子女抚养调解对任何家庭都不轻松。对华人家庭而言,还有一些特有的难处——而这些难处,未曾与华人家庭打过交道的从业者未必看得见。
以下内容源自执业经验,属一般性观察。每个家庭都不相同。
一、不在房间里的那些人
澳洲的家庭纠纷调解制度,预设的是两位家长各自为自己谈判。但在许多华人家庭,关于孩子的决定并不是这样作出的。祖辈可能已经带了孩子好几年——有时是在国内带,父母则在澳洲立足。一位从婴儿期就担任主要照顾者的奶奶,是有自己的看法的,而且这看法有分量。出资付了首付的舅舅,也可能认为自己有发言权。
这本身不是缺陷。隔代照顾在许多家庭是一种优势,澳洲法院也承认孩子与祖辈之间关系的重要性。但它在调解中造成一个实际问题:一方或双方家长到场时,可能并不真正拥有拍板的权限。
法律现已直接回应这一点。根据 2025 年家庭纠纷调解条例,调解员在评估是否适宜调解时,必须考虑任何人——不论该人是否为当事方——的不当偏颇或影响,是否妨碍了一方自由协商的能力。了解这类家庭结构的调解员,会在前期会谈阶段就问清楚,而不是等到调解进行到一半才发现。
处理方式是有的:在调解前确认必须征询哪些人的意见,并预留征询的时间;采用穿梭调解(shuttle mediation)的形式;或在适当情况下,以有结构的方式让祖辈参与进来,而不是任由他们在场外施压。
二、面子,以及”被看作让步”的代价
一个在私下完全可以接受的方案,一旦家长必须向自己的父母、向前配偶的家族、或向一个人人相识的社群交代,就可能变得无法接受。真正的顾虑往往不是结果本身,而是”被看作输了”。
在这一点上,调解远优于诉讼:家庭纠纷调解中所说的内容是保密的,且在有限例外之外不可作为证据采纳。这项保密性值得在一开始就仔细说明——对许多当事人而言,这是整个流程中最令人安心的一点,而偏偏往往没有人告诉过他们。
表述方式也很重要。在家族内部,”为孩子利益共同制定的安排”与”被对方逼出来的让步”,是完全不同的两件事。
三、回中国探亲:房间里最棘手的议题
以我们的经验,这一个议题使华人家庭调解破局的次数,超过任何其他议题,而且双方家长通常都对它理解不足。
澳洲与约九十个国家之间适用 1980 年《海牙国际诱拐儿童民事方面公约》。中国大陆不在其中。香港和澳门适用该公约,中国大陆不适用。若孩子被带往中国大陆而未返回,没有海牙申请可以用来把孩子带回来。留在澳洲的一方只能在中国寻求当地法律意见并寻求领事协助——那是一条截然不同、且远不确定的路。
在这一背景下,一位家长拒绝让孩子随祖辈回上海度假四周,未必是不讲道理;而另一位家长因为被暗示”可能不回来”而感到受辱,同样未必是不讲道理。两种立场都是理性的。调解正是可以调和两者的场合;法官处理同一问题时,手上的工具要粗糙得多。
能够促成共识的具体安排包括:
- 护照的保管安排,包括由谁持有证件、是否涉及中国护照或旅行证件;
- 家事法观察名单(Family Law Watchlist)——当抚养令或禁制令限制出境并请求将孩子列入名单时,由澳洲联邦警察(AFP)维护;
- 明确的行程、预先订妥的回程机票,以及停留期间的联系方式;
- 循序渐进的安排,先短后长,随信任建立而延长;
- 担保安排,无论是保证金还是对等安排。
双方家长也应当知道:违反《家庭法》相关条文将孩子带离澳洲,是由 AFP 调查的刑事事项,而不仅仅是违反法院命令。
四、从另一套制度带过来的预设
当事人常常带着一套关于”应该怎样”的既定想法前来,而这些想法来自中国的实践,或来自某位亲戚在国内离婚时听到的说法。最常见的包括:
- 认为幼儿自动归母亲,较大的孩子归父亲;
- 认为在中国签署的离婚协议可以决定在澳洲的子女抚养安排;
- 认为出钱买房的一方、或签证身份较好的一方,主张更强;
- 认为孩子到了某个年龄就可以自己选。
这些都不是澳洲法律的立场。在澳洲,法院关注的是儿童最佳利益,依法定考量因素作出判断;而”父母责任”是关于决策权的概念,不是所有权的概念。调解中看起来像是不讲理的部分,实际上往往是一位家长拿着一本不适用的规则手册在自信地谈判。
在前期会谈阶段——分别与每位家长、在双方同处一室之前——花时间厘清这一点,通常不会白费。
五、背景中的签证身份
当一方家长的居留身份系于这段关系或系于子女时,这个现实会压在调解中提出的每一个方案底下,无论是否有人把它说出口。它可能让一位家长急于达成协议,也可能让其急于不达成。看不见这一点的调解员会误判局面;看得见的调解员,至少能确保双方在承诺任何安排之前,先取得适当的移民法意见。
六、语言,以及在语言中流失的东西
用第二语言谈论自己的孩子,这种劣势不是靠善意就能弥补的。必要时翻译不可或缺,但经过传译会增加距离、拖慢本就艰难的对话,并且磨平那些最关键的细微之处——而恰恰是在这些时刻,细微之处决定了调解能否达成。
当双方家长都能自如使用普通话或粤语时,直接以该语言进行调解——不经中介——会显著改变调解的质地。书面材料,包括育儿计划本身,也应当以每位家长真正读得懂的语言提供。
七、华人家庭特有的争议点
除了常见的时间分配与交接安排之外,这类家庭的育儿计划通常还需要处理:周六的中文学校与补习安排;对学业成绩和课外活动的期望——双方可能分歧很大;春节、清明、中秋,以及圣诞和复活节;跨时区的视频联系,以及是否使用微信;孩子是否以中文成长、由谁承担这一责任;以及管教方式上的不同看法。
这些都不是小事。一份只解决了假期轮值、却对孩子是否继续上中文学校只字不提的计划,其实没有解决多少问题。
八、何时不宜进行调解
家庭暴力不分文化背景。在一些家庭中,当事人确实很难把它说出口——对着陌生人、在正式场合、用一种可能被理解为”背叛家庭”的说法。调解员必须审慎筛查,并且必须有勇气作出”不宜进行家庭纠纷调解”的结论。若属此种情形,家长并非因此失去出路:《家庭法》既规定了基于该理由签发的证书,也另行规定了完全豁免证书要求的情形。
我们能提供的协助
蔡智勋律师是注册家庭纠纷调解员(FDRP)、全国认证调解员、家事法仲裁员及育儿协调员,以中英双语主持子女抚养调解——在墨尔本面对面进行,亦可在全澳范围内线上进行。他在多个司法管辖区的调解员名册上任职;本所自 1990 年起即从事澳洲与大中华地区之间的跨境法律事务。
如需讨论子女抚养事宜或安排调解,欢迎致电 (03) 9602 3988 或发送电邮至 chuatan@tpg.com.au。
本文仅为一般性信息,并不构成法律意见。每个家庭情况不同,法律的适用取决于您的具体事实。采取任何行动前,请就您自身情况取得专业意见。(资讯更新至 2026 年 10 月)
另请参阅本所文章《60I证书:申请子女抚养令前必须了解的事》,其中说明了在提起子女抚养申请前您需要取得的证书。
English version
Parenting mediation is difficult for everyone. For Chinese-Australian families it is difficult in some particular ways, and those ways are not always visible to a practitioner who has not sat with such families before.
What follows is drawn from practice. It is general observation, and no two families are alike.
1. The people who are not in the room
Australian family dispute resolution assumes two parents negotiating for themselves. In many Chinese families that is not how decisions about children are made. Grandparents may have raised the child for years, sometimes in China while the parents established themselves here. A paternal grandmother who has been the child’s primary carer since infancy has a view, and it carries weight. An uncle who funded the deposit on the family home may consider himself entitled to one.
This is not a defect. Intergenerational care is a strength in many families, and courts here recognise the significance of a child’s relationship with grandparents. But it creates a practical problem in mediation: one or both parents may arrive without real authority to agree to anything.
The law now addresses this directly. Under the 2025 family dispute resolution regulations, a practitioner assessing whether mediation is appropriate must consider whether undue bias or influence from any person, whether or not that person is a party, affects a party’s ability to negotiate freely. A practitioner who understands these family structures will ask about them at intake rather than discovering them halfway through a session.
There are ways to manage it: confirming before the session who must be consulted and building in time for that consultation; conducting the session in a shuttle format; or, where appropriate, involving the grandparents in a structured way rather than leaving them to exert pressure from outside.
2. Face, and the cost of being seen to concede
A settlement that would be entirely acceptable in private can become impossible when a parent must explain it to their own parents, to a former spouse’s family, or to a community in which everyone knows everyone. The fear is rarely of the outcome itself. It is of being seen to have lost.
Mediation handles this better than litigation does, because what is said in family dispute resolution is confidential and, subject to limited exceptions, inadmissible. That confidentiality is worth explaining carefully at the outset. For many clients it is the single most reassuring feature of the process, and it is often the thing nobody has told them.
Framing matters too. An agreement presented as a joint plan made in the child’s interests is a very different thing, within a family, from an agreement presented as a concession extracted by the other side.
3. Travel to China: the hardest issue in the room
In our experience this single issue derails more Chinese-Australian parenting mediations than any other, and it is usually poorly understood by both parents.
Australia is party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction with around ninety countries. Mainland China is not among them. Hong Kong and Macau are covered; mainland China is not. If a child is taken to the mainland and not returned, there is no Hague application available to bring that child back. The left-behind parent is left to private legal advice in China and consular assistance, which is a very different and far less certain path.
Against that background, a parent who resists a four-week holiday with grandparents in Shanghai is not necessarily being unreasonable, and a parent who is insulted by the suggestion that they might not return is not necessarily being unreasonable either. Both positions are rational. Mediation is where they can be reconciled; a judge dealing with the same issue has blunter instruments.
The tools that make agreement possible include:
- passport arrangements, including who holds the documents and whether a Chinese passport or travel document is in play;
- the Family Law Watchlist, which the Australian Federal Police maintain where a parenting order or injunction limits overseas travel and asks for the child to be listed;
- defined itineraries, return flights booked in advance, and contact details for the stay;
- graduated trips, beginning shorter and lengthening as trust is established;
- security, whether a bond or a mirror arrangement.
It is also worth both parents understanding that removing a child from Australia in breach of the relevant provisions of the Family Law Act is a criminal matter investigated by the AFP, not merely a breach of a court order.
4. Assumptions imported from another system
Clients frequently arrive with settled views about what should happen that come from Chinese practice, or from what a relative was told in a Chinese divorce. Among the most common:
- that custody of a young child automatically follows the mother, and of an older child the father;
- that a separation agreement signed in China determines parenting arrangements in Australia;
- that the parent who paid for the home, or who holds the better visa, has the stronger claim;
- that a child of a certain age simply chooses.
None of these states Australian law. Here the Court’s concern is the best interests of the child, assessed against statutory considerations, and parental responsibility is a question about decision-making rather than ownership. A good deal of what looks like unreasonableness in a mediation is in fact a parent negotiating confidently from a rulebook that does not apply.
Time spent at intake correcting this, separately with each parent and before anyone is in the same room, is rarely wasted.
5. Visa status in the background
Where one parent’s immigration position is tied to the relationship or to the children, that reality sits underneath every proposal made in the session, whether or not anyone names it. It can make a parent desperate to settle, or desperate not to. A practitioner who does not recognise it will misread the room. One who does can at least ensure each parent obtains proper migration advice before committing to arrangements that may have consequences nobody intended.
6. Language, and what gets lost through it
A parent negotiating about their children in their second language is at a disadvantage that no amount of goodwill corrects. Interpreters are essential where needed, but interpretation adds distance, slows a difficult conversation, and flattens the nuance that matters most in exactly the moments where nuance decides whether a session settles.
Where both parents are comfortable in Mandarin or Cantonese, mediating directly in that language, without an intermediary, changes the character of the session considerably. Written material, including the parenting plan itself, should also be available in a language each parent genuinely reads.
7. The flashpoints that are specific
Beyond the usual questions of time and handovers, parenting plans in these families regularly need to deal with Chinese school on Saturdays and the tutoring schedule; expectations about academic performance and extracurricular commitments, where parents may differ sharply; Lunar New Year, Qingming and Mid-Autumn as well as Christmas and Easter; video contact across a time-zone difference, and whether WeChat is the medium; whether a child will be raised speaking Chinese and who carries that responsibility; and differing views about discipline.
These are not minor. A plan that resolves the holiday roster and says nothing about whether the child continues at Chinese school has not resolved very much.
8. When mediation is not appropriate
Family violence does not respect culture, and in some families there is real reluctance to name it, to a stranger, in a formal setting, in terms that may be understood as a betrayal of the family. A practitioner must screen for it carefully and must be willing to conclude that family dispute resolution should not proceed. Where that is the position, it does not leave a parent without options: the Act provides for both a certificate on that basis and, separately, an exception to the certificate requirement altogether.
How we can help
Justin Chua is a registered family dispute resolution practitioner, nationally accredited mediator, family law arbitrator and parenting coordinator, and conducts parenting mediation in English and Mandarin, in person in Melbourne and online across Australia. He sits on mediation panels in several jurisdictions, and the firm has practised in cross-border Australia and Greater China matters since 1990.
To discuss a parenting matter or to arrange a mediation, please call (03) 9602 3988 or email chuatan@tpg.com.au.
This article is general information only and is not legal advice. Every family is different and the law’s application depends on your particular facts. You should obtain advice about your own circumstances before acting. Current as at October 2026.
See also our article on section 60I certificates, which explains the certificate you will need before filing a parenting application.
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