Blog

To celebrate the start of the 2018 AFL season, FGD Canberra played host to the Giants football club; inviting the team, their sponsors and their friends to the celebrate the season launch at our offices on 28 February 2018.

Marriage Equality in Australia is now a reality. But what benefits have same sex couples gained from this change in the law? Other than the fact that they are finally being treated as equal citizens, there are actually some important legal benefits as well. Here are 5 key benefits for...

No one marries with the plan to divorce down the track (well, very few people). Once you have made a commitment to share your life with someone (til death do you part), divorce is the farthest thing from you mind. But if it comes around (and unfortunately it does) you...

Reading a recent ABC news article online about Lawyers and mental health made me reflect on the positive initiatives implemented by Farrar Gesini Dunn.

It’s happened to everybody. It might be the awesome café you discover on the day it’s shutting down. Or the gift voucher that you find in your sock draw the week after it expires. And so it is with the anti-detriment payment—many people are only finding out it exists on...

I am often asked whether Prenuptial Agreements are binding. Given that the Family Law Act was amended over 15 years ago to enable parties to enter into Binding Financial Agreements including Prenuptial Agreements, it is surprising that there remains, in the community, a belief that they are “not really binding”.

Consider this scenario: Two women are in a relationship. Let’s call them Kylie and Rachel. Kylie and Rachel decide that they want to have a child together and want to use donor sperm to conceive. They decide that Kylie should attempt to get pregnant using an embryo created from the...

Financial Agreements – De Facto versus Marriage The Full Court of the Family Court has delivered a new judgement regarding whether you can have a binding financial agreement (aka a pre nup) that covers both de facto relationship breakdown and marriage breakdown. Background Several years ago the Family Law Act...

What are prenups in Australia? Something I commonly hear when talking to non family lawyers is: “I’d like my clients to protect their assets from divorce, but prenups aren’t binding in Australia…” Well actually, they are! Prenups (or as we know them: Binding Financial Agreements – BFA’s for short) ARE...

A couple of weeks ago I posted about trying to make sense of the fluctuating Court fees (see blog post below entitled The cost of divorce…what’s the deal with the fluctuating Court fees). When I last posted the Court fees had been hiked up; then dropped down; and then hiked...

We recently attended a training session entitled ‘Young children have a lot to tell us about themselves.’ This session focused on children and the ways in which they can communicate their views. This is particularly important when it comes to making arrangements for children after a separation. The training session,...

Director Ann Northcote revisits her article ‘Litigating the clever way’. Family law disputes often involve situations where one party needs a resolution more than the other. For example, if the wife has moved out of the former matrimonial home and she is now renting her own place, whereas the husband has...