During the pandemic, Alia’s* former partner started sending “long-winded rants” via text message. Covid-19 wasn’t real. Stay-at-home rules were unlawful, he told her, and he took their children to anti-lockdown protests. He started to share what she later realised were “sovereign citizen” or pseudolaw ideas.

“He wouldn’t follow anything that the government was saying because ‘it’s not a genuine law, it’s illegal, it’s treason, and it’s all a scam that’s designed to try to bring in the new world order’,” she said.

As the virus spread, they were in the midst of proceedings in the family court over child custody. Alia said she tried to raise his behaviour with the court and other authorities, but felt like it wasn’t taken seriously.

“It was brushed off as, ‘people have different beliefs and people have different political leanings’,” she said. “I felt like I couldn’t clearly get across that this was going so much deeper than a different political leaning. That this was potentially putting the kids at risk.”

The impact of sovereign citizen pseudolaw movements – where adherents use “legal argumentation” that has no legal basis, often predicated on a belief in the illegality of or corruption of government – are having a serious impact on the family court.

In 2024, Guardian Australia has tracked almost a dozen family court judgments where these kinds of arguments had an impact on proceedings.

“It’s really an emerging area in the family law jurisdiction that needs to be addressed seriously … given what’s at stake with children involved in these cases,” said Dr Georgina Dimopoulos, an associate professor of law at Southern Cross University.

The issue is also affecting criminal cases involving children. At least two women have been convicted this year of offences related to unlawfully removing children in cases linked to sovereign citizen groups or pseudolaw ideas.

The rise of a ‘dangerous’ ideology among parents is causing havoc in custody disputes

Self-declared sovereign citizens, who believe Australia’s laws do not apply to them, are having a serious impact on the family court, experts say

^{Ariel Bogle (The Guardian)}