An educational guide, not a law firm window

Online Family Lawyer (onlinefamilylawyer.com.au) is a greenfield rebuild. The public web archive for this hostname was an empty shell — a handful of non-content captures, no family-law articles to migrate. The information architecture is therefore new: divorce, parenting, property, mediation, safety and process pages written to be useful to readers and citable by answer engines.

We are not a regulator, not the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, not Legal Aid, and not a referral broker. Court names, agency names and crisis-service names appear so you can leave this site and use the official one. Those names are their owners’ trademarks. See the fleet copyright notice in the footer and on the disclaimer page.

Why there is no “Principal Lawyer” biography

There is no invented practitioner biography on this page. YMYL legal content that invents a solicitor, a success rate or a “we will win custody” persona is a compliance failure. If a later editor is a named Australian lawyer who actually takes responsibility for a page, that identity should be accurate. Until then, the publisher is an educational site with an editorial inbox, not a law practice.

If you need a lawyer, use a law-society find-a-lawyer tool, a community legal centre, or National Legal Aid. Read choosing a family lawyer and when to get personalised advice.

What we publish, and what we refuse

We publish definitions, process maps, comparison tables and official outbound links. We refuse invented case outcomes, scraped court forms hosted as if they were official, and booking buttons that imply we will appear for you. The contact form is editorial. Sending it does not create a solicitor–client relationship and does not start a conflicts check.

Family law in Australia is mostly a Commonwealth story — the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) — with honest state and territory overlap for protection orders, some child-protection issues and Legal Aid. Western Australia generally uses the Family Court of Western Australia. We will say that repeatedly rather than flatten the country into one brochure.

How to use the site

Start at the homepage if you want the system in one sitting. Use the hubs — divorce, parenting, property — if you already know which file you are in. Use the glossary and FAQ when you need a sentence you can quote. Use the guides when you need a checklist for the first month, a document pile, or a comparison of plans and orders.

If you or a child are in danger, do not use this site as a safety plan. Call 000. Contact 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732. Then read family violence and safety for how the legal map sits beside those services.

This website publishes general information about Australian family law. It is not legal advice, is not a substitute for advice from a qualified lawyer, and does not create a solicitor–client relationship. Family law is fact-specific. Statutes, court rules and agency processes change. Confirm current requirements with official sources and obtain personalised advice before you act.

Editorial and technical contact: callum.sherwood.seo@gmail.com. Corrections are welcome. Legal advice is not available from that address.