Hon Justice Gail Sutherland

The Hon Justice Gail Sutherland is our new Chief Judge of the WA Family Court. The first female to hold this position since the Courts inception 43 years ago. She spoke to the Law Society magazine recently and answered a number of questions.
She noted that ‘the court faces the challenge of resources over demand and asked if it was appropriate for the Court to allocate resources to decide interim matters like a trip to Bali simply because the parties could not agree and also to allow frequent interim applications to incrementally increase time with the children where the time was already adequate to maintain a meaningful relationship and where such applications used resources that could otherwise be applied to final trials and reduce the wait time between starting a case and reaching the final trial’ .