably supports
- Labelling policy evaluation, developmental outcome research, consensus, and commentary separately.
- Using group-level evidence as context rather than a substitute for individual facts.
- Evaluating implementation effects, exceptions, and unintended incentives.
- Requiring experts to explain inferential limits and competing evidence.
Does not establish
- Claiming professional approval proves improved child outcomes.
- Claiming one child-outcome association proves a legal presumption is optimal.
- Using an attachment measure in isolation to decide custody or protection.
- Presenting a selected group’s consensus as the end of scientific debate.
Important limitations
- Observational comparisons cannot show that shared care caused better wellbeing
- Mother and father reports differed on some child outcomes
- Families entering shared care differed in prior involvement and other characteristics
- The evaluation examined an entire reform system, not only child outcomes
Evidence context and debate
Open the sections below for the wider research context, points of agreement, and areas that remain contested.
Why this question matters
Courts and professionals have sometimes used attachment theory to claim that a child needs one primary attachment figure or to diagnose an individual family more confidently than the research allows.
Family-law research asks two linked but distinct questions: what arrangements are associated with child and family outcomes, and what happens when legal rules change professional behaviour. Developmental studies, policy evaluations, consensus statements, and legal commentary answer different parts of that picture and should not be combined as if they share one design.
The Arizona evaluation, for example, reports perceptions of judges, lawyers, mental-health providers, and court staff after a statutory change. It is informative about implementation, adversarial incentives, and reported conflict. It is not a direct measurement of children’s attachment, mental health, or long-term adjustment. Conversely, a developmental cohort may measure children well while saying little about how a legal presumption operates.
The court context also magnifies the cost of overstatement. Group averages do not identify the best arrangement for one child, and research instruments designed for population study may lack the sensitivity and specificity required for individual adjudication. The mature evidence base therefore stresses transparent inference, multiple sources of case evidence, and clear limits.
Where researchers agree and disagree
Experts broadly support familiar non-abusive caregivers, continuity of good-enough care, attachment networks, and careful attention to observable caregiving behaviour.
Experts openly disagree about whether formal attachment assessments should be used in individual court decisions and, if so, how much weight they should receive.
Comparison with other research
Fabricius et al., 2018
Reports professional evaluation of Arizona’s reform, including neutral perceived conflict effects and small increases in certain allegations. It is a policy-implementation study, not a child-outcome trial.
Warshak, 2017
Defends a consensus report and critiques what he describes as misinformation in professional translation. It reveals the scholarly dispute but adds no new family dataset.
Forslund et al., 2022
Sets out international consensus principles and explicitly records dissensus about attachment assessment, modelling how disagreement can remain visible.
Shared-custody outcome reviews
Provide background about average child outcomes but cannot by themselves establish which legal presumption will work best across jurisdictions.
How the evidence developed later
Policy studies increasingly examine how statutes affect bargaining, litigation, allegations, and professional practice.
Consensus work now states both common ground and unresolved dissensus.
Researchers have called for stronger quasi-experimental designs to separate policy effects from social change.
Court guidance increasingly emphasizes caregiving behaviour, safety, and relationship history over simplified attachment labels.
Read the paper and related research
This report
Rae Kaspiew, Matthew Gray, Ruth Weston, Lawrie Moloney, Kelly Hand, Lixia Qu & the Family Law Evaluation Team (2009). Evaluation of the 2006 Family Law Reforms. Australian Institute of Family Studies.
Parental separation and overnight care of young children, Part I: Consensus through theoretical and empirical integration
See how McIntosh, Pruett, and Kelly integrated attachment caution with the importance of both parent-child relationships.
Record checked against the linked scholarly source. Last editorial review: 22 July 2026, as part of a batch review of the current collection.