An individual or joint application
An application for Divorce can be brought by either party of the marriage. This is called an individual application. You will only need to produce your personal concession or health card if you are making the application yourself.
The alternative to you bringing a sole application is a divorce application done as a joint application. This is an application signed by both parties to the marriage. The advantage of this application signed by both parties is that there is no need to demonstrate that the application has been served by one party on the other. It will allow the court to deal with your application in a simplified manner (this is dealt with in more detail in our Hearing chapter). It is unfortunately the case that in a marriage separation it is not always common that the parties can cooperate well enough to file a Joint Application and we find in probably about 4 out of 5 applications, that the applicant is a sole applicant as opposed to a joint one.
Submitting information needed for the application itself
A divorce application requires various pieces of information to be provided. In broad terms the information required is as follows:-
- Full names of the parties
- When the marriage occurred and where it occurred
- Date of marriage and date of separation
- Whether after separation the parties lived under one roof and if so the periods when this occurred
- Whether there is any likelihood of reconciliation of the marriage (yes this is actually a question)
- Whether there are any children of the marriage or other children of the household who are under 18 years of age on the date of making the application (even if they turn 18 between the application date and the hearing date). This includes any children of prior relationships or other member of the household.
- Details in relation to the children including their education, health, financial support and how they spend their time between the parties.
- If there are any previous orders made by a Court including in relation to children, property or domestic violence.
Lodging your application
Once all of the relevant documents have been collected and the application completed with the above information then it is a matter of getting your application under way. Once upon a time, paper copies of your application in triplicate were lodged with the Family Court (now Federal Circuit Court) and service copies returned to you. However, today there is an electronic version of filing all of the material through a portal known as the Commonwealth Portal. This enables the application and all supporting documents to be scanned and uploaded and after completion of an initial application process in the Commonwealth Portal the application can be lodged and a hearing date allocated. In our next chapter we will talk about what happens after you file your application.
We are here to assist
The team at Your Divorce are able to assist with any of your enquiries in relation to your Divorce. Feel free to contact us at help@your-divorce.com.au or visit us at our website www.your-divorce.com.au