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Domes­tic vio­lence in finan­cial cas­es in the Fam­i­ly Court and Fed­er­al Cir­cuit Court of Australia

The Fam­i­ly Law Act 1975 estab­lished the ​‘no fault’ divorce prin­ci­ple. This means that, unlike in some oth­er juris­dic­tions, to estab­lish grounds for divorce, courts do not have to con­sid­er which part­ner is to blame for the break­down of a marriage.  Where domes­tic vio­lence can be a fac­tor estab­lish­ing ​‘fault’ as grounds…

What’s in a name? Chang­ing your child’s sur­name after sep­a­ra­tion or divorce

Your child’s name can be changed where you have the con­sent of the oth­er par­ent and the change of name is in the child’s best interests.  Change of name with­out oth­er par­en­t’s consent  In Chap­man and Palmer, the Full Court of the Fam­i­ly Court held that a court will not pre­vent a par­ent from…

Show me the mon­ey: the con­se­quences of fail­ing to dis­close assets in fam­i­ly law proceedings

Par­ties to finan­cial fam­i­ly law cas­es have an ongo­ing duty to dis­close the mate­r­i­al facts relat­ing to their finan­cial posi­tion. This prin­ci­ple was stat­ed in In the mar­riage of Briese, where the court said that ​“a per­son … has a pos­i­tive oblig­a­tion to set out at an ear­ly stage [their] finan­cial…

Is it okay to let your for­mer spouse trav­el over­seas with the children?

The short answer is no. Once a par­ent has left the juris­dic­tion of Aus­tralia with the chil­dren, the chil­dren may become the cen­tre of an inter­na­tion­al child abduc­tion and nev­er be returned to Aus­tralia. Inter­na­tion­al child abduc­tion is a par­en­t’s worst night­mare and caus­es severe psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma to the chil­dren and the…

Swaab Attor­neys launch­es a new look and a new name

The part­ners of the firm are proud and excit­ed to announce that from Mon­day 24 Sep­tem­ber 2018 the firm will be renamed Swaab. This name change will also include a new logo, web­site and refreshed brand. The Swaab brand has been evolv­ing since the firm was first found­ed by Fred Swaab back…

Guide — A Glob­al Roadmap to Per­son­al Data Protection

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A Glob­al Roadmap to Per­son­al Data Protection

“Not so long ago, ​“data pro­tec­tion” meant a locked fil­ing cab­i­net and a good shred­der. No longer. In a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion, pro­tect­ing data went from safe­guard­ing doc­u­ments to secur­ing infor­ma­tion of almost every kind, both tan­gi­ble and in elec­tron­ic form. Although every­one under­stands what it means to pro­tect a hard copy doc­u­ment, it is…

Michael Byrnes dis­cuss­es casu­al employ­ment on ​‘Mon­ey News’

Michael Byrnes dis­cuss­es casu­al employ­ment on the ​‘Mon­ey News’ pro­gram on 2GB, 3AW and 4BC. Lis­ten to the inter­view here (from 37.30).…

Lawyers Week­ly arti­cle ​‘Mid-tier firm rebrands with new name’

Lawyers Week­ly have cov­ered the Swaab brand refresh in an arti­cle titled ​‘Mid-tier firm rebrands with new name.’ The arti­cle includes an inter­view with Mary about the impor­tance of the changes, and what this means for the firm.See fol­low­ing an excerpt:Speak­ing to Lawyers Week­ly, Swaab man­ag­ing part­ner Mary Digiglio said this change…

Swaab Con­nect | Octo­ber 2018

Our Octo­ber issue of Swaab Con­nect launch­es the new look of our newslet­ters fol­low­ing the renam­ing of the firm as Swaab and a new look and web­site going live. In this issue, Annette Wil­son and Kate­ri­na Lon­er­gan exam­ine the con­se­quences of fail­ing to dis­close assets in fam­i­ly law pro­ceed­ings, in their…

Obit­u­ary

In ear­ly 2016, Fred Swaab, entre­pre­neur and founder of Syd­ney-based Swaab Attor­neys, sad­ly lost his long bat­tle with ill health.Fred found­ed the mid-tier aspi­ra­tional firm in 1981, which he led until 2010, when he retired as man­ag­ing part­ner to become Chair­man. He worked tire­less­ly to cre­ate a law firm with an…

Email Redi­rect

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Crowd-sourced fund­ing extend­ed to pri­vate companies

From 19 Octo­ber 2018, pri­vate com­pa­nies can seek finance through the equi­ty crowd-sourced fund­ing (CSF) régime that was pre­vi­ous­ly open only to pub­lic companies. CSF is a mech­a­nism (an online plat­form) that allows eli­gi­ble com­pa­nies to raise cap­i­tal by offer­ing secu­ri­ties (only new ordi­nary shares) in the com­pa­ny to a large num­ber of…

Com­pet­ing Con­sid­er­a­tions: An Employ­ee and her ​‘Hob­by Business’.

In the cur­rent age where any organ­i­sa­tion, irre­spec­tive of size, can adver­tise to the world through the inter­net, the bar­ri­ers to entry for ​“micro” or ​“hob­by” busi­ness­es are low­er than ever. Increas­ing­ly, employ­ees are show­ing their inge­nu­ity and entre­pre­neur­ship by set­ting up their own hob­by busi­ness­es to the side of…

Reheat­ed Retweets: The Sig­nif­i­cance of a ​‘Retweet’ in Employment

The CFM­MEU Case In a recent case of the Fair Work Com­mis­sion (FWC) (Con­struc­tion, Forestry, Mar­itime, Min­ing and Ener­gy Union-Con­struc­tion and Gen­er­al Divi­sion, Queens­land North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry Divi­sion­al Branch [2018] FWC 6462), a ​‘retweet’ by a mem­ber of the FWC, Senior Deputy Pres­i­dent Ham­berg­er, formed the basis of a sub­mis­sion by the Con­struc­tion, Forestry, Mar­itime…