Applying for Consent Orders: Locking In the Deal Without a Trial

The short answer

An Application for Consent Orders is how you turn an agreement into binding court orders without ever setting foot in a courtroom. You file the paperwork online through the Commonwealth Courts Portal, pay the filing fee, and a registrar reviews it on the papers. No hearing. No cross-examination. Just a document that ends the argument.

The handshake is not the deal

You sorted it out over coffee. She keeps the house, you keep the super and the boat, and neither of you has to hand a lawyer a fortune to argue about it.

That is a good outcome. It is also not a settlement.

Here is the pattern we see constantly: two reasonable people reach a sensible agreement, feel enormous relief, and then do nothing formal about it because doing something formal feels like reopening the wound. Twelve months later one of them has a new partner, or a redundancy, or a lawyer with an appetite, and the agreement evaporates. Under the Family Law Act 1975, your property claim against each other stays alive until a court order or a properly certified financial agreement closes it. An email saying "yep, agreed" does not close it.

The stakes are simple. If you transfer the house into her name on trust and never document the split, you have given away an asset and kept the liability of a live legal claim. You can be dragged back in years later, and the pool gets valued at the date of the hearing, not the date of your handshake. If your business has grown since, that growth is in play.

Suggested first move: today, take whatever you have agreed and write it down as a list of who gets what, who pays what, and by when. That list is the raw material for your minutes of consent.

Translation: an agreement you have not filed is a promise. An order is a fact.

What you are actually filing

Two documents do the heavy lifting. Men usually understand the first one and completely underestimate the second.

What is an Application for Consent Orders?

It is the court form that asks the court to make the orders you have both signed up to. It covers property, parenting, or both, and you can file it for either or both together. It is long, and it asks for a lot: assets, liabilities, superannuation, income, contributions at the start of the relationship and during it, who cared for the kids, who paid the mortgage, and where children are involved, the arrangements you want for them.

This is the document the registrar reads to decide whether your deal is fair and, if the kids are in it, whether the arrangements suit them. It is not a cover sheet. It is the evidence. It sets out the background of both of you and of the relationship: who did what, who earned what, who looked after the children, and what each of you is going to need in the future.

What are Minutes of Consent?

The minutes of consent, sometimes called the draft orders, are the operative bit. This is the actual wording the court will turn into an order: transfer this property, pay this sum within 60 days, split this superannuation interest by this amount, each party otherwise retains what is in their possession.

Super is the clause men get sloppy about most. A splitting order has its own machinery and its own notice requirements to the fund trustee, and we have set that out in superannuation splitting explained for men.

Get the minutes wrong and you have an order that cannot be performed. "Husband to refinance the mortgage" with no deadline, no fallback if the bank says no, and no sale clause is not an order. It is a hope with a court seal on it.

A suggestion: for every obligation in your draft orders, ask three questions. What exactly happens? By when? And what happens if it does not? If any answer is missing, the clause is not finished. Our property settlement page walks through how these orders get built.

Translation: draft it like the other side will do the bare minimum, because sometimes they will.

The registrar is not a rubber stamp

This is the part men get wrong most often.

People assume that because both of you agreed, the court has to approve it. It does not. For married couples, section 79 of the Act requires the court to be satisfied the orders are "just and equitable" (fair, in all the circumstances). For de facto couples, section 90SM does the same job. A registrar sitting in chambers with your paperwork can and does refuse applications, or send them back with a requisition asking you to explain yourselves.

What trips people up is not greed. It is thin paperwork. You have agreed to a 70/30 split in her favour because you feel guilty, or a 65/35 in your favour because you brought in the deposit, and you have written nothing in the application explaining why. The registrar cannot read your mind. They see numbers that look lopsided with no reasoning attached, and they push back.

The four-step process is now written into the Act itself, in force since June 2025: identify the pool, assess contributions, assess future needs (the section 79(5) factors), then check the overall result is just and equitable. The Act also now explicitly recognises that family violence, including economic and financial abuse, can affect both what someone was able to contribute and what they will need going forward. If that is part of your matter, in either direction, it belongs in the material and it needs careful handling. Start with our family violence page before you draft anything.

Suggestion: wherever your split departs from roughly half, write two or three plain sentences in the application explaining why. Initial contribution, inheritance, length of relationship, care of children, earning capacity. Give the registrar the reasoning.

Translation: you are not asking permission. You are showing your working.

Disclosure is now in the Act, and it has teeth

The duty to tell the other side about everything you own and owe used to live in the court rules. Since the 2024 amendments it sits in the Family Law Act itself, at sections 71B and 90RI.

That matters more than it sounds. Full and frank disclosure means every bank account, every super fund including ones you forgot about from a job in 2012, every loan to your brother, every trust interest, every crypto wallet, the lot.

Men hide things for two reasons, and neither is what people assume. The first is shame about a bad investment. The second is a genuine belief that something is "mine" and therefore not relevant. Both are expensive mistakes.

If you get consent orders by concealing an asset, section 79A lets the other party apply to have those orders set aside. Years later. After you have rebuilt. And the person who did not disclose does not get sympathy on costs.

Suggested task: pull every statement, every fund, every account into one folder before you sign anything, and put the awkward ones in too.

Translation: the thing you are tempted to leave out is the exact thing that unravels the deal.

The clock you did not know was running

There is a deadline and it surprises people every week.

If you are married and divorced, you have 12 months from the date your divorce order takes effect to bring a property application (section 44(3)). If you were in a de facto relationship, it is 2 years from the date of separation (section 44(5)). Outside those windows you need the court's permission to proceed, and permission is not automatic.

Here is the trap. Men often rush the divorce because it feels like progress, then leave the property alone because it feels hard. The divorce is the easy administrative bit. The property is the part that determines the next decade of your life. Getting the order in the wrong sequence starts a clock you were not watching. We have mapped both of them in the two clocks running behind your separation, and if you are not sure you even need the divorce yet, read do you actually need to divorce, or is it the property and parenting that matter.

Worth doing today: work out your date. If you are unsure where you sit, run it through our property settlement time limit calculator and, if divorce timing is in the mix, the divorce date calculator. Then diarise it with a three-month buffer.

Translation: file the property first, or at least do not let the divorce paperwork lull you into thinking you are finished.

Consent orders or a financial agreement

They are not the same animal and men get sold the wrong one.

Consent orders are court orders. A registrar checks them for fairness, they are enforceable like any other order, and they attract the stamp duty and capital gains rollover concessions that come with orders under the Act. Neither of you is required to have a lawyer to get them. Plenty of people file their own, and the law does not stop you.

A Binding Financial Agreement is a different beast. It is a private contract, it never goes near a court, and both of you must get independent legal advice and a signed certificate to prove it. No lawyers, no agreement. There is also no fairness check, which is exactly why some people want one, and exactly why they are more vulnerable to being challenged later on grounds like non-disclosure, pressure applied to sign, or a defect in the advice.

Most separating couples with an agreed outcome want consent orders. A financial agreement earns its place in narrower situations, usually where the deal deliberately sits outside what a court would call just and equitable and both of you understand and want that.

Helpful tip: before you sign either, ask directly which one you are being given and why the other was ruled out. If you have a lawyer, put that question to them in writing. If you do not, get the question answered before your signature goes anywhere near the page.

Translation: the cheaper document is not the safer document.

If parenting is in the same application

You can put parenting arrangements in the same Application for Consent Orders. Plenty of people do.

But understand that the test changes. Property is about what is just and equitable between two adults. Parenting is about one thing only: the best interests of the child, under section 60CC. The presumption of equal shared parental responsibility was removed in May 2024. There is no default. There is no starting point of 50/50 that you have to be argued out of, which is a different thing from 50/50 being off the table, and we have unpacked that in do fathers get 50/50 custody in Australia.

That is not bad news for fathers, whatever the internet tells you. The Act is built around children maintaining a relationship with both parents where it is safe to do so, and the practical question a court asks is whether there is a parent ready, willing and able to care for the child. If that is you, say so with evidence: school runs, medical appointments, the roster you have actually been running since separation.

A registrar will not make parenting orders that are not in the child's interests just because you both signed. If there are safety concerns disclosed anywhere in the material, expect questions.

Suggestion worth an hour of your night: write your proposed parenting orders as a calendar a stranger could follow, including school holidays, changeover times and changeover location. Vague orders breed future fights. There is more on how these are structured on our parenting page.

Translation: "reasonable time as agreed" is not an arrangement. It is next year's argument in advance.

What consent orders cost in Australia, and how long they take

Two numbers men want before they do anything else. Here they are, plus the part nobody tells you about.

How much do consent orders cost?

There is the court's fee and there is the drafting.

The filing fee for an Application for Consent Orders is set by regulation and indexed on 1 July every year. It currently sits a little over $200, and there is no concession or reduced rate on it, so budget the full amount and check the current figure on the Federal Circuit and Family Court fee page the week you file.

The drafting is the variable. It is also the part that decides whether the orders work. Paying for a properly built set of minutes is cheap next to enforcing a broken one.

How long do consent orders take?

You file electronically through the Commonwealth Courts Portal. Nobody attends court. A deputy registrar reviews the material, and in the ordinary course that takes somewhere in the range of six to ten weeks, though it varies with the registry's workload and with how clean your paperwork is.

Thin paperwork is slow paperwork. Every gap in your explanation is a question that comes back to you by post.

What happens after you file

If the registrar has a question, you get a requisition: a request for more information or an amended draft. That is not a rejection. It is a chance to fix it. Answer it properly and quickly.

When the orders are sealed, they are binding. Then the real work starts: the transfers, the refinances, the super splitting notices to the trustee. Orders do not execute themselves.

If money is the thing stopping you from getting this documented properly, look at how our fee structure works before you decide to do it alone with a template off the internet.

Handy habit: put every deadline from your sealed orders into your phone calendar the day you receive them, with alerts a fortnight out.

Translation: sealed is not done. Performed is done.

What the law actually requires of you

Nobody is legally required to stand beside you for this.

That surprises men. The word "court" arrives and they assume a retainer arrives with it. Not for consent orders. There is no rule saying either of you must be represented, and no certificate to sign proving you got advice. Compare that with a Binding Financial Agreement, where independent legal advice is compulsory for both sides or the document is worthless. Consent orders carry no such requirement. The registrar looks at the substance of the deal, not at who typed it.

There is one requirement the law does impose, and only where children are involved. Before a parenting application is filed, you generally have to have attempted family dispute resolution and to file a certificate saying so. Exceptions apply, including urgency, family violence, and applications where both of you are consenting to the orders sought. Know which of those you sit in before you assume the step does or does not apply to you.

The risk in doing this without help was never the absence of a lawyer in the room. It is a clause that cannot be performed: no deadline, no fallback, no consequence. Those clauses cost more to fix than they ever cost to draft properly. That is the trade you are actually making.

Suggested next step: do the thinking first and turn up with a draft, not a blank page. Write your list, gather your disclosure, then have the document itself checked by someone who drafts these for a living. If you want to understand how we work with men through this, start at family law for men.

Translation: cheap advice on strategy is fine. Cheap drafting is not.

FAQ

Do we both need lawyers to get consent orders?

No. There is no legal requirement for either of you to have a lawyer for consent orders, unlike a Binding Financial Agreement where independent advice is mandatory. But one badly drafted clause can cost more than the advice would have.

How long do consent orders take to come through?

Once filed through the Commonwealth Courts Portal, a deputy registrar typically reviews and seals them within about six to ten weeks. Clean, well explained paperwork moves faster than thin paperwork.

How much do consent orders cost in Australia?

The court filing fee is set by regulation, indexed each 1 July, and currently sits a little over $200 with no concession rate. Legal costs for drafting sit on top and vary with how complex the deal is.

Can the court knock back an agreement we both signed?

Yes. The registrar must be satisfied the property orders are just and equitable, and that any parenting orders are in the child's best interests. If your application does not explain why an uneven split is fair, expect it to come back with questions.

Do I have to be divorced first?

No. You can apply for property consent orders before, during or after a divorce. Just remember that once a divorce order takes effect you have 12 months to bring a property application, or 2 years from separation if you were de facto.

What if she stops paying or will not transfer the house?

Sealed consent orders are enforceable court orders. You can bring enforcement proceedings. This is precisely why your draft orders need deadlines and a consequence clause for non-performance.

Can we put the pets in the orders?

Yes. The 2024 amendments introduced a specific framework for companion animals in property settlements, so who keeps the dog can be dealt with in the orders rather than in a text war at changeover.

The close

Open your notes app. Write the list: who gets what, who pays what, by when. Then get it drafted properly and filed.

The deal you never documented is the deal you will fight about twice.