Family Law

Family law is often overwhelming and complex for people who find themselves needing advice in this area. Our dedicated Family Law team has experience and expertise in property, financial and children's issues. Our goal is to provide our clients with commercially sound, commonsense and clear advice to achieve the best outcome for them.

We have access to professionals within our firm practising in other areas which regularly impact on family law cases including commercial, trust, taxation, bankruptcy, wills and estates and financial planning. This breadth of service is not available in boutique family law firms. Our clients can resolve their cases by using this in-house expertise and minimise additional delays, double-handling and expense.

We do not underestimate the emotional impact on our clients and on those who care about them. Our team is empathetic, supportive and approachable. We protect our clients' privacy, although, if our clients wish us to, we are also happy to involve family members and keep them informed. It is important that our clients feel confident that we listen to and respect them. We aim to work with our clients to ensure that their case makes sense to them and allows them to plan their future.

The Family Law Team can assist in the following areas:

• Settlement without Court

  Including round-table conferences, mediation and collaborative law.

• Litigation

  Advising on when to litigate and how to do so effectively.

• Divorce

  how to obtain a divorce and the legal effects of a divorce.

• Pre-nuptial and other financial agreements

  Preparing and advising on Financial Agreements between spouses before, during and after a marriage

• Asset protection within extended families

  using Financial Agreements as a wealth protection tool, especially for extended families and second marriages.

• Property cases

  Advising on and resolving property settlements including superannuation, trusts, companies, taxation, inheritances, Centrelink and third party issues.

• Spousal maintenance

  lump sum and periodic spousal maintenance and seeking to prevent future claims.

• De facto relationships (including same sex)

  advising and resolving claims by alternative dispute resolution or litigation, and preparing Agreements before, during and after relationships.

• Restraining orders

  Intervention orders, sole use and occupation of the home orders, urgent injunctions.

• Children's cases

  Including living arrangements, specific parenting issues, same-sex parents, relocation, abduction, abuse, mental health, other parties (eg grandparents) and transgender parents.

• Paternity

  Arranging for DNA testing and the child support and parenting consequences of such testing.

• Child support

  dealing with the Child Support Agency, preparing private agreements, child support agreements and child maintenance trusts, advising on childbirth maintenance and adult child maintenance.

• Post-settlement

  including conveyancing, wills & estate planning, taxation & accounting advice, financial planning and enforcement of orders and agreements.

• Interstate and International Family Law

  advising in and undertaking agency work in multi - jurisdictional cases as the only Melbourne law firm in the MSI Global Alliance.