Since 10 June 2025, the court must consider family violence at two separate points when dividing property: once when weighing what each person contributed, and again when weighing what each person needs going forward. Those considerations sit in sections 79(4)(ca) and 79(5)(a) of the Family Law Act 1975, with mirrors at section 90SM of the Family Law Act for de facto couples.

What a family violence property settlement adjustment is not is compensation. It reflects the effect the violence had on contributions and on a person’s current and future circumstances, worked out inside the same process that applies to every property settlement in NSW. There is no payment for the harm itself, and no percentage schedule sits behind it.

Key takeaways

• The Family Law Amendment Act 2024 commenced on 10 June 2025 and applies to matters already on foot, unless the final hearing had begun.
• Family violence is now assessed twice: contributions under s79(4)(ca), then current and future circumstances under section 79(5) of the Family Law Act.
• The law was never the hard part. Proving what happened, and then proving what it did to your capacity to contribute, is where these arguments succeed or fail.
• Economic and financial abuse now has its own place in the family violence definition in the Family Law Act at section 4AB.
• No tariff exists. Anyone quoting you a percentage is guessing.

Is this a new law, or was family violence always relevant?

It was already relevant, and had been since 1997.

The Kennon principle allowed a party to argue that violence during the relationship made their contributions significantly more arduous, so those contributions should carry greater weight. Courts applied it narrowly. It was reserved for exceptional cases and required proof of a discernible effect on the person’s capacity to contribute, which is why so few reported judgments ever turned on it. Conduct also reached property matters through wastage and the line of authority beginning with Kowaliw.

The Family Law Amendment Act 2024 took a principle buried in case law, put it on the face of the statute, made it a mandatory consideration rather than an argument available to those who could afford to run it, and extended it to a second stage of the process.

The bigger shift is where it now operates. Most property matters never reach a courtroom. When family violence lived in case law, raising it in a negotiation meant asking the other side’s solicitor to engage with a Kennon argument they were free to ignore. It now sits in the provision every property negotiation is conducted against, which changes what a reasonable offer looks like at mediation and around a kitchen table.

Where family violence sits in section 79 of the Family Law Act

The first limb is contributions. Section 79(4)(ca) directs the court to the effect of family violence on a party’s ability to make financial contributions, non-financial contributions, and contributions as a homemaker or parent. Someone who was prevented from taking a job, or who carried a household while being harmed inside it, belongs in this limb.

The second is section 79(5) of the Family Law Act, which replaced the old “future needs” list with considerations relating to current and future circumstances. Subsection (5)(a) asks what the family violence has done, and will keep doing, to the person subjected to it. Ongoing counselling. Medical treatment. An earning capacity that never recovered. A credit file damaged by debts taken out in their name.

De facto couples get the same architecture at s90SM(4)(ca) and s90SM(5)(a).

Being considered twice matters more than it first sounds. Under the old approach, a matter treated as relevant to contributions could not then be counted again as a future needs factor. That constraint is gone in a domestic violence property settlement, which is why the practical weight of family violence in a NSW property settlement can now exceed what Kennon ever delivered.

How do you prove domestic violence in family court?

Two things need proving, and people usually underestimate the second.

The first is that the violence occurred. Police event records, an ADVO or an application for one, hospital and GP records, photographs, counselling notes, messages, and evidence from people who saw the aftermath all carry weight here. The court is not bound by a criminal standard, and the absence of a conviction does not sink an allegation.

The second is causation, and this is where most arguments come apart. A family violence property settlement adjustment does not follow automatically from proving the violence. You have to connect it to something: employment records showing work interrupted or abandoned, bank statements showing accounts you had no access to, loan documents in your name you never agreed to, evidence of a business you were shut out of. Damage to earning capacity is the hardest of all to demonstrate, and in larger matters it often calls for expert evidence rather than assertion.

If your evidence establishes what happened but nothing that ties it to money, expect a solicitor to tell you so early. Where there is no independent record of the violence at all, the argument rests on your affidavit and how it holds up under cross-examination.

What counts as financial abuse in a property settlement?

Section 4AB(2A) now sets out economic abuse as family violence in its own right, and the examples are drawn from what practitioners see rather than from theory: unreasonably controlling or restricting access to money, coercing someone into debt or into a liability they did not want, concealing assets to disadvantage them in settlement negotiations, sabotaging their ability to hold down employment, and dowry abuse.

Clients rarely arrive using the phrase. They describe the signs of financial abuse in a relationship instead. An allowance. No login to the joint account. A partner who “handles the tax”. Being a director of a company they were never shown the books for. Being told the house was in one name for asset protection.

Naming it as financial violence, rather than as poor communication about money, is the step that gets it into the evidence.

Financial coercive control does not stop at separation

Sole control of accounts, loans and company structures carries into the settlement itself. The party who holds the records controls the shape of what the other side sees, and by extension what a jointly appointed forensic accountant is working from. Omissions are not always disclosed as omissions. They simply go unmentioned while the report is prepared.

The Family Law Act now writes the duty of full and frank disclosure into the statute at ss 71B and 90RI, and that duty starts before proceedings do, which squarely includes mediation. That is the answer to post separation abuse of the disclosure process: it is a breach of a statutory duty, and it can be met with orders, subpoenas and costs consequences rather than with frustration.

Pressure applied during the settlement is its own form of financial coercive control. People make poor long-term decisions when they are being harassed weekly about listing the house.

One thing worth being clear about, because it circulates constantly: a letter from the other side’s lawyer demanding the property be listed within seven days is not an order. Only a court can compel that.

Is there a set percentage for family violence in a property settlement?

No. There is no tariff, and the question of how many incidents equal what adjustment has no answer in the legislation or the case law. Three common assaults do not outrank one more serious charge. Coercive control does not convert into a number.

This is where expectation and advice collide. If a solicitor tells you that running a family violence argument may not improve your outcome, they are not telling you it did not happen and they are not dismissing you. They are telling you that on the available evidence the adjustment is unlikely to exceed what the argument will cost you in fees, delay and cross-examination.

Sometimes the stronger case sits elsewhere entirely. Where one party has burned through a substantial share of the pool or refused to work, section 79(5)(d) deals with material wastage caused intentionally or recklessly. The Full Court’s decision in Shinohara & Shinohara ended the old practice of notionally adding spent money back onto the balance sheet, so wastage is now handled as an adjustment to the percentage split of what is left. In practice it is often easier to prove than the effect of violence on contributions, and it can achieve more.

Why waiting usually costs the person being harmed

The asset pool is valued at the date of settlement or hearing, not the date of separation. Superannuation accrued since you separated goes in. So do savings, redundancy payments and anything bought since.

For the person who left with less and who has been carefully rebuilding, that arithmetic runs the wrong way. Every year of delay grows the pool the other party has a claim against. The fear of starting is understandable and it is expensive.

There are also hard limits. Married couples have twelve months from the date a divorce order takes effect. De facto couples have two years from separation. You do not need to be divorced to start a property settlement, and in most matters you should not wait for it.

If living arrangements are the barrier, interim options exist. A sole occupancy order under section 114 requires the other party to leave the home, though the threshold is high and the circumstances need to be compelling. Interim spousal maintenance is also available, and for anyone who has been told spousal maintenance in NSW is not a thing, it is, and it is regularly ordered where one party cannot meet reasonable expenses and the other can pay.

Funding a matter when you have no access to money

The observation that the party with the money tends to win is not baseless, and the mechanics of answering it are worth knowing.

Interim or partial property distributions can be ordered to fund legal representation from the pool itself. Litigation lenders operate in this space. Costs orders now sit under s114UB. Legal Aid NSW does grant aid in property matters, subject to means and merit tests, contrary to what gets repeated online. Women’s Legal Service NSW, community legal centres, university clinics and 1800RESPECT are all available at no cost, and the Law Society of NSW can point you to practitioners who take these matters.

Deferred fee arrangements are genuinely hard to obtain from private firms. It is better to know that at the outset than after approaching fifteen of them.

Speak to a family lawyer before your first offer, not after it. How family violence is framed in the early correspondence tends to set the tone of the entire negotiation, and it is far harder to introduce credibly once positions have hardened. Hillcrest Family Legal acts for clients across Sydney in property matters where financial abuse, coercive control and safety concerns are part of the picture. Book a confidential consultation to talk through where your matter sits.