The distinction between de facto and married couples

In this video, family law partner Justine Woods talks about the distinction between married and de facto couples in the family law system.

Video transcript

Hello, hello, everyone, I'm Justine Woods. I'm the family law partner here at Cooper Grace Ward.

Distinctions between married and de facto couples

Today, we're going to discuss some of the few distinctions between married and de facto couples in the family law system. Now, as a little piece of history, the two systems were quite separate in all of Australia until the introduction of the Federal Family Law System on 1 March 2009, and every state and territory had a different system. That meant you could be in the extremely unenviable position of, for example, conducting a parenting matter in the family court system, but separately having to run de facto proceedings in the state courts or the courts of the territories. Horribly expensive, horribly stressful, not concurrent necessarily in terms of timing.