Separation affects almost everything at once. Where your children live. Whether you keep the house. What happens to the superannuation you have spent many years building.
Our expertise in family law includes (but is not limited to)
- Parenting arrangements
- Relocation and recovery orders
- Property settlements
- Binding financial agreements
- Divorce, separation and de facto relationships
Most people arrive at a family lawyer's office having already spent months trying to work it out themselves and having discovered that goodwill alone does not resolve questions this complicated.
Our job is to give you a clear picture of where you stand, set out the realistic options, and help you make decisions you can live with in five years' time rather than five weeks.
We would rather settle it than litigate it
Most family law matters do not need a judge. They need two people with accurate advice, a realistic sense of what a court would do, and a structure for negotiating. Court is slow, expensive and unpredictable, and it hands the decision about your children and your finances to a stranger.
So we start with negotiation, mediation and consent orders wherever it is safe and sensible to do so. That is not a soft option; it usually produces a better result more quickly and for a fraction of the cost.
But some matters cannot be settled. Where there is family violence, where a former partner will not disclose their finances, where a child has been taken, or where the other side simply will not move, you need someone prepared to file and run the case. We do that too, in the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia at the Darwin registry.
The Territory makes some of this harder
Family law is federal, so the Family Law Act 1975 applies here exactly as it does in other Australian cities. But separating in the Northern Territory brings complications that interstate firms would rarely encounter.
People move. Darwin has a large Defence population subject to posting cycles, a significant fly-in fly-out workforce, and a steady flow of people who came for two years and stayed for ten. When a relationship ends here, one parent very often wants to go home to another state, and that turns an ordinary parenting matter into a relocation case.
Distance matters too. Arrangements that work in a capital city do not survive a six-hour drive or a wet season road closure. Parenting orders drafted for the Territory must be drafted for the Territory.
And for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, the law requires the court to consider the child's right to enjoy their culture and to have the support necessary to explore and develop that connection. That is not a footnote in the NT. It is central to a great many parenting matters here, and it needs a lawyer who treats it that way.
How we work
Your first appointment is free. Come in, tell us what has happened, and get an honest assessment with no obligation.
We quote a fixed fee before we start. Family law is where legal costs most often spiral, and where people most often feel they lost control of the bill. You will know what this costs in writing before you commit.
We will tell you if you do not need us. If your matter can be resolved between the two of you with some information and a set of consent orders, we will say so.