Most Recent Decisions

The Court decided that the assets of the testamentary trust should not be included in the matrimonial pool because the husband did not have any direct or indirect control of the trust.

The High Court has found a man who donated his sperm to a lesbian friend to have a child is the father, due to his involvement in the child’s life.

A Queensland woman applied to the Qld Supreme Court in Brisbane for the right to use her dead boyfriend’s sperm to have a baby.

The Civil and Administrative Tribunal of NSW ordered Mr Berger be removed from the roll of local lawyers, after finding him guilty of a wide range of conduct, including overcharging in the case of Mrs N, misappropriation of funds from various estates, and failing to disclose costs.

A Family Court judge has delivered a blistering judgment on the “culture of bitter, adversarial and highly aggressive family law litigation” in Sydney and blasted two law firms for charging “outrageous” fees.

1.Appeal allowed. 2.Set aside the orders of the Full Court of the Family Court of Australia made on 26 September 2016 and, in their place, order that the appeal to that Court be dismissed with costs. 3.The respondent pay the appellant's costs of the appeal to this Court.

The defendant is to deliver to the plaintiff the two wedding bands and pay the plaintiff $1,000

This case was on the treatment of property acquired after separation, where the husband received a substantial inheritance four years after the parties separated. They key question was whether the trial magistrate erred by including the inheritance (which was received 4 years after the divorce) among the assets to be divided between the parties.

The parents could not agree on where their primary school-aged son and daughter should go to high school. The mother has taken her ex-husband to Court, on appeal, to compel him to pay for their children to attend private school at the cost of approximately $50,000 per year in annual fees.

A Canberra man launched legal action against his former fiancee in a bid to recoup the money he’d spent on her engagement ring after their relationship broke down. The man had first contacted the Melbourne woman and her parents with a view to marriage in late 2014 and they got engaged the following year.

He was a multi-millionaire, she was his much younger Eastern European bride who spoke little English. The couple met online in 2006 on a “website for potential brides” when the husband was 67 and she was 36. Soon after he met the wife online, he told her that if they married, “you will have to sign paper. My money is for my children.” These legal proceedings are about the wife disputing the validity of the pre-nuptial (and subsequent post-nuptial agreements) signed between the two.

A baby with Down syndrome at the centre of an international surrogacy dispute was held by the Family Court of Western Australia not to have been abandoned in Thailand by his Australian parents. This case involved twin children, Gammy, and his sister, Pipah, born in Thailand to a surrogate mother (“the surrogate”) using a Western Australian man’s sperm (“the father”) and an anonymous donor’s eggs. The father returned to Australia with Pipah, but not Gammy.

This case is about the admissibility of audio recordings and transcripts of the audio recordings made by the mother of exchanges between the her and the father where the recordings were made without the knowledge or consent of the father. The Court found that the audio recordings fall within the exception contained within the Surveillance Devices Act 2007 (NSW), as the recordings were reasonably necessary to protect the lawful interests of the mother.

A dying woman sat in her kitchen, delivering "motherly exhortations" and her last will and testament to a video camera. The NSW Supreme Court had to determine whether this video Will was a valid Will.

FAMILY LAW – CHILDREN – sole parental responsibility – where equal time not in children’s best interest – where mother poses a psychological risk to children – where mother made a number of false allegations of sexual abuse by the father and previous partners – where the Family Report writer did not consider the effect of the mother’s allegations upon the father.

This matter concerns the long term parenting arrangements for L who is eight, S who is six and Z who is four, the three children of Ms Gorman (“the mother”) and Mr Huffman (“the father”) who separated after a five year marriage. Following the breakdown of the parents’ relationship, the children continued to live with their mother.

Corby and Corby regarded the use of four non-consensual audio recordings between the parties as evidence in a custody hearing. The applicant, the mother in the estranged partnership, contended that the respondent was sexually coercive, intimidating and physically violent during their relationship.

A woman paid more than $94,000 in Federal Government benefits following a Centrelink error will be required to repay less than 20 per cent of that, according to a tribunal decision.

The mother has made serious allegations of child sexual abuse by the father against a child of the marriage. The allegations were deemed to be 'false'. The family report went so far as to recommend that the children be 'immediately' removed from the mother's care because of her unrepentant beliefs that the father was a paedophile who had harmed the children.

Just prior to their wedding, the couple signed a pre-nuptial agreement. Soon after the wedding, the couple signed a second agreement, reinforcing the agreement as to how the husband's wealth was to be apportioned, in the event of a divorce. Years later, the couple proceeded to separate and then divorce, with the husband dying soon afterwards.

The third daughter of late mining heir Michael Wright has succeeded in her bid to extract much more than she was left from his will, with a judge ruling she should get $25 million.

A QUEENSLAND mother who claimed her young daughters had been sexually abused by their father has been handed sole parental responsibility for the girls, even though the Family Court found no truth to the allegations.

This was an application for leave to appeal from the dismissal of an appeal from the Social Security Appeals Tribunal which increased the appellant’s taxable income for child support purposes. The application was dismissed with costs. In its judgment, the court analysed and determined a number of significant questions of law arising out of the interpretation of the Child Support (Assessment) Act 1989 (Cth) which would be of interest to family law specialists.

The mother was found to have contravened the Orders and obstructed contact between the child and the father. The mother was required to enter into a bond and pay the father's costs. The father was also provided make-up time.

The case involved a sex worker who made a claim for a property order against a former client turned partner of 8 years. The applicant alleged that she lived in a de facto relationship with the respondent from 2003 until 2011.

A judge recently took the “drastic step” of ordering that a girl, eight, who had lived with her mother since her parents separated when she was 13 months, instead live with her father.

Is treatment of childhood gender identity disorder a medical procedure which requires court authorisation pursuant to the court’s welfare jurisdiction under s 67ZC?

The father has conceded that he has denied the children their right to a meaningful relationship with their mother, as well as exposing the children to repeated derogatory comments towards his ex-wife and her lesbian partner,

The relationship was not found to be de facto in nature. Mr Regan’s application was dismissed and it was held that the Court could not make orders altering the parties’ property ownership.

At issue is the admissibility of transcripts of covertly recorded conversations made by the father, alleged to have captured various unguarded conversations between the mother and the father.