My ex is using my prescription against me in a parenting dispute. What happens?

What the law actually says

The Family Law Act 1975 does not mention cannabis, prescribed or otherwise. What it gives a court is a list of considerations, and a prescription is relevant only to the extent it bears on one of them.

Section 60CA — the child's best interests are the paramount consideration in making a parenting order. Not the parents' conduct in the abstract, and not a medicine's name.

Section 60CC — how the court determines best interests. This section was rewritten and the old structure is gone. Many articles and older advice still describe two "primary considerations" weighed against a list of "additional considerations". That framework no longer exists. Section 60CC(2) now sets out six general considerations, and the court must consider all of them:

• (a) what arrangements would promote the safety of the child and of each person who has care of the child — including safety from being subjected to or exposed to family violence, abuse, neglect or other harm;
• (b) any views expressed by the child;
• (c) the developmental, psychological, emotional and cultural needs of the child;
• (d) the capacity of each person who has or is proposed to have parental responsibility to provide for those needs;
• (e) the benefit to the child of a relationship with their parents and other significant people, where it is safe;
• (f) anything else relevant to the particular circumstances of the child.

Section 60CC(2A) requires that, in considering safety under (a), the court include any history of family violence, abuse or neglect involving the child or a carer, and any family violence order. Section 60CC(3) adds considerations for an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child, about the right to enjoy their culture.

Where a prescription actually lands. Nowhere on its own. If it is raised, it is raised as evidence going to paragraph (d), capacity — and occasionally (a), safety. The question a court is answering is whether you can meet the child's needs, which is a question about your functioning, your arrangements and your evidence. A prescription is at least as capable of supporting capacity as undermining it, because a treated condition is usually a better-managed condition than an untreated one.

What happens if it goes wrong

Because the medicine is only ever evidence about capacity, the useful response is evidence about capacity: how you store it, when you take it, whether you drive, who cares for the child and when, and what your prescriber says about your functioning.

Two things worth knowing about the current text. First, the six considerations in section 60CC(2) are not ranked — the court must consider all of them, so an argument that fixes on one is not the whole picture. Second, paragraph (f) is open-ended, which cuts both ways: it lets unhelpful material in, and it lets your context in too.

This page describes what the Act says. It is not advice about your matter, and family law outcomes turn heavily on facts and evidence. If a prescription has been raised in your proceedings, that is a question for a family lawyer.

We did not search decisions of the Federal Circuit and Family Court, so this page makes no claim about how any court has treated a prescribed patient in practice.