For a long time there was an awkward gap in property settlements. A person could be controlled financially for a decade, come out of the relationship with nothing in their own name, and still be told that the split turns on contributions and future needs, with violence sitting somewhere at the edges of the argument.

The Family Law Amendment Act 2024 closed the gap. The property provisions commenced on 10 June 2025 and they apply to proceedings that had not been finally determined by that date.

Economic abuse is family violence

Section 4AB of the Act defines family violence. It now expressly captures economic or financial abuse, and gives examples of what that looks like. Dowry abuse is named in the Act as one of them.

This matters because the definition feeds everything else. Once conduct is family violence for the purposes of the Act, it is available to be considered in the property case, not only in a parenting case or an intervention order application.

  • Controlling all the bank accounts and giving an allowance.
  • Taking out loans or credit in the other person's name.
  • Preventing someone from working, studying, or keeping their own income.
  • Withholding money needed for food, medicine or the children.
  • Coercing someone into signing financial documents they did not understand.

The property framework is now on the page

The other half of the reform is structural. The steps a court works through when it alters property interests under section 79 used to live largely in case law, learned by practitioners and invisible to everyone else. They are now set out in the Act itself, along with the list of current and future circumstances the court weighs.

The effect for a client is not that the outcome changes overnight. It is that you can be shown, on the face of the legislation, why your matter is being run the way it is.

The family pet

Companion animals now have their own framework, separate from the rest of the property pool, and it comes with a hard limit. The court can make one of three orders and no others: that one party owns the animal, that it be transferred to someone else who has agreed to take it, or that it be sold.

In deciding who keeps the animal the court looks at how it was acquired, who has owned and possessed it, who actually cared for it and paid for it, any family violence between the parties, any history of cruelty or threatened cruelty toward the animal, any attachment to it by either party or a child, and each party's demonstrated ability to look after it without help from the other.

A companion animal is one kept primarily for companionship. It does not cover an assistance animal, a working animal on a farm, or an animal kept for a business or for laboratory use.

People are sometimes embarrassed to raise the dog. Do not be. It is one of the more common things a separation actually turns on, and it now has a place in the Act.

What to do about it

If financial control was part of your relationship, start writing it down now, with dates. Bank statements, messages about money, the year you stopped working and why. A property matter is built on evidence and the evidence is easier to gather while you still have access to it.

If your matter started before June 2025 and has not been finally determined, the new provisions can apply to it. That is worth a conversation with whoever is running it.