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If you and your former partner reach an agreement about the division of your assets and liabilities following on from a separation, you can formalise that into what are known as ‘consent orders’. If your orders divide your assets and liabilities, this is called a ‘property settlement’.
In order to get consent orders made, you have to reach an agreement with your former partner. You can’t get consent orders for a property settlement unless and until you both agree. You both have to sign the documents before they are lodged with the Court.
Consent Orders have the same effect as orders that are made by the Court following on from a contested hearing. They are just as legally binding and just as enforceable. The only difference is that you control and agree on what the orders say. Orders made by the Court following on from a contested hearing are not made ‘by consent’. They are imposed on you by a judge following on from a hearing.
The Court won’t draft your consent orders for you. You have to submit your own, properly drafted, proposed consent orders, setting out in detail exactly what is going to happen. You are best off getting an experienced family law practitioner to draft your orders for you, as they will know what to include and how to include it. They won’t leave anything out and they won’t put in things that might be ambiguous or leave unanswered questions for down the track.
For some people, they might not want to formalise their property settlement and get consent orders made, but there’s a reason they need to. For example, if you want to transfer a property from joint names to one person’s name, consent orders will enable you to do that without any stamp duty implications. If you want to obtain orders that split superannuation, so that one person gets some of the other’s super, that should be done by way of property settlement consent orders as well .Consent Orders in Canberra