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Does a Decline in Living Standards Post-Separation Affect Division of Property?
How Do Living Standards, Both Before and After Separation, Affect the Court’s Assessment? Separation almost always lowers the parties’ respective living standards. It is very rare that the parties can continue living at the same pre-separation standard after they have...
Assessing the Weight of Property Brought Into a Relationship
Divorce Settlement: Introduction Occasionally, a party to a property dispute will have owned property at the beginning of the relationship. The weight attributed to such property in assessing the parties’ contributions will depend on: The parties’ overall...
Financial Settlement in Divorce
Financial Settlement in Divorce Lawler & Lawler (1988) 12 FamLR 319 Oftentimes, a party to a property dispute will have owned property at the beginning of the relationship. The weight attributed to such property in assessing the parties’ overall contributions will...
Debts in divorce: debts incurred by a single party
Debts Incurred During a Relationship That Has Broken Down Adair & Milford [2015] FamCAFC 29 Valuing the property of the parties in the context of proceedings under s 79 of the Family Law Act involves deducting the value of the parties liabilities from the gross...
Are Trust Assets Available for Division?
How Do Courts Deal With Discretionary Trusts and Divorce? Kennon v Spry (2008) 238 CLR 366 A trust is an obligation to deal with assets for the benefit of either a class of persons called “beneficiaries” or for a charitable purpose. This obligation is binding on a...
Duty of Disclosure: Dealing With Delinquent Litigants
Surridge & Surridge [2017] FamCAFC 10 Parties to a property dispute are required to provide full and frank disclosures of their financial circumstances. They are bound by this obligation both before, and after, proceedings have commenced. Where a party has failed...
How Does the Court Deal With Property Acquired After Separation?
Calvin & McTier [2017] FamCAFC 125 Ordinarily, the first step that the court takes in determining a property application is identifying and valuing the property of the parties. In this particular context, “property” has a broad definition and would typically...
Property Settlements Under Australian Family Law
The court has the power to re-distribute matrimonial property between the parties to a marriage. This power is set out in s 79(1) of the Family Law Act (“FLA”). Section s 79(2) of the Family Law Act limits the use of this power to circumstances where making such order...
The Best Interests Principle in Detail
Whenever the court makes a parenting order, it must regard the child’s best interests as the paramount consideration. This is the paramountcy principle. Section 60CC of the Family Law Act sets out two categories of consideration that the court must take into account...
Spousal Maintenance Considerations in Australia
In Australia, courts must have regard to the spousal maintenance considerations set out in s 75(2) of the Family Law Act when hearing such applications. These considerations specify the factual matters that the court must take into account in determining what...
Spousal Maintenance and Child Support
“Maintenance” refers to virtually any form of material provision enabling an adult or child to live above mere subsistence. Under s 80(1) of the Family Law Act, a court is empowered to make such orders as it considers proper for the provision of spousal maintenance....