ABSTRACT
Australia’s matrimonial property division jurisprudence has tended to focus on cases involving large asset pools and successful business enterprises. This contribution draws on an empirical study of unreported Family Court judgments to explore the patterns of reasoning in the more general population of defended matrimonial property disputes. The data from this study revealed that case law principles which exhort judges to assess and compare the value of each spouse’s contributions were rarely observed in practice beyond the ‘big money’ cases, and that judges regularly abandoned the requirement to consider the parties’ contributions in favour of a needs-based approach where there were limited assets and dependent children to house. The findings also indicate that notions of matrimonial fault continue to affect judicial decision-making in this area of law.
