You’ve worked hard to build a life together—whether it’s a house, investments, a cherished collection of furniture, or a farm full of tools. Suddenly, these must be split.
Prioritising your personal financial future becomes essential, yet it’s difficult to balance this with the needs of your ex-partner. If you have children, you might have differing opinions on what’s best for them financially. Should they stay in the family home? And is that even feasible when housing costs double?
Our financially literate mediators, are experienced in navigating both simple and complex financial arrangements. Regardless of the situation, the reality remains: one financial pie must be split into two. Life as a single person often comes with significant financial challenges. The grief and anger of facing financial instability after years of hard work can feel overwhelming.
The Family Law Act sets the ultimate standard, with extensive legislation guiding the equitable division of assets. The Court considers factors such as contributions, earning capacity, and future needs to determine how assets should be divided.
Getting initial legal advice is the best way to understand your potential entitlements if you were to go to Court. However, Court should always be a last resort. Why spend tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of dollars on legal fees when there’s a better alternative?
Initial mediation sessions focus on identifying the asset pool and agreeing on asset valuations. Later sessions centre on negotiating an agreed division of those assets.
Agreements reached during mediation can typically be quickly and affordably transformed into property consent orders by your chosen lawyer and lodged with the Family Court for finalisation. We transcribe property mediations using Microsoft Word and Excel, providing printed or emailed agreements directly to your lawyer to save you time and money.
At your initial one-on-one session, your mediator will ask you very briefly about why you separated, and hear a little about what has been happening for each of you since separation. This helps her to understand where each of you is coming from when you come to the joint mediation.
Assets and Needs:
The main focus of the discussion will be your current assets and future needs. At this stage you will work together to create a rough list of your assets and liabilities, including any property, vehicles, superannuation, businesses, investments, loans and credit card debts. You’ll then talk through your idea of what would be a fair split. This is all completely confidential.
You don’t need to bring much paperwork to your individual session, but it can be useful to get some legal advice from a specialist family lawyer beforehand. Knowing what you may be entitled to under the Australian Family Law legislation is a help when you and your partner have a different opinion about what is “fair”. The legislation is the only real, objective and fair guideline about how assets should be divided.
That said, ultimately in mediation you and your partner decide on the outcomes. If you haven’t had time to get legal advice before your pre-mediation, that is fine.
If you feel like the value of your property is easily agreed on, you may not need to bother with a valuation.
However, if it could be a point of contention, we recommend that you bring along a valuation from a registered valuer, or three appraisals from real estate agents, which are averaged out. For some couples this is discussed at the first joint session, as there are sometimes logistical issues about arranging meeting times and access to properties.
Again if this is a matter of contention, We recommend clients go to car valuation sites such as Red Book and print out the values of their vehicles (adjusted for year model and mileage).
Other valuations that may be helpful to bring along include those for assets like antiques, boats and caravans. You may agree at mediation to have a family business valued or have your superannuation valued for family law purposes.
Statements showing the current balance of liabilities are often very useful in property mediation.
Bring documents showing current cash balances in accounts or share portfolios.
Differences between schemes may require specialist analysis before inclusion in the asset pool.
