Property

Negotiating A Property Settlement during Covid-19

Negotiating and documenting a property settlement under the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) (FLA) is not always easy. You and your former partner may have a strong desire to keep things amicable, but it is an emotional time and there are added layers of difficulty in times of economic crisis. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,...

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Negative property pools and who will wear the debt

1      Introduction There are two ways to approach this question:  one can consider property pools where the debts outweigh the parties’ modest equity in a home and superannuation.  As these cases are rarely litigated because the costs are disproportionate to the property pool, it is difficult to draw any principles from...

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Eight tips for dealing with overseas property

In these increasingly mobile times, the family law courts are often faced with the question of how to deal with property which is located overseas, such as bank accounts, superannuation and real property. Does Australia have jurisdiction to deal with part or all of the overseas property? The test is that Australia is not a...

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Eight tips on add-backs

  Add-backs in proceedings for the alteration of property interests under the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) (FLA) occur when the court adds back funds or other property to the property of the parties, when funds or other property has been used by one of the parties for their own purposes, usually after separation. The...

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Tomaras– is the Family Law Act an escape hatch to avoid tax?

The Australian Taxation Office recently appealed to the High Court of Australia on the question of whether there was power under the Family Law Act 1975 (FLA) for the husband to be substituted for the wife in relation to a tax debt owed by the wife of over $250,000 plus interest. In Commissioner of Taxation for the...

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