Section 60I Certificate Queensland: What It Is and How to Get One

What Is a Section 60I Certificate?

A Section 60I certificate is a formal document issued by an accredited Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner (FDRP) after you engage with FDR, or after the FDRP decides that FDR is not appropriate to start or continue. For most non-urgent applications for parenting orders, the Family Law Act 1975 requires either a valid certificate or an exemption before filing in the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (FCFCOA); the court may reject an application filed with neither.

The requirement exists because Australian family law treats court as a last resort. Parliament designed the system so that separating parents in Queensland exhaust every reasonable avenue of negotiation before asking a judge to decide where their children live and how decisions about their lives are made.

Once issued, a Section 60I certificate is valid for exactly 12 months from the date of your last mediation session. If you do not file your court application within that window, you need to go through mediation again and obtain a fresh certificate.

The Five Certificate Types

Your FDRP does not simply sign a generic form. They must select one of five legally defined categories that describe what happened during the mediation process. The category your certificate falls into matters — it signals to the court how each party engaged with the process:

Certificate 1 — You attended and made a genuine effort to resolve the dispute, but the other parent refused to attend or participate in Family Dispute Resolution (FDR).

Certificate 2 — Both parents attended FDR and both made a genuine effort, but no agreement could be reached.

Certificate 3 — Both parents attended, but one or both failed to make a genuine effort to resolve the issues.

Certificate 4 — The FDRP assessed that FDR was not appropriate to start or continue. This typically happens after confidential safety screening reveals a severe power imbalance, active child abuse risks, or debilitating mental health conditions.

Certificate 5 — FDR started, but the practitioner subsequently decided it was not appropriate to continue the session.

Certificates 4 and 5 are particularly relevant for parents dealing with family violence. The FDRP conducts confidential intake interviews with each parent before any joint session. If the screening reveals that one parent would be unable to negotiate freely — because of fear, coercion, or a history of violence — the practitioner can issue a certificate without any joint mediation taking place.

Where to Get a Section 60I Certificate in Queensland

Queensland parents can access accredited FDR services through three main channels:

Family Relationship Centres (FRCs) are government-funded centres located across metropolitan and regional Queensland. The first three hours of mediation are free. Subsequent joint sessions are offered on a sliding scale capped at roughly A$60 per hour, based on your assessable income. The downside is demand — intake waitlists at FRCs frequently stretch three to six months.

Non-profit providers such as Relationships Australia Queensland, Centacare, and UnitingCare offer accredited FDR using similar income-based fee structures. Concession card holders can often access fee waivers.

Private mediators offer the fastest path. A private accredited FDRP can typically schedule individual intake sessions within one to two days and run joint or shuttle mediation within one to two weeks. Private mediation costs between A$1,500 and A$3,000 for a half-day session and up to A$5,000 for a full day, usually split equally between both parents. If the practitioner determines mediation is inappropriate during intake screening, private providers charge a certificate-only fee of A$400 to A$1,200.

When You Can Skip Mediation Entirely

The Section 60I requirement is not absolute. The court may allow a parenting application to proceed without a certificate if it grants an exemption in these circumstances:

• Urgency — there is an immediate risk of harm to a child, or one parent is about to remove the child from Australia
• Family violence or child abuse — there are reasonable, evidence-backed grounds of past or imminent violence or abuse by one of the parties
• Incapacity — a party cannot participate effectively due to severe mental illness, cognitive impairment, or a language barrier that mediation cannot accommodate
• Geographic remoteness — the parties are physically remote from any accredited FDR provider and lack reliable internet or phone access for remote sessions
• Recent serious contravention — the application relates to a serious breach of an existing parenting order less than 12 months old

To file without a certificate, you must draft an Affidavit — Non-Filing of Family Dispute Resolution Certificate setting out the specific factual evidence supporting your claimed exemption. If you are relying on a family violence exemption, you also need to complete the Acknowledgment form confirming you have received information about non-court safety options from a professional.

How Section 68R Connects DVOs to Parenting Orders

Queensland parents dealing with domestic violence often have both a state-level Domestic Violence Order (DVO) issued by the Queensland Magistrates Court and federal parenting orders from the FCFCOA. These two systems can directly contradict each other — a DVO might prohibit contact while a parenting order requires changeovers.

Section 68R of the Family Law Act 1975 resolves this conflict. It gives the state magistrate who issues or varies a DVO the power to simultaneously vary, suspend, or revive the federal parenting order to ensure physical safety. This means a Queensland magistrate can override a federal court's parenting orders when necessary to protect a parent or child from violence, without the parent needing to file a separate application in the family court.

If you hold both a DVO and a parenting order, keep copies of both documents together and carry them during changeovers. Police officers responding to a dispute need to see both to understand which conditions apply.

What Happens After You Get Your Certificate

With your Section 60I certificate in hand, you have two choices:

If mediation produced an agreement, you can formalise it as either a signed parenting plan (not court-enforceable but legally recognised) or as consent orders filed through the Commonwealth Courts Portal (legally binding once sealed by a registrar). The Queensland Child Custody and Parenting Plan Guide walks through both options with clause-by-clause drafting templates.

If mediation failed, your certificate allows you to file an Initiating Application (Form 1) with the FCFCOA, together with a supporting affidavit and the mandatory Notice of Child Abuse, Family Violence or Risk. Filing fees for a parenting-only application are A$455 for final orders or A$610 if you also seek interim orders.

Either way, you have 12 months from the certificate date to act. After that, the certificate expires and you start the FDR process over.

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