Family Law Amendment Bill 2024.
The new Family Law Amendment Bill 2024 was passed by Parliament on 28 November 2024. It proposes to use family violence issues to provide a greater
transfer of the property (and superannuation) from one party to the other
party. This is after divorce or separation.
As a result, we are confident that unproven
family violence accusations (and many other similar unsubstantiated reasons) will be very often used to get a bigger property
settlement for one of the parties.
These new legislative changes to the Family Law Act will no doubt create further litigation. Due to greater testing of this unproven evidence, there will be increased costs, further delays and more impact on the participants.
The Bill had been rushed through Parliament at a breakneck speed. This is as compared to other inquiries.
As a result, there were only 33 submissions on the Bill. Of these 33 submissions, 29 of this number were published and supported the Bill. A further 3 submissions were marked "confidential" and were unpublished. That left our submission as being the only one published that did not support the Bill.
One can only speculate on the motives behind the 29 other published submissions that did support the Bill.