Expert Family Lawyers

Background A parent may for a variety of reasons wish to obtain a child’s name change following a separation. In the recent case of Somerville & Somerville (No.2) [2018] FCCA 2665 (21 September 2018), Judge Mercuri of the Federal Circuit Court of Australia ordered a child’s name change from that of her biological father to an altered derivative of the biological mother’s maiden name and that the Mother make application

Introduction Alcohol use disorder is quite often raised by one party in parenting action as a reason why the other party should have only supervised time with the child or children. Whilst the benefit of the child having a meaningful relationship with each parent is a primary consideration when the family courts are determining what parenting orders should be made, the other primary consideration (which carries greater weight) is protecting

Introduction Section 117 of the Family Law Act 1975 (“FLA”) sets out the general principle that “each party to proceedings under this Act shall bear his or her own costs”. However, that general principle is subject to certain other provisions of the FLA. If there are justifying circumstances, then the Court has power to make such costs order as the Court considers just requiring that one party pay the legal

Background In lengthy litigious proceedings parties can accumulate large legal fees. The question is can these legal fees form part of the asset pool in a property settlement? In the recent decision of Trevi & Trevi (18 May2017), the Full Court of the Family Court allowed the appellant husband to add back to the asset pool the wife’s legal fees which had accumulated to $437,000. In November 2015 Mr. and

Introduction Historically trusts have been misused in property proceedings to conceal the assets of one party from the other party as well as from the court. It is commonly thought that property held in trust is not subject to division between separating parties during property settlement because trust property of a discretionary trust is the property of that entity not of the beneficiaries of the trust. However, this is not

Background In the recent case of Ellis & Murphy [2018] FamCA 468 (22 June 2018) the mother argued that she felt isolated and wanted to go back to the country where her family was (taking the children with her permanently). She also complained about verbal intimidation from the father. In this case, both of the parents were from the UK, and had moved to Australia separately. They began living together

Introduction According to the Australian Law Reform Commission, procedural fairness means acting fairly in administrative decision making. It relates to the fairness of the procedure under which a decision is made, and not the fairness in a substantive sense of that decision. The High Court has confirmed on numerous occasions that in the absence of a clear, contrary legislative intention, administrative decision makers must accord procedural fairness to those affected

Background In the recent case ofLamb and Anor & Shaw [2018] FamCA 629, the Court of Appeal clarified the law surrounding surrogacy in Queensland. In this matter two parents whose biological child was birthed via surrogate in Australia were unable to be legally recognised as the parents of their child. This was an unusual case in that the surrogate was the third cousin of the genetic mother. In addition to

Background In the recent case of Idelsohn & Idelsohn [2017] FamCA 398 (11 May 2017), the Family Court of Australia preserved national secularism when an application by an Orthodox Jewish husband to force his wife to grant him a Jewish divorce, was refused. After 15 years of marriage, the couple divorced under Australian civil law. However, Mr Idelsohn wished for his wife to also attend the Beth Din, or Sydney’s

The case of Hallis & Fielder [2017] FCCA 2851 dealt with the following question: whether the Federal Circuit Court would make an order under Section 143 of the Child Support (Assessment) Act to make orders directing one party to repay child support payments to another. Mr Hallis sought repayment of the $4,142.73 in child support payments, as well as the legal costs incurred by him in previous and current legal