Consent Orders Application Pack | Family Law Act 1975

A consent orders application pack is the bundle of documents you file with the FCFCOA to have your agreed parenting and property arrangements made into binding court orders without a hearing. At its centre sits the Application for Consent Orders, a prescribed court form that sets out your financial position, the parties, the children, and the orders you are asking the court to make. Alongside it you attach your proposed orders (also called minutes of consent or terms of settlement), drafted in the numbered, paragraph-by-paragraph style the court expects.

People often confuse consent orders with a binding financial agreement. They are not the same thing. A binding financial agreement is a private contract between the two of you under Part VIIIA or Part VIIIAB, requiring independent legal advice for each party but no court involvement. Consent orders, by contrast, are made by a Registrar of the court and have the same legal effect as if a judicial officer made them after a full hearing. That court seal is what makes them directly enforceable and what gives them priority over a private contract when it comes to superannuation splitting, stamp duty exemptions, and dealing with third parties. If you are weighing the two routes, our binding financial agreement template for pre-nups and post-nups explains where the private-contract path makes more sense.

Consent orders live inside the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth), and the court can only make the orders you ask for if they meet the Act's requirements. For parenting, that means the orders must be in the best interests of the child, the paramount consideration under section 60CA. Since the reforms commencing 6 May 2024, the old presumption of equal shared parental responsibility has been removed, and the section 60CC best-interests factors have been restructured around safety and the child's views. When you seek parenting orders by consent, the court expects your application to engage with those factors, and you should read sections 60B, 60CA, 60CC, 61CA, 61DAA, 61DAB, 67Z and 67ZBA before you draft. These changes apply even to applications filed before that date if the court is still considering them, so parenting orders drafted to the pre-May-2024 language risk being rejected outright.

Property and financial orders follow a separate pathway. For married couples the relevant provisions are sections 79, 79AA and Part VIIIB; for de facto couples, sections 90SK, 90SL, 90SM, 90SMA and Part VIIIAB. The court must be satisfied the property division is just and equitable. The Family Law Amendment Act 2024, in force from 10 June 2025, codified the four-step property framework into statute and, for the first time, made the economic effect of family violence an express consideration under the amended section 79. Traditional add-backs of notional property have also been curtailed, with wastage now addressed under the new framework. The court's own guidance on the mandatory forms and eligibility is set out in its published Federal Circuit and Family Court guidance on how to apply for consent orders, which every applicant should read before filing. A crucial procedural point: whenever parenting orders are sought by consent, both parties must file a Notice of child abuse, family violence or risk, and this form is not optional.

The most common trigger is a settled separation where you and your former partner have agreed on the children and the money, and you want that agreement locked in before anyone changes their mind. Mediation and family dispute resolution frequently end with a signed heads of agreement that has no legal force on its own; converting it into consent orders is the step that makes it stick. This is especially important once a property transfer is involved, because a sealed order unlocks the stamp duty exemptions and superannuation splitting mechanisms that a private agreement cannot reliably deliver.

A second scenario is the clean financial break after divorce. Remember the clock: once a divorce order takes effect, married couples generally have 12 months to apply for property and spousal maintenance orders, while de facto couples have 2 years from separation under section 44. Filing consent orders inside that window is far simpler than asking the court's leave to proceed out of time, which is never guaranteed. Our Australian separation agreement covering the s.44 time limits is often the interim step people use while finalising the consent orders themselves.

Then there are variations. Life moves on, a parent relocates, work hours change, a child's needs shift, and the old parenting arrangements stop working. Consent orders can vary or discharge existing family law orders, so you do not have to relitigate from the beginning. One edge case worth flagging: if you already have a parenting plan rather than orders, you may want to formalise it, and our section 63C parenting plan template pairs naturally with a later consent orders application when the arrangements have proven stable. Another edge case is third-party debt. A consent order that says one of you will "take a name off the mortgage" does not bind the bank; refinancing is a separate process the lender controls.

• The application details and financial disclosure section captures the identity of both parties, the children, the length of the relationship, and a full picture of assets, liabilities and superannuation. The court uses this to test whether the proposed property split is just and equitable, so incomplete disclosure is the fastest route to a rejected application.
• The proposed parenting orders are drafted in the numbered-paragraph format the court requires, covering with whom the child lives, the time they spend with each parent, allocation of parental responsibility for major long-term decisions, changeover arrangements, holidays and communication. Each order is written to the post-6 May 2024 framework so it reflects the current section 60CC considerations.
• The proposed property and financial orders set out transfers of real estate, division of bank accounts and personal property, superannuation splits, and how joint debts will be handled. They are drafted to survive scrutiny under the codified section 79 pathway.
• The Notice of child abuse, family violence or risk is included as the mandatory safety form both parties sign when parenting orders are sought. It is not a formality; the court reads it before making any parenting order.
• The statement of consent and signature blocks confirm that both parties agree to every order and understand its effect, dated and signed on each page as the court requires. A supporting annexure to proposed consent parenting orders is included where the matter involves existing proceedings.

Family law in Australia is federal, so the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) and the FCFCOA govern consent orders uniformly across every state and territory. That said, the ground shifts once your orders touch state-administered systems, and this is where a nationally-drafted pack still needs local awareness.

New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland each administer their own stamp duty (transfer duty) regime, and a sealed consent order transferring the matrimonial home is what triggers the family-law exemption from that duty. Without the court seal, Revenue NSW, the State Revenue Office Victoria or the Queensland Revenue Office will generally treat the transfer as a dutiable dealing. The order must be drafted precisely enough for the revenue office to accept it.

Western Australia is the significant outlier. For de facto couples, WA has historically operated under its own Family Court Act 1997 (WA) and a separate Family Court of Western Australia, so de facto property matters there follow the state pathway rather than Part VIIIAB of the Commonwealth Act. Married couples in WA still use the federal system. If you are a de facto couple in Western Australia, confirm which court and which Act applies before drafting, because filing in the wrong forum wastes the filing fee and delays everything.

South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory follow the Commonwealth pathway for both married and de facto couples, but land titles offices in each still require the sealed order and a correctly completed transfer form before they will register a property change. Titles registration is a separate step from the court order itself, and people routinely forget it.

You start by confirming your eligibility and your timing, because the section 44 limitation periods decide whether you can file as of right or need the court's permission. From there, you and your former partner complete the financial disclosure together, listing every asset, liability and superannuation interest honestly, since the Registrar tests the whole split against the just and equitable standard. The pack guides you through translating your agreement into numbered proposed orders, one order per paragraph, split cleanly into parenting orders and property orders so the court can assess each against its own test.

Where children are involved, you complete the Notice of child abuse, family violence or risk alongside the main application, because the court will not process parenting orders without it. Both of you then sign and date each page. Most people eFile through the Commonwealth Courts Portal, pay the filing fee, and wait: it generally takes around two weeks for the court to make consent orders once a complete application is filed. If your matter also involves ongoing child support, our limited child support agreement registrable with Services Australia can be prepared in parallel and lodged separately.

The most damaging mistake is drafting parenting orders in the language of the old law. Since 6 May 2024 the equal-shared-parental-responsibility presumption is gone, and orders that assume it, or that use the retired terminology, get bounced back or refused. The second is treating financial disclosure as optional. Applicants who leave off a superannuation fund, a credit card, or an investment property hand the Registrar an easy reason to refuse, because the court cannot certify a division as just and equitable when it cannot see the whole pool. Vague orders are the third trap: "the parties will share the children fairly" is not an order a court can enforce, and neither can a school or a police officer act on it. Every order must be specific enough that a stranger could follow it.

The fourth mistake is ignoring third parties. An order between the two of you does not bind a bank, so promising to remove someone from a joint mortgage means nothing until the lender agrees to refinance or release the liability. The fifth is the timing slip: letting the 12-month post-divorce window (or the 2-year de facto window) lapse turns a straightforward filing into an application for leave that the court may refuse. Diarise your limitation date the moment you separate or your divorce is finalised. Finally, people forget the mandatory family violence notice, and an application seeking parenting orders without it is simply incomplete. If you are also setting up broader personal arrangements, a well-drafted Australian will aligned with state succession law is worth revisiting after separation, since your existing will may still name your former partner.