Can I get an Order for my partner to participate in therapy or take medication? No!
Can the Court require a parent to undertake therapy (or take medication) and provide a psychological report certifying that a party understands and accepts the need to manage their anger prior to professional supervision ending?
The Court in Lainhart & Ellinson [2023] has said, “No.”
Courts exercising jurisdiction under the Family Law Act must decide justiciable disputes, by conventional adversarial procedure, between imperfect litigants on the available evidence according to law by making prescriptive and enforceable orders within statutory power to quell the controversy. That is the unique and essential function of judicial power…The judicial function cannot be delegated to others, apart from to registrars in limited circumstances, and only then subject to the right of de novo judicial review…
Courts must take the litigants as they find them when determining causes of action under Pt VII of the Act. Courts are not, and cannot operate like, therapeutic agencies, using litigation as the vehicle to meddle by making aspirational directions about how litigants should improve their parenting capacity in the hope of enhancing their children’s familial experiences.
If the Court finds on the available evidence a parent poses a risk of harm to a child which can only be satisfactorily attenuated by professional supervision, then the Court must decide when it is safe for the child to spend time with the party without safeguards such as supervision and make orders to that effect and no more. It is for the Court and not a psychologist to decide when and how a child is to spend time safely with a party.