Most people are familiar with the basic orders that can be made by a Magistrate Court in Domestic Violence matters. The two main types being a Protection Order or a Temporary Protection Order. It is also open to a court, however, to impose a further order on a Respondent – a “Voluntary Intervention Order”. [...]
It is important to know that superannuation is 'property' and is considered in a property settlement, but more importantly, it can be split between parties and usually it is. Background The law in relation to superannuation and family law changed dramatically in 2002 with amendments to the Family Law Act. Prior to December 2002, [...]
Have you recently separated? Have you been to see a Counsellor? Many people believe that their private counselling discussions are confidential. The reality is - most are not. It is important during a separation that spouses seek professional support and talk through their issues either together or individually. If repair can’t be brought to [...]
The Family Court holds that parties to a marriage (or defacto relationship) should share in the good economic times as well as the bad that occur in their relationship, even if the losses have been caused by the actions of one party. Only where there are ‘good and substantial reasons’ should there be a [...]
Agreeing to a Domestic Violence Order (DVO) being made 'without admission' is often considered the quickest and easiest solution when faced with a domestic violence application, especially in circumstances where the respondent does not wish to defend the action and agreeing to the order will not affect their livelihood (e.g. they don’t require a [...]
The court recently considered a case where the assets of the parties were modest in value. It included vehicles, credit cards, and some personal loans, by contrast, the superannuation of the parties totalled almost $900,000. Of the super amount, the husband had around $780,000 in a ‘defined benefit fund’ and a small ‘accumulation fund’. The [...]
How can you make sure that real estate registered in the other spouse’s name is not sold, transferred or put up as security without your knowledge? Protection may be found in a caveat. A caveat is a document that can be lodged with the Titles Office. Once a caveat is lodged, the owner of [...]
In family law matters, a spouse’s credibility is important, and the popularity of social media is now proving a shortcut to finding damaging evidence, particularly in children’s parenting cases. As it is often difficult to obtain evidence showing absentee-parenting and behaviour which is not child-focused, the court is increasingly seeing late-night tweets, risque Facebook [...]
There are many circumstances which can arise in a matter which mean that one parent must be supervised when 'spending time' with their child. It is interesting to look at supervision options. The court is often faced with weighing up who an appropriate supervisor should be. Should the supervisor be a professional, such as [...]
The Australian Tax legislation provides that a Child Support Trust can be established following a family breakdown. A family breakdown is defined as including legal obligations arising not only from the breakdown of live-in relationships but also where parentage has occurred outside of such a relationship. Such a Trust is set up to provide [...]
