Divorce in Australia

Who can apply, and where

Applications go to the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia and are filed online through the Commonwealth Courts Portal. At least one of you must be an Australian citizen, or domiciled in Australia, or ordinarily resident in Australia and have lived here for the 12 months immediately before filing.

You must have been married. You must have been separated for at least 12 months, including separation under one roof if that is your situation. And the court must be satisfied there is no reasonable likelihood of reconciliation.

You can apply on your own as a sole applicant, or together as a joint application. A joint application avoids the need to serve the other party, which removes the single most common source of delay.

Two procedural requirements were removed on 10 June 2025 by the Family Law Amendment Act 2024. Couples married less than two years no longer have to attend counselling or file a counselling certificate before applying. And a sole applicant with children under 18 is no longer automatically required to attend the divorce hearing. Read the notice the court sends you, because your particular application may still be listed for attendance.

What it costs and how long it takes

The court filing fee for an Application for Divorce is $1,170, with a reduced fee of $390 for holders of certain government concession cards or where you can show financial hardship. Those figures are current at August 2026. Fees are set by federal regulation and are indexed on 1 July each year, so check fcfcoa.gov.au before relying on them.

Timing runs roughly like this. You file, the court gives you a hearing date, a sole application must be served on the other party at least 28 days before the hearing if they are in Australia, the order is made, and the divorce takes effect one month and one day later. Most straightforward applications are finished within three to four months of filing.

Legal fees for a divorce application are separate from the filing fee, and this is a piece of work that should be quoted as a fixed fee range. Complications that add cost are almost always service related: a former partner who cannot be found, is overseas, or is refusing to accept documents. Substituted service or dispensation of service can be applied for.

Children under 18

Where there are children of the marriage under 18, section 55A means the court cannot make the divorce order final unless it is satisfied that proper arrangements have been made for their care, welfare and development.

This is not a merits review of your parenting arrangement. The court is checking that the children have somewhere to live, someone caring for them, schooling, health care and financial support, and that the arrangement is not obviously inadequate. Your application asks for that information and you answer it plainly.

It is not a substitute for parenting orders and it does not create any. If arrangements for the children are unresolved, deal with that separately through family dispute resolution and, if needed, parenting orders.

The deadline the divorce creates

This is the part that costs people money. Under section 44(3) of the Family Law Act, once a divorce order takes effect you have 12 months to start property settlement or spousal maintenance proceedings. After that you need the leave of the court, granted only where hardship would result to you or a child.

People routinely get divorced, feel relieved, and do nothing about the house or the superannuation for two years. Then the market moves, or a new partner appears, and the negotiation restarts from a much worse position with an extra legal argument to win first.

If your property is not sorted, either resolve it before the divorce or diarise the date the divorce order takes effect and count 12 months. Better still, do the property settlement first. There is no rule that the divorce has to come first, and no advantage in rushing it.