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Welcome to The OMB Law Board, the podcast where legal insights meet practical advice. Hosted by Simon Bennett, Managing Partner at OMB Solicitors, this show delves into what you can expect when engaging with OMB Solicitors. Specialising in property law and commercial law, OMB also boasts dedicated teams for estate planning, contested estates, body corporate matters, litigation, and family law.
Each episode features in-depth discussions led by experienced team leaders, some with over 20 years of expertise. You'll gain valuable knowledge on initial consultations, cost assessments, timelines, and the importance of clear communication and confidentiality in legal matters.
Join us to break down barriers and navigate your legal journey with confidence. Tune in for expert advice, client stories, and tips on how to prepare for your legal needs. The OMB Law Board is your trusted source for all things legal.
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Welcome to the OMB Law Board. And we're touching now on a family law series. So for all of the listeners out there who wanna know a little bit more about the family law space, I've got today with me, Abbi Golightly, partner of the family law team here at OMB. And Abbi, today you and I are gonna talk about all things family. Fabulous, let's go. Yeah, I know you love the topic and sometimes I wonder how you do it, right? There's so much emotion and stress. Sure is. It's high pressure, isn't it? It's high pressure, it's high stress, it's high emotion. It's real life problems for real life people.
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I guess that's why I like it. And I always am amazed at you the great empath.
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Is that part and parcel of what you need to be a family lawyer? Absolutely, you've got to have a high level of empathy for people in what is statistically the most stressful time of their lives, marriages, deaths, and I think moving houses, although I think I'd rather move house 20 times a year. Than move partner? Than move partner 20 times a year.(...) But it's a highly stressful and empathy and understanding and compassion. And that's a big part of what we do. All of which you absolutely have in spades and our viewers will get a taste of that today, I think, and get an understanding of what it takes. But I always find it really interesting that it could be any one of us,(...) but for the fate of God, as they say,
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can be a normal and well and stable put together person and an event can occur which just tips your life upside down. Sure does. And then all of a sudden, there's so many moving parts. There is. Talk me through that little bit of change from when someone's life is on track to being derailed.(...) Look, statistically, the divorce rates are obviously more than half marriages end in divorce and the same statistics can apply to de facto relationships as well. So if that's what you find yourself waking up to or if it's the end of a long set of circumstances that bring you to that point, you're then faced with the circumstances of what I do, where do I go, how does this all get worked out?(...) And the way I like to speak to clients is to talk them through what the court says happens, even though huge focus on avoiding that, no one wants to end up in court, it's two, probably up to two years of your life that you'll never get back. And we've heard in previous episodes about alternative dispute resolution, conciliation, mediation, is that all part of the process? Big part of the process, it's mandatory. So the court has recognised that it is a vital part of getting matters resolved early, but even if you tick the mandatory box, conciliation conferences, mediation, roundtable conferences, all happen at any stage in a family law matter and it's really important that we take every chance to resolve matters. Yeah, and I love that about you and the way you practise your family law is,(...) if you can resolve it, you will,(...) but where you need to fight, you will. That's part of the job.(...) Fighting is probably the wrong word. Advocacy, assertion, I like to consider myself an assertive rather than an aggressive lawyer, big difference. But if your matter can't resolve and you do need to end up in litigation,(...) then we've got your back. Yeah, well that's great to hear. And I know today you wanted to talk to me a little bit about the property settlement side of things. So tell me a little bit about property and property settlements and what that means. Sure, so when we're talking about property settlement, the Famular Act defines property as a whole raft of different things. Most people think of your houses, your cars, businesses, superannuation, things like that. The stages that the court goes through to decide what is the ultimate division of assets is the same process we as your lawyers will advise you about and we engage in in mediation.(...) The first step is to identify what exists. So as I said, houses, cars, businesses,
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all raft of things, including liabilities. So your mortgages, your tax debts, your personal loans, all those sorts of things. We find out what exists and try and value it. And if we can't agree on a value, then we get it valued by an expert.(...) And so once that's done, we then look at what you've each contributed to it. And then whilst I talk about it being a five stage process, each stage has about seven different stages. But fundamentally when we're talking about contributions, that's what you brought to the relationship, which is of more importance in shorter than longer relationships, what you contributed throughout the relationship. So what you did by way of income,(...) but also conversely what is done by way of homemaking and parenting contributions. Right, so domestic chores and external chores as well. Correct, so things that are done within the home, raising children,(...) renovations, improvements, they're non-financial contributions mostly, and they are valued the same as financial contributions. That was a big shift in the early stages of family law to make sure that that's recognised because invariably there is one stay-at-home partner, parent, and one worker, so we've got to balance that out. So then contributions throughout the relationship, which we've touched on, and then anything post-separation, that's of significance. That doesn't often come into it unless you've been separated for quite a significant period of time, or something such as an inheritance comes in after separation or quite late in the past. And do they also recognise what the parties start with, particularly in short relationships? Exactly. Yeah, you may have touched on that, but so where there's a gross inequity in the way you come into a relationship. So that is important, particularly as you've said in short relationships, where it's a very mathematical exercise and the court tries to put people back in the position they were in if the relationship hadn't occurred. Over time, the initial contributions lose their significance. They don't go away completely unless we're talking 25, 30-year relationships where if someone came in with a $30,000 car, it's not really as important. Not worth a lot. Down the end. I guess that's something we could touch on probably in another episode, but where you've got that large inequity, what is commonly referred to as the prenuptial agreement. Yeah, that's a whole different discussion for another episode, but they are certainly-- But that has some protection value to those inequities at the start. Certainly does. So that's contributions in a general sense. We then look at what we as lawyers call future needs factors. Those are the adjustments that are made for things such as having the primary care of young children, and obviously the focus being on young. If you've got children who are towards the other end of the childhood scale, the weight or the adjustment for the care of those children aren't as significant if we're talking babies and toddlers.
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Issues with health, so if someone can't work because of a health condition or they have a degenerative condition that is going to impact them into the future, they might need a little bit more now to help them out with that. And then the other adjustments are differential in earning capacity and income earning ability. So if someone has highly skilled, well-trained professional tradesperson, those sorts of things, and the other spouse doesn't have those sorts of skill sets, there's an adjustment often considered for that. Those are your most common. The adjustment factors that are just set out in the Famular Act are significant, but those are the most common ones. And so we go through those stages and then we get to the last one, which is an overall consideration of what is fair and reasonable.
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How long is a piece of string? Right. That's an overall factor that the court looks at, okay, well, we go through all of these steps, we get to that outcome, is that fair and reasonable?
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Probably.(...) And then that's what they decide on as the division of assets. Yeah, and we try to get to a result that obviously both parties can live with and not always happy with, but something that avoids the need to fight further if possible. Correct.
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And we move forward from there.(...) Property is just such a complex area, myself being a property lawyer,(...) obviously from a family point of view, you're an accredited family law specialist with the Queensland Law Society, so you're an expert in this stuff. The structuring concepts in property, and we've talked about structuring in another episode, but you've got to get your head around these and maybe you could explain to the audience the benefit of working in a full service firm where you can come to, for example, the property team, or one of the other teams here to discuss complex structuring issues so you can drill through it in a property sense. Yeah, so in family law, we need to be across, as you've said, a number of areas of law, family law, obviously,
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general corporate structures, trust structures, we need to be across wills and estates issues because often those intersect. So working at a firm like OMB and for our clients to have the knowledge that we as a firm can provide to them is invaluable. So I know that if I have an issue which can arise quite often in even reasonably simple property settlements regarding, okay, well, what is the impact on taking this person out of that structure, I can speak with our property and commercial team,(...) matters such as one I've had recently where we've had to have someone appointed a trustee for sale, I'm knocking on your door or George's door saying, "Hey, can you deal with that for me "because that's your area of expertise?" And so you can't put a value on that, it's amazing. And I love the collaborative approach that we've got here at OMB between the teams because some of those family law issues where you do need to get a trustee appointed or you may need to lodge a caveat on a matrimonial home so one partner doesn't sell it or we have a settlement or a sale of a property, the two teams just work seamlessly through. Yeah, as I said, it's an invaluable benefit to our clients having all of the services that we can provide to them knowing that if properties need to be sold, pursuant to orders, we've got our team that can do it, it's done seamlessly, it's done easily and it's more efficient for our clients which is ultimately for them. Yeah, and I think that goes back to our purpose here which is we wanna make people's lives better and often they come to you in a difficult(...) or unpleasant circumstance and we wanna make their lives better and that collaborative approach allows us a point of difference to just an exclusive family law firm where we've got this big family law team with strength and experience led by yourself and a wonderful team who can rely on, for example, the Wilson Estates team or the property law team. Exactly, and then if there are circumstances arising where we've got disputes over whether or not there's a debt owed to a family member, those sorts of things, we've got our commercial litigation team.(...) It's an amazing benefit to our clients and I think I know I appreciate all the other teams here immensely. And we appreciate you as well, Abbi, and on that point, I'm sure our viewers have really enjoyed our chat today(...) as part of the family law series, all things property and family,(...) some really interesting points you've made regarding contribution and need and the reasonableness component that gets taken into account and the whole process. So thank you for joining us on the OMB Law Board. It's been fantastic. Not a problem.