A short case about a short de facto relationship

Video transcript

Hello, hello, everyone. I’m Justine Woods. I’m the family law partner at Cooper Grace Ward. And today, I thought I would talk about a short case regarding a short de facto relationship.

Henry and Cuso case

And it’s a very neat, plain case. This is not a complicated video today. This is about a case of Henry and Cuso where the parties were married for two years. Incontrovertible, and as some nice High Court authority says, a wedding certificate is very straightforward proof of what’s occurred. The complexity in their matter is that they admitted that they’d met in 1991 and had dated for a period of time. The wife then said, and I must say, it’s often the wives who say this, but not always, said that from 1994 until 2004, they were in an on and off again de facto relationship. And so, in relying upon periods of cohabitation over that span of time, plus their marriage for two years, she applied for a property settlement of 40%. Now, this is a recent case, and it’s post the High Court’s decision of Stanford, which says, we must look very carefully.

First step in the process

And as the first step in the process, as to what are the parties legal and equitable interests in their assets, and does justice and equity require that they be altered? Now, in that case, all of the bulk of the assets were in the husband’s name. They had no joint assets whatsoever. And he, of course said, ‘no, we didn’t cohabit at all. We got married two years ago’, basically. So, the court found and again, you have to tell the same story. Trying to have this is an attempt to say, ‘oh, I’ll say one thing here, but something else elsewhere’. The wife had a number of different addresses over time, didn’t always live with the husband, had made a number of contradictory statements to authorities about where she lived, what sort of relationship she was in. And again, this is, I know that I do harp on about this. There was absolutely no corroborative evidence produced. So, in the preparation of the case, I would think more could have been done. But it wasn’t.

Need a reliable third party

And whether that it simply meant there wasn’t any evidence to produce, but it certainly was remarked upon by the judge that there was no external corroboration of any kind. So, one of the things that is an important piece in any family law matter is what is the public presentation of the relationship? That can be: does a de facto relationship exist? How do we describe one another? It’s also important in issues of divorce or separation, but more for divorce because you have to have a year and one day of separation. But lots of people are living under the same roof, usually for financial reasons and it’s always fairly miserable, in my observation. But then you need a third party to corroborate that. If you want to get divorced one year and one day after you’ve been separated, some of which or all of which has been under the one roof, then you’ve got to have someone, a reliable third party adult witness to say, ‘well, yes, we knew that they were living in the same house, but they were in separate rooms. They socialised separately, they ate separately’, things of that nature. So, the corroboration piece is quite important in a range of spheres. So, in that case, after the whole wash up, the court found they weren’t in de facto relationship, they were married for two years, neither the contributions, nor either parties future needs warranted any adjustment, and the female de facto’s application was dismissed. So, that’s the neatest type of case in terms of these are the principles which will be applied.

Court looks into initial contributions

The court will look very carefully at your initial contributions and what you have done during the course of the relationship. Now, there also is never really a recognition of well, one person’s got all the assets and all the power and all the money. So, it’s not really a joint decision of keeping the assets separate. The richer person is choosing not to. That the court really doesn’t seem to come into any of that. But that’s the outcome. So, I think it’s just something to bear in mind about, if for example, you don’t have a binding financial agreement, there are things that can be done to either protect your assets if you’re the richer person or to try and improve your claim. So, keeping finances separate, not making joint purchases, not succumbing to pressure to buy things jointly, if you’re the wealthier spouse is quite a neat, not a perfect solution. If you go on and then live together for 20 years and have two children, no good complaining about it later. But it will work for a period of time. Or if you’re the person who’s doing the housework or making the non-financial contributions, maybe have some children you try and influence. This all sounds very cynical, but these are the factual issues that bear on the outcome.

So, if you’d like to talk about those issues or indeed any others regarding family law, you’re very welcome to contact us here at Cooper Grace Ward.