Pub­li­ca­tions

3 June 2026

Dis­clo­sure: When is enough enough?

Dis­clo­sure, the fam­i­ly law equiv­a­lent of dis­cov­ery in oth­er kinds of civ­il pro­ceed­ings, is a foun­da­tion­al part of fam­i­ly law matters. The Fed­er­al Cir­cuit and Fam­i­ly Court of Aus­tralia (Fam­i­ly Law) Rules 2021 (Cth) (“the Rules”) and the var­i­ous pre­de­ces­sors of those Rules have long includ­ed a require­ment that:… each par­ty to a pro­ceed­ing has a duty…

2 June 2026

When Judges return to prac­tice: a clos­er look at the deci­sion in Tan­it & Tanit

In the Fed­er­al Cir­cuit and Fam­i­ly Court of Aus­tralia, being a Fed­er­al Court, the com­pul­so­ry retire­ment age of Judges is 70 years of age. If Judges don’t retire before they turn 70 (which many Judges do), they are forced to leave the role at 70 pur­suant to Sec­tion 72 of the Constitution. Accord­ing…

1 May 2025

Match­ing Par­ent­ing Orders to Risk: Craft­ing orders to prop­er­ly address the dan­gers in a fam­i­ly law matter

The focus of any par­ent­ing mat­ter being dealt with in the Fed­er­al Cir­cuit and Fam­i­ly Court of Aus­tralia is what orders are in the best inter­ests of the child. To deter­mine what is in the best inter­ests of the child, the Court must con­sid­er all of the evi­dence pre­sent­ed in…

16 Nov 2022

Are Prenups the height of romance? Rethink­ing Bind­ing Finan­cial Agreements

When peo­ple think about ​‘romance’, they tend to imag­ine things like can­dle­light, flow­ers, oys­ters, cham­pagne. Well, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, I believe that Bind­ing Finan­cial Agree­ments should be bumped up the list. Whilst the ​‘brand­ing’ of BFA’s may need a lit­tle mar­ket­ing rework, they are, at their core, a deeply lov­ing and roman­tic document…

12 Oct 2022

Are We; Aren’t We? Deter­min­ing whether a De Fac­to rela­tion­ship exists

As soci­ety and our views about mod­ern rela­tion­ships change, we have seen few­er peo­ple rush­ing to the alter, with many hap­py to tack­le life side by side as De Fac­to part­ners. Whilst for mar­ried cou­ples there is lit­tle dif­fi­cul­ty prov­ing the exis­tence of a mar­riage (with the help of a Mar­riage Cer­tifi­cate)…

22 Apr 2022

Use of Audio and Video Record­ings in Fam­i­ly Law cases

It’s no secret that we are glued to our smart­phones. Thanks to tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments, we have a ​‘one stop shop’ device at our fin­ger­tips, which includes access to audio and video recordings. For many years, Fam­i­ly Lawyers have been pre­sent­ed with secret record­ings tak­en by clients in the hopes that the…

14 Apr 2022

Pause before you Post – How social media can impact your Fam­i­ly Law matter

Irre­spec­tive of your feel­ings about social media – it is here to stay. In today’s social media world ​‚it seems that there is so lit­tle that we tru­ly keep pri­vate. We’ve nev­er been more con­nect­ed or had a wider plat­form to share each of our inti­mate thoughts how­ev­er, whilst some of…