Jonson Leo

Most people who come to us asking about divorce have already been separated for some time. The marriage ended in practice months or years before anyone started thinking about the formal legal step. What they need is not a complicated explanation of the law. They need a clear answer to a practical question: what do I need to do, and in what order?

We give Caulfield clients exactly that. We work through what has been resolved and what still needs to be addressed, we map out the right sequence for their specific situation, and we make sure nothing important is missed along the way.

Getting the sequence right

The most common mistake people make when approaching divorce is treating it as the first step rather than the last. In practice, the legally significant work of ending a marriage happens during the separation period. Property settlements, parenting arrangements, financial agreements, superannuation splitting, all of this needs to be addressed before or alongside the divorce application, not after it.

Once a divorce order becomes absolute, a twelve month window opens for commencing property proceedings through the court. If that window closes without action, court permission is required to proceed. That permission is not automatic and the process of obtaining it adds cost, delay and uncertainty. We help clients plan around this deadline from the outset.

What the divorce application requires

A divorce application in Australia requires twelve months of continuous separation before it can be filed. There is no fault component. The only ground for divorce is the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage and twelve months of separation establishes that. The application is a court document and in most standard cases the parties do not need to appear before a judge in person.

Where there are children under eighteen, the position is different. Either a lawyer or one of the parties must attend court and the court will not approve the divorce until it is satisfied that proper arrangements are in place for the children. We manage this process thoroughly for our Caulfield clients so that nothing catches them by surprise.

Separation under the same roof

The twelve month separation period does not necessarily require living at separate addresses. Australian law recognises that couples sometimes remain in the same home after a relationship has ended, particularly where finances or children make moving out impractical in the short term.

The evidentiary requirements are more demanding in these cases. The court needs to be satisfied that the relationship genuinely ended during that period, not simply that the parties were sharing a building. We advise clients on what evidence supports this and how to document the separation properly.

Divorce situations that need more careful handling

A significant number of divorce applications proceed without any difficulty. Others involve circumstances that require more careful management, including:

• Establishing separation when both parties continued living together
• Disputes over the date the separation actually started
• Serving documents on a former spouse who is hard to locate or avoid contact
• Marriages entered into overseas and the questions of recognition that follow
• Choosing the right country for divorce when multiple jurisdictions might apply
• Applications made urgent by one party’s intention to remarry
• Cases where children’s arrangements need to satisfy the court before the divorce is approved

Whatever the complication, addressing it with proper legal advice early produces a better result than attempting to manage it once it has already created a problem.

Talk to a divorce lawyer in Caulfield

A short initial conversation is all it takes to get a clear picture of your process and what needs to happen next. We make that conversation as useful as possible.

Call us on 03 9793 7888 to book a free initial consultation.