Lisa Young

This article considers whether the Family Law Amendment Act 2024 is likely to achieve the Australian government’s stated reform goals. These goals include: codifying the common law so as to make property law clearer and thus more accessible for unrepresented litigants and those bargaining outside of the court; ensuring family violence is factored into all aspects of family law financial disputes; and placing more emphasis on children’s post-separation housing needs. The article provides an examination of the key changes to the Family Law Act 1975 that relate to property disputes between separated couples (married and cohabiting) against the backdrop of the existing case law. The article concludes that, while there are some positive aspects to the reforms (not least in the area of family violence), overall clarity has not been achieved. It is argued there is now uncertainty as to how various provisions will operate and the extent to which common law principles have been codified and it is difficult to see how this will improve access to justice for the target groups.

Welfare agencies are increasingly turning to technology to facilitate information-sharing and communication with users. However, while the administrative, governmental and material effects of technological advances have been examined, research has yet to explore how welfare users could make use of technology for their benefit. In this article, we examine the extent to which available technologies allow Australian separated mothers to assemble and provide data to government agencies in order to pursue procedural, and therefore substantive, justice in child support and welfare contexts. We find that no currently available apps provide separated mothers with technological affordances suited to this purpose. As a result, we find that existing child support and welfare data practices reinforce the social hierarchies that exist post-separation, whereby low-income single mothers are financially and socially disadvantaged, while welfare administrators and non-compliant ex-partners accrue savings and discretionary benefits as a result of existing bureaucratic data gaps and omissions.

Immunization of patients with autologous, ex vivo matured dendritic cell (DC) preparations, in order to prime antitumor T-cell responses, is the focus of intense research. Despite progress and approval of clinical approaches, significant enhancement of these personalized immunotherapies is urgently needed to improve efficacy. We show that immunotherapeutic murine and human DC, generated in the presence of the antimicrobial host defense peptide LL-37, have dramatically enhanced expansion and differentiation of cells with key features of the critical CD103 + /CD141 + DC subsets, including enhanced cross-presentation and co-stimulatory capacity, and upregulation of CCR7 with improved migratory capacity. These LL-37-DC enhanced proliferation, activation and cytokine production by CD8 + (but not CD4 + ) T cells in vitro and in vivo. Critically, tumor antigen-presenting LL-37-DC increased migration of primed, activated CD8 + T cells into established squamous cell carcinomas in mice, and resulted in tumor regression. This advance therefore has the potential to dramatically enhance DC immunotherapy protocols.

Australia lags behind other jurisdictions in considering the relevance of a mature minor’s decision-making capacity to parenting disputes. Gillick competency, as it is known, is routinely discussed in the case of medical decision-making, however is ignored when it comes to parenting decisions concerning very mature minors. This article explores this failure and in particular considers a) the jurisdiction of the court to determine a matter when a child is competent; b) the extent to which the courts are entitled to ignore a child’s competency, based on their best interests; c) to the extent a court should, but does not, consider a child’s competency, why they do not; and d) the arguments for overriding, or not, competency where there is a discretion. The article concludes that the court needs to reconsider this area of law, highlighting that this would play a part in the larger project of giving due recognition to children’s rights in parenting proceedings.

As family law in Australia is under consideration by the Australian Law Reform Commission, it is an opportune time to consider whether the family property regime is in need of reform, in particular to provide more certainty. This article explores, and details, the courts’ power to circumscribe the exercise of discretion in this area by making legitimate guidelines and binding rules. The article argues that insufficient attention has historically been paid to this power, resulting in a lack of clarity as to the status of statements of legal principle. The article concludes that this, alone, does not justify wholesale property law reform. It supports targeted, limited, legislative reform and greater focus by the judiciary on the classification of statements of principle.

In Australia, domestic violence has increasingly been recognized as germane to ancillary proceedings, including parenting and property matters. However, the road to recognition of the relevance of violence has been slow and the search for appropriate responses challenging. Drawing upon an explicitly feminist perspective, this article outlines the why and how of that relevance by looking at the ways in which family violence may intersect with family law property matters. We explain how a property settlement, both in process and outcome, may be either a manifestation of coercive control and/or affected by the legacy of coercive control. In terms of how this has been addressed to date, we chart the limited Australian responses and suggestions for reform, which have effectively left the judiciary to fashion a response with all the attendant difficulties of non-legislative reform. In conclusion, we maintain that the time is therefore ripe for a reconsideration of legislative – and other – responses to issues of family violence and property.

This article analyses the administrative and research capture of child support data as a case study of how institutional data collection processes are performative in perpetuating gendered inequalities. We compare interviews with 19 low-income single mothers and their longitudinal survey responses from the same research to reveal how low-income women strategically or inadvertently ‘smoothed’ their experiences when responding to data collection processes. This directly resulted in material and symbolic costs in the form of reduced welfare benefits and limited evidence with which to lobby for policy reform. These processes in turn provided benefits to fathers and the state in the form of reduced child support liabilities and enforcement action, and welfare outlays, respectively. We conclude that current administrative and research data collection practices provide a limited and gendered evidence base for administrative justice and policy reform.

Australia’s formula for calculating child support has an inbuilt ‘cap’, the result of which is that there is a maximum liability for child support in any case. The legislation also provides a process by which parents can seek a departure from the normal application of the formula. There are a number of limited grounds for departure, one of which relates directly to the ‘income, property and financial resources’ of the parents. A question which has arisen in some cases is whether the mere fact of a very high income of a parent is sufficient to establish a ground for departure. All of the grounds for departure require that the applicant show ‘special circumstances’. Given the formula relies on income, and has a cap on the costs of children tied to combined parental income, where a parent is already paying the maximum possible rate of child support, does the mere fact of a very high parental income (or indeed extreme wealth) amount to a special circumstance? Different judicial officers have answered this question differently. This papers considers this question, the case law and argues that a special circumstance requires something more; that is, something more than the normal and intended operation of the formula. Further, the paper identifies flaws in decision making in this area which influence how the provisions are applied more generally.

This article considers the treatment of earning capacity in child and spousal maintenance law in Australia and the UK. It argues that in both jurisdictions the legislatures have retreated from this important concept as it relates to child support without providing any clear rationale for this shift. In the case of spousal maintenance, however, there has been no such shift. The article considers the justification for this different treatment and argues that there is a need for reconsideration of the law as it relates to earning capacity in child support law.

The Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) provides no guidance on the way the courts should treat family violence when determining property disputes. Did the introduction of the Kennon ‘factor’ fill this void? This article reports on the application and interpretation of Kennon along with the outcomes in 57 first instance judgments of the Federal Magistrates Court, the Family Court of Australia and the Family Court of Western Australia between 2006 and 2012. We found that only 42% of applications for a Kennon adjustment were successful with a mean adjustment of 7.3% in those cases where the court identified the relevant percentage adjustment. There was an apparent jurisdictional variation in success rate with judicial officers in the ACT making relatively fewer Kennon adjustments. In examining the judicial application of Kennon we highlight the diversity in interpretation of specific phrases which form the cornerstone of the Kennon principle. We also identify examples of lawyers not raising the Kennon principle when it may have been appropriate, not identifying the impact of violence on contributions, and not seeking a percentage adjustment as high as the judicial officer might have considered. Our conclusion is that the Kennon factor is being under-utilised and inconsistently applied, and that there is considerable confusion as to its proper application. We argue the preferred solution is legislative reform which addresses directly, and in detail, the issue of the relevance of family violence to the alteration of property interests. In the meantime we suggest that, at the very least, further education concerning both the impacts of family violence and the application of the Kennon principle is required within the relevant professional communities.