What the 2024-2025 Family Law Reforms Actually Changed
Two significant changes came into effect through the 2024-2025 family law reforms, and both have direct relevance to how property settlement proceeds in Australia.
The first is financial disclosure. Parties to property proceedings are now subject to mandatory disclosure obligations from the outset. Both sides are required to provide full and frank disclosure of their financial position, including assets, liabilities, income, and financial resources. The court’s powers to respond to non-disclosure — including concealment of assets or deliberate understatement of liabilities — have been substantially strengthened. Transparency is no longer optional.
The second change is the formal recognition of financial abuse and coercive control. Courts are now required to consider whether either party engaged in coercive or controlling behaviour during the relationship — including restricting access to money, making financial decisions unilaterally over a sustained period, or undermining the other party’s financial independence — when determining a property settlement outcome. This is a meaningful development for clients whose experience of the relationship included financial control. If that is your situation, speaking with a specialist family lawyer before any negotiations begin is important.
Step One: What Goes Into the Property Pool?
The first step in any property settlement is identifying and valuing everything that forms part of the shared asset pool. This is consistently broader than people expect.
Real estate, savings, shares, and vehicles are the obvious starting points. But the property pool also includes superannuation, business interests, family trusts, self-managed super funds (SMSFs), and significant personal assets. It includes liabilities too: mortgages, credit card debts, personal loans, and outstanding tax obligations all form part of the calculation.
One of the most important points about property settlement in Australia is that it does not matter whose name an asset is held in. If it came into existence during the relationship — or was brought into the relationship by either party — it will generally be considered as part of the shared pool. This is why understanding the full picture from the outset, with specialist legal advice, matters enormously.
Step Two: Assessing Contributions — Financial and Non-Financial
Once the property pool is identified, the court assesses each party’s contributions throughout the relationship. Contributions fall into two categories.
Financial contributions include income earned, assets brought into the relationship, inheritances received, and gifts. Non-financial contributions include homemaking, parenting, and the practical and emotional support provided to the other party’s career or business. Both are formally recognised under the Family Law Act. Neither automatically outweighs the other.
This is a point many clients find counterintuitive. A parent who stepped back from paid work to raise children during a long marriage has made substantial legal contributions to the asset pool, even if their name appears on no financial asset. The law acknowledges this, and it is reflected in outcomes.
Steps Three and Four: Future Needs and the Just and Equitable Standard
The third step is future needs. Age and health, income-earning capacity, whether one party will be the primary carer of children following separation, and the financial effect the relationship has had on each party’s career prospects are all considered. A parent returning to the workforce after many years as the primary carer faces fundamentally different financial circumstances to a spouse who continued building their career throughout the same period. The court takes that difference seriously.
The fourth step is the just and equitable test. This is the standard that governs the entire process. It is not a formula, and it is not a fixed percentage. It is a qualitative assessment of whether the proposed outcome is appropriate given the specific contributions, circumstances, and future needs of both parties. “Just and equitable” does not mean equal. It means fair, given the full picture. Identical asset pools regularly produce very different outcomes depending on the facts of the matter. This is precisely why specialist legal advice from the outset makes a material difference.
How Property Division After Separation in Australia Works Without Going to Court
One of the most consistent surprises clients have when they speak with Village Family Lawyers for the first time is discovering that property settlement does not require court proceedings. The four-step framework applies whether you are negotiating directly, working through a family dispute resolution process, or engaging in formal mediation. The difference is not which framework applies — it is how the process unfolds.
Village Family Lawyers operates with a resolution-first philosophy. Approximately 90% of the matters the firm supports through mediation resolve without going to court. Any agreement reached outside court must be formalised — through consent orders approved by the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, or through a Binding Financial Agreement — to be legally enforceable. Reaching an agreement is one thing. Making it legally binding is another, and this is where specialist legal drafting matters.
Lauren Wilson and the team at Village Family Lawyers guide clients through this process from offices on the Mornington Peninsula and in Malvern in Inner East Melbourne. Understanding what a resolution without court proceedings actually requires — and what makes it legally sound — is something the firm covers from the very first conversation.
When You Need a Specialist: Complex Assets, Business Interests, and Trusts
For some clients, the property pool includes assets that require specialist handling: business interests, family trusts, SMSFs, investment portfolios, and assets with contested valuations. These situations require not only specialist legal expertise but often independent expert valuation.
Village Family Lawyers has two LIV Accredited Family Law Specialists on its team: Bryn Stevens (Partner) and Anna Bulner (Special Counsel). The LIV Accredited Family Law Specialist designation is awarded by the Law Institute of Victoria and held by fewer than 5% of family lawyers in Australia. For clients on the Mornington Peninsula and in Malvern dealing with complex or high-value assets, this level of specialist experience within the local team is genuinely uncommon.
Where pre-relationship asset protection, post-separation financial agreements, or trust restructuring are part of the picture, the Financial Agreements and Asset Protection service addresses these additional strategies alongside property settlement advice.
