Parenting Plan Australia | s.63C Family Law Act

A parenting plan is defined in section 63C of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) as a written agreement, made free from threat, duress or coercion, that is signed and dated by the parents and deals with any aspect of the care, welfare or development of a child. It can cover who a child lives with, the time a child spends with each parent and with other significant people such as grandparents, how parental responsibility for major long-term issues is allocated, the communication a child has with each parent, and the process the parents will use to resolve disagreements or change the plan later. It can name almost anyone with an interest in the child's care, including a grandparent or other relative, not just the two parents.

The distinction people most often get wrong is the one between a parenting plan and parenting orders. A parenting plan is not legally enforceable in the way a court order is. If one parent stops following it, the other cannot ask the police or the court to enforce the plan itself. What a plan does carry is real legal weight of a different kind: a court will have regard to the most recent parenting plan when later making orders, and under section 64D a parenting order can be made subject to a subsequent plan. So it is far more than a private note. Families who want enforceability convert the agreed terms into consent orders, and a well-drafted parenting plan is the natural draft they file. If you are also sorting out property and finances, our separation agreement templates for Australian couples sit alongside this document in the same category.

The governing statute is the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth), and Part VII of that Act was substantially reworked by the Family Law Amendment Act 2023 (Cth), which commenced on 6 May 2024. The single most important change for parents drafting a plan is the repeal of the former presumption of equal shared parental responsibility that used to sit in section 61DA. Many parents still arrive believing the law starts from a default of equal time or a fixed 50/50 split. It does not, and it never quite did, but the removal of that presumption makes the point unmistakable. The law now asks what allocation of decision-making and time actually serves the individual child, and your plan should be written to that reality rather than to an assumed equal division.

The compass for every parenting decision is the best interests of the child, which remains the paramount consideration under section 60CA. The reformed section 60CC replaced the old two-tier list of primary and additional considerations with a simplified set of six general factors, weighted by the court as the circumstances require. Chief among them is the safety of the child and each person who cares for the child, including any history of family violence, followed by the child's views, the child's developmental, psychological, emotional and cultural needs, the capacity of each carer to meet those needs, and the benefit of a relationship with parents and other significant people where it is safe. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, the court gives additional consideration to the child's right to enjoy their culture. A parenting plan drafted today should read as though it was written with these six factors in front of the drafter, because that is exactly the lens a court will later apply. The Attorney-General's Department publishes a clear public overview of the 2024 changes to Australia's family law parenting framework that is worth reading before you finalise anything.

One procedural point catches people off guard. Before most parenting applications can be filed, section 60I requires the parties to have made a genuine effort to resolve the dispute through family dispute resolution, evidenced by a certificate from an accredited practitioner, unless an exception such as family violence or urgency applies. A parenting plan is often the productive output of that very process.

The clearest trigger is a recent separation where both parents are still communicating and want to lock in a workable routine before memories and moods start to drift. Writing down the school-week pattern, the weekend rotation and the changeover point while you still agree is what stops the slow slide into a fortnightly argument. The second common scenario is the lead-up to consent orders: parents who intend to formalise their arrangement almost always draft a plan first, because it forces the detail out into the open and becomes the working document their lawyers or the court can adopt. The third is change. A plan written when the children were toddlers rarely survives the move to high school, a parent's relocation for work, a new partner joining a household, or a shift to weekend rosters. Updating the plan is cheaper and calmer than litigating a dispute that a stale document helped create.

There are also edge cases where the plan does heavy lifting. Where a grandparent or other relative provides significant care, section 63C lets the plan name them and record the time the child spends with them, which matters when a school or a doctor asks who is authorised. And where separation happens under one roof, or where one parent travels frequently, a plan that spells out communication methods and changeover logistics prevents the ambiguity that otherwise festers. Parents who are also employed and juggling shift work often pair this with our employment contract templates for Australian workplaces when negotiating a roster that fits the care schedule. If there is any history of family violence, do not treat a parenting plan as a substitute for legal advice, because safety considerations may make court orders the safer path.

• The parties and children schedule records both parents' full names and contact details, the date of separation, and a repeatable list of each child with date of birth and current school. Getting the children correctly identified sounds trivial until a plan naming only "the children" collides with a blended family, so each child is listed explicitly.
• The living and time arrangements clause sets out who the child lives with and the pattern of time spent with each parent, whether that is shared care, care primarily with one parent, or a split arrangement across siblings. It is drafted to reflect the post-2024 position that there is no presumed equal split, so you describe the arrangement that actually fits your family rather than defaulting to a fixed formula.
• The allocation of parental responsibility clause addresses major long-term issues as defined in section 4(1), meaning education, health, religion, culture, name and significant changes to living arrangements. It lets you decide, issue by issue, whether decisions are made jointly or by one parent, and records the consultation process the parents will follow.
• The holidays and special occasions clause covers the most disputed territory: Christmas, Easter, school holidays, birthdays, and cultural or religious observances. Vague wording here is where plans fall apart, so the template prompts specific alternating arrangements rather than an aspirational "we'll work it out".
• The communication and changeover clause sets how the child communicates with the non-resident parent, how the parents communicate with each other, the changeover location and named collector, and a no-disparagement understanding. It also flags interstate notification and international travel, including passport arrangements under the Australian Passports Act 2005.

Parenting under the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) is Commonwealth law and applies uniformly across the country, so the core framework does not change between jurisdictions. Where the states and territories matter is in the surrounding services, the courts you deal with, and the practical mechanics of changeover and safety.

New South Wales parents deal with the largest registry of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, and Sydney's family dispute resolution services carry significant waitlists, which is worth factoring into your section 60I timing. Where family violence is a concern, a NSW Apprehended Domestic Violence Order made under state law sits alongside the federal parenting framework, and your plan's changeover arrangements should be drafted so they do not put either parent in breach of an existing order.

Victoria operates a well-developed network of Family Relationship Centres and the Victorian Family Violence Intervention Order regime under the Family Violence Protection Act 2008 (Vic). Melbourne parents frequently use supervised or neutral-location changeovers arranged through community contact services, and naming that service in the plan removes a recurring flashpoint. Victoria's cultural diversity also makes the section 60CC focus on cultural needs a live drafting consideration rather than a formality.

Queensland covers vast distances, and relocation between regional centres and the south-east corner is a common source of dispute. A Brisbane or Townsville plan should be explicit about travel arrangements, who bears the cost and logistics of long-distance changeover, and how school-holiday flights are booked. Queensland's Domestic Violence Order framework under the Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act 2012 (Qld) again interacts with changeover clauses and should be checked before finalising.

Western Australia is the outlier every Australian parent should know about. Family law for children of unmarried and de facto parents is governed not by the Commonwealth Act but by the Family Court Act 1997 (WA), administered by the separate Family Court of Western Australia. The concepts are closely aligned and WA adopted parallel best-interests reforms, but the section numbers and the court differ, so a Perth parent should confirm the WA-specific pathway before assuming the federal provisions apply directly.

You begin by entering both parents' details and the date of separation, then adding each child in turn with their date of birth and current school, which the form repeats as a clean schedule. From there you describe the living and time arrangements in plain language, choosing the pattern that reflects your family rather than a preset split, and the template guides you toward the level of specificity that prevents later argument. You then work through parental responsibility issue by issue, deciding for education, health, religion and the other major long-term issues whether the decision is joint or sits with one parent, and recording how you will consult. The holidays section walks you through Christmas, Easter, school breaks and birthdays so nothing is left to a future disagreement, and the communication section captures changeover location, the named collector and how the child keeps contact with each parent. The final step is the part people skip at their peril: both parents must sign and date the plan for it to meet the section 63C definition. If you intend to seek enforceability, you carry the finished plan across into our consent order and family law document templates, and if you are drafting a will to reflect your new circumstances, our personal legal document templates for Australians cover that alongside powers of attorney.

The most damaging mistake is treating a parenting plan as though it were a court order and assuming it can be enforced the same way. It cannot, and a parent who relies on that assumption discovers the gap at the worst possible moment. If enforceability matters, the plan needs to become consent orders, and the plan should be drafted from the outset with that conversion in mind. The second frequent error is writing the plan around an assumed equal-time default that the law abandoned on 6 May 2024. Since the repeal of the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility, a plan that reads like a mechanical 50/50 split, without reference to the child's actual needs, sits awkwardly against the reformed section 60CC framework and is more likely to unravel.

Vagueness is the quiet killer. A holiday clause that says the parents "will share Christmas fairly" guarantees a fight every December, whereas a clause that alternates specific years removes it. Parents also routinely forget that a plan cannot bind third parties: a school, a bank, or Centrelink is not obliged to follow a private agreement, so anything requiring institutional action needs its own process. Finally, never draft or sign a plan under pressure, because section 63C requires the agreement to be made free from threat, duress or coercion, and a plan produced in a coercive dynamic is both legally fragile and, where family violence is present, potentially unsafe.