Family Law Amendment 2024

✦ Plain-English Summary

# Family Law Amendment 2024

## What it does
This bill overhauls Australia's family law system with five major changes: it reforms how property is divided after separation, introduces new rules for disclosing financial information, creates better dispute resolution processes before court, strengthens protections for sensitive information in court cases, and gives courts more flexibility in ordering who pays legal costs.

## Why it matters
If you're going through a separation or divorce, these changes aim to make the process faster, cheaper, and fairer by encouraging people to sort things out before court and making sure both sides put their cards on the table. They also protect children's information and make the court system more efficient overall.

## Key details
- **Property and disclosure reforms kick in 6 months after the bill becomes law** — this gives people time to understand the new rules before they apply
- **You'll need to try family dispute resolution (mediation) before taking custody cases to court** — courts won't hear your case unless you've genuinely tried to resolve it first
- **Courts can now order the losing party to pay more of the legal costs**, giving judges more power to punish unreasonable behaviour and discourage dragging out cases unnecessarily

Official Description

Amends the: Family Law Act 1975 to: enable the court to control and manage the conduct of property and other non-child-related proceedings, including to address family violence and ensure appropriate evidence is before the court; codify the duty of disclosure relevant to financial information; amend the arbitration regime for court-ordered or privately arranged family law arbitrations; provide a regulatory framework for Children’s Contact services; safeguard against the disclosure and adducing of evidence arising from communications made in the course of professional confidential relationships; and Family Law Act 1975 and 5 other Acts to clarify various aspects of family law and support the operation of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia and the Family Court of Western Australia. Also provides for a review of the amendments made by this proposed Act.

Committee Referrals

Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights; Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills; Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee

Full bill PDF →APH page →

Audit History

Introduced

22 Aug 2024

Last updated on APH

10 Apr 2026

Outcome date

10 Dec 2024

Last checked by Crossbench

yesterday

Full text indexed

yesterday

🗳️

No formal division recorded

This bill passed by voice vote — parliament agreed without calling a formal count. A division is only recorded when a member explicitly requests one.

Constituent votes

Voting is closed — this bill has been decided by parliament.

No votes yet.

No votes were recorded for this bill.

🔒 Voting closed — this bill has been decided by parliament