What’s included in the Membership?
Initial 2 hour meeting by Zoom, phone call or software of your choice with a lawyer to work out where you are up to and develop a written plan to self represent in your family law matter.
In the second month and monthly thereafter, a one hour meeting to support and assist you. This time can be used in any manner you want, eg review what you have done in the month and what you need to do next, draft a subpoena, work on an affidavit, etc.
Access to quality precedents.
Secure Portal to receive and work on your documents.
Private Facebook group for members.
Weekly Q & A sessions with a lawyer via Facebook live.
Monthly Q & A with a psychologist via Facebook live.
Regular webinars, such as how to run an interim hearing.
Answers to 3 quick procedural type emails per month.
App to make Consent Orders if you get an agreement before Court or during Court proceedings (coming soon)
App to make a Will
Settify app will give you personalised information depending on your answers.
Access to other law apps to make your life simpler, easier and save time such as family property (coming soon)
Resource and Learning Materials
Announcements
If you have any problems accessing the documents via the portal or using any programs or booking a conference with a lawyer, please contact us by email at hello@familylawassist.net.au.
Quality Precedents & Your Own Portal
Precedents
Family Law Assist will give you access to quality precedents, the same suite of precedents used by solicitors. The precedents will be given to you in batches depending on where you are up to in your family law matter.
In your initial 2 hour meeting with a lawyer we will work out a roadmap for you using our 9 step model and our Court checklist. We will decide what precedents you will need for the stage you are up to, for example if you need to file in the Federal Circuit Court, there will be an Application for Final Orders, a Notice of Risk, an affidavit and possibly an exemption form.
Your Own Secure Portal
You will have your own secure portal in ‘Lawconnect’ and we will put the precedents or any other file you need in there. You will need to sign up first with Lawconnect by pressing the link following Join up to the your portal or the button below and you will then get a username and password to login.
You will be able to work on these precedents and files in your lawconnect portal. You will also be able to upload documents such as Court documents, medical records etc to this portal. You won’t have to worry about the computer crashing or getting stolen and losing all your files ever again.
You can read more about the type of online security at https://lawconnect.com.au/ and the documents will be kept in servers in Australia and not in overseas centres.
Meet With Your Lawyer
In your initial 2 hour meeting with a lawyer, we will work out a roadmap for you using our 9 step model and our Court checklist to help you start or to continue to self represent in your family law matter.
We will also decide what precedents you will need for the stage you are up to, for example if you need to file in the Federal Circuit Court, there will be an Application for Final Orders, a Notice of Risk, an affidavit and possibly an exemption form.
In the second month after the initial 2 hour meeting, it is up to you how you want to use your hour of a lawyers time. You can use the time to talk about your progress or problems you have encountered and get some advice on how to deal with it or how to do the next step. You could also ask the lawyer to draft some simple court documents like a subpoena. If you don’t use the hour in the month, you can roll it over to a maximum of 5 hours over 5 months and could use this block of time to have a solicitor draft a more complex document, like your affidavit for example.
We encourage you to upload any documents that you want the lawyer to read prior to the meeting in your portal ‘Lawconnect’.
Book a your Meeting with a Lawyer
Book your first two hour roadmap meeting and then monthly meeting for one hour with a solicitor using our online calendar.
We will be using Zoom (or other programs like Teams) to speak with you and look at documents together. When you book on our online calendar a zoom invite will be generated and sent to you by email. ( If you need some help working out how to do it, we can provide a complementary ‘how to’ session with you to start with)
If you want to use just a phone that is fine too. There is a place on the form to put your phone number when you book online with the calendar.
Your portal at LawConnect can be used to put any documents you want the solicitor to read before you have the meeting or notes.
If the solicitor does some drafting for you during the meeting, those documents can be put into your portal for you to access and work on.
Webinars
There will be regular webinars on issues of interest to members and you are encouraged and invited to send us topics of interest that would be helpful for you to self rep in your family law matter.
The topics for the webinars will be posted on this section of the page and there will be a link for you to press to go there to participate and a zoom invite will be sent to you.
The first webinar will be “How to use the Federal Circuit Court and Family Court’s portal which is called ‘Comcourt’ Court to your best benefit?”
There is a short video on how to use the Comcourt portal and in the webinar we will explore the different options available such as showing you how to file, how to get notifications if the other party files, how to download documents off the portal and any other questions that arise from you during the webinar. To watch the video just press Comcourt portal
Weekly Q & A Sessions with a Lawyer
There will be a Question and Answer session with a lawyer each Wednesday, at 7 pm EST for an hour on Zoom or Facebook live.
Section 121 of the Family Law Act places restrictions on what personal information you can share publicly with others. Any questions will be need to be framed in such a way so people are not identified in your family law matter, like your former partner or children for example.
Monthly Q & A Sessions with a Psychologist/Counsellor
There will be a Question and Answer session with a psychologist/counsellor monthly for an hour on Zoom or Facebook live to discuss emotional issues arising from your family law matter. The sessions will include; how to talk to your children about separation, grief about the end of relationships, family violence and parental alienation issues, how to keep yourself emotionally healthy and how to get help if you decide you need it. Day and times to be advised.
3 Quick Questions per month by Email
You can email Family Law Assist 3 quick questions per month at email@familylawassist.net.au.
Please provide up to 48 hours for an answer, of course we will try to answer it earlier.
The questions are not for us to provide detailed legal advice to you but the type of questions might include procedural questions, like can I sign my affidavit electronically still because of COVID19 or do I have to get it sworn before a Justice of the Peace. Another type of question might be, I am trying to file on the portal and the Court voided my document and told me something I don’t understand, what do I do?
Facebook Group
Family Law Assist Members is a private facebook group for members to share information and resources and support each other.
Please be aware in the facebook group that Section 121 of the Family Act 1975 applies.
Section 121 of the Family Law Act places restrictions on what personal information you can share publicly with others. Any questions will be need to be framed in such a way so people are not identified in your family law matter, like your former partner or children for example.
There is also the Family Law Assist facebook group which is PUBLIC and open to everyone
https://www.facebook.com/groups/FamilyLawAssist
Get Access to Law Apps
Family Law Assist is committed to bringing you law apps to make your life easier and quicker. The number of apps is growing all the time and we will try to put the best ones here for you to use.
1. Settify
By answering a few simple questions in Settify, you will receive personalised information about the Family Law system in Australia, and how it might apply in your situation. After the first 7 questions that takes about 5 minutes a report is generated for you. There is a more comprehensive questionairre which will allow you to get your information for parenting and/or property organised in a structured way and can provide you with useful balance sheets. We can provide you with a report of this information as well. The balance sheets that can be printed out are in a format that can be filed in the Court when you are ready for a conciliation conference.
You may have started by using the Settify app and got your first report and if so, you can continue if you wish to finish the second part as your information has been saved in the Settify system or you may be just wanting to start to use the Settify app.
Start organising your information and generate some reports by pressing the Settify link below
SETTIFY LINK
2. Will App This is our Will app that was made for us. You can use this Will if you want to leave your property and things to one special person, or equally or in different proportions between lots of people and your estate is relatively straight forward and does not require taxation and/or superannuation advice. This Will app allows you to appoint a guardian for a child(ren) and establish a basic testamentary trust for the child(ren). This is not a Will you should use if you own a business or a family trust and have special wishes for how they should be run when you die. This Will may or may not be suitable if you have overseas assets depending on the country, make a gift conditional or create a life interest in property
3. Consent orders If you come to an agreement with your former partner you can have Orders made by the Family Court without actually having to go to Court. This app may save you considerable money as lawyers are offering to do them for at least $1500 online. You can also use the App to do Consent Orders if your matter settles during court proceedings. This app is coming soon
4. Family Property (coming soon) The Family Property App is a specialised program that is great if you are trying to work out your Balance sheet and modelling for property settlement. Family Property charge $85 to a solicitor for each of their clients to use their program. If you want to use it , we can set this up for you and there will be a charge of $85 which is paid to them. https://www.familyproperty.com.au/
5. Amica was released in 2020 and is an initiative of National Legal Aid and the Legal Services Commission of South Australia, with support from the Australian Government. It is an online platform to help amicable separating couples to work out parenting arrangements and to record their agreement about dividing their money and property simply . Amica is saying it provides reliable and accurate information for separating couples an online platform for messaging your former partner a step-by-step approach to help you to reach agreements a simple method of recording your agreements
You can access it free at: https://www.amica.gov.au/
6. What are the best apps for separated parents? The apps that are in the App Store and Google Play help parents co-parent and communicate effectively and schedule the days the kids live with them and the activities that the kids do are:
