The case for fairer law
Child support exists for a simple and important reason: children are entitled to the support of both parents, whether or not those parents live together. The principle is sound. The difficulty lies in turning it into fair, workable decisions for families whose lives are anything but uniform.
The Australian child support scheme is built on a formula, and a formula has real virtues. It is predictable, it treats like cases alike, and it spares most families the cost and conflict of fighting every figure out in court. But no formula can capture every circumstance. Incomes rise and fall, work becomes irregular, businesses blur the line between salary and profit, care arrangements shift, second families form, and parents sometimes find themselves separated by oceans rather than suburbs. It is in exactly these situations — where the formula's neat assumptions meet untidy reality — that fairness is most at risk, and where the courts are most often asked to decide what the law truly requires.
That is the heart of our mission. We aim to bring a fairer balance to how child support law operates in Australia by concentrating on the place where much of that law is genuinely shaped: in the reasoned judgments of the courts. When those judgments are well argued and carefully reasoned, the whole system becomes fairer, not just for the parties before the court but for the many families whose later assessments are guided by what the court has decided.
A fair formula still needs a fair interpretation. Our mission is to help the courts develop that interpretation soundly. The Foundation's purpose, in one line
The role of well-argued cases
Cases are how the law learns. A statute can only say so much; it is in applying that statute to real disputes that its meaning is settled. Each significant child support decision answers a question that the legislation left open, and in doing so it creates a reference point for everyone who comes after. The quality of those reference points depends, to a surprising degree, on how well the underlying cases were run.
A well-argued case is one in which the right question is clearly framed, the relevant evidence is properly gathered and presented, and the competing principles are tested against each other with rigour. When that happens, the court is given everything it needs to reach a sound and durable decision. A poorly run case — one where the key argument is never made, or the evidence is thin, or the matter settles before the real question can be answered — can leave an important issue unresolved for years, or worse, can produce a decision that quietly entrenches unfairness.
The Foundation aims to reduce the number of times that happens. By identifying cases that raise questions of real and recurring importance, and by helping ensure those cases are run as carefully as possible, we hope to strengthen the body of decisions on which the whole scheme rests. We are not interested in volume for its own sake. A handful of consequential questions, properly resolved, can do more for fairness than any amount of activity around matters that change nothing.
Considered jurisprudence
Jurisprudence is simply the accumulated reasoning of the courts — the principles that can be drawn from many decisions read together. In child support, that reasoning is rich and evolving, and it rewards careful attention. We work to follow it closely, to identify where it is clear and where it is unsettled, and to explain it in terms that parents and advocates can actually use.
This explanatory role matters as much as the case work itself. A principle that lives only in the pages of a law report helps very few people. The same principle, set out plainly, can help a parent understand why their assessment was decided as it was, help an adviser frame a stronger argument, and help the public see that the system is governed by reason rather than chance. Part of our mission is to bridge that gap — to make the considered development of child support law visible and intelligible to the people it affects.
Our guiding principles
Everything we do is shaped by a small set of commitments that we hold to without exception.
- Fairness for the whole system
- We seek fairness for child support as a system — for paying parents and receiving parents alike, and above all for the children whose security depends on these decisions. We do not take one parent's side over another's as a matter of principle; we take the side of sound, even-handed law.
- Respect for the courts
- Courts decide cases, and that is exactly as it should be. We never seek to influence, pressure or second-guess any decision-maker. Our role is to help ensure the strongest, best-prepared arguments are available to be considered — not to suggest what the answer should be.
- Importance over volume
- We focus on questions whose answers will matter to many families, not on disputes that turn only on their own facts. The test we apply is whether a case can meaningfully clarify or improve the law.
- Clarity for the public
- We aim to explain how child support law is developing in language ordinary parents can follow. Law that cannot be understood cannot be trusted, and trust is part of fairness.
Independence
The Foundation is independent and non-partisan. We are not aligned with any political party or movement, and we are not a vehicle for any single grievance. Our independence is not incidental to our mission — it is essential to it. Only an organisation that is genuinely even-handed can credibly speak for the fairness of the system as a whole.
We should also be clear about what we are not. We are an advocacy foundation, not a law practice and not a charity. We do not take on individual matters, we do not provide personal legal advice, and we do not solicit donations or claim any tax status. We work at the level of principle: identifying the cases and questions where the development of the law can do the most good, and helping ensure they are addressed with the seriousness they deserve.
Our mission is ambitious but its logic is simple. If the questions that matter most are argued well, the law that results will be sounder. If the law is sounder, the everyday assessments built upon it will be fairer. And if those assessments are fairer, the children at the centre of every child support arrangement — the people this is ultimately about — will be better served. To understand how we pursue that mission in practice, read about our work.