Aussies unrepresented in family court due to high cost of lawyers
An exclusive investigation into the practice of Australian lawyers has discovered that an estimated 25,000 parties in family law cases have been left unrepresented in court due to the hefty cost of hiring a lawyer.
VIC News
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Greedy lawyers are gouging millions of dollars from divorcing Australians and charging massive bills for work they never do.
A Sunday Herald Sun investigation into the Family Court has uncovered the legal nightmare has led more than half of the estimated 50,000 Australians in family law cases each year without a lawyer at some stage of their trial because they simply can’t afford it.
In many cases the fees being paid to lawyers is more than the value of the property divorced couples are fighting over.
Family court practitioners are now the most complained about lawyers in every jurisdiction in Australia.
Our investigation also reveals:
LAWYERS are charging a “disappointment fee’’of up to $14,000 a day for court bookings that are cancelled.
DELAYS in the Family Court are now so bad that this week a couple was told to “come back in 2021”
LAWYERS charging commercial rates of tens of thousands of dollars a day for writing letters and taking phone calls;
A FIVE-YEAR property battle has soaked up $2 million in legal costs.
Chief Justice of the Family Court, Will Alstergen, said without making comment on any particular cases or practices “it is of great concern that up to 60 per cent of litigants find themselves unrepresented during the course of litigation”.
He said without attributing blame to one element of the system “often parties have been paying disproportionate fees compared to the assets they are fighting over”.
In many cases Justice Alstergren said “parties find themselves unrepresented because they run out of funds to continue paying legal costs.”
The Federal Government, which recently moved to establish a Senate inquiry into family law is particularly outraged by the “disappointment fee” rip-off.
The charges — unknown outside of family law cases — act like compensation for barristers when a case settles early and booked court dates are cancelled.
At the same time the number of people who can’t afford lawyers is soaring. Trials where both parties are unrepresented soared from 8 to 22 per cent in the past year.
Judges have also slammed the money being wasted in court proceeding because of the impact on children.
“Sometimes angry people in the shadow of separation do not mind destroying their own lives financially because they do not like the other parent.
“Those people do their children a massive disservice,” a judge wrote recently.
Another also highlighted the impact on kids, saying: “money that would otherwise be applied to the children’s future is being spent by the parties”.
Fiona McLeay, Victorian Legal Services Commissioner, said family law attracts more complaints against lawyers than any other single area of law.
But she blamed the number of complaints on the levels of emotional and financial distress experienced by clients.
“Overcharging commonly features in family law complaints; however, it is unusual for us to issue disciplinary charges against a lawyer for overcharging,” she said.
“This is because we can usually help both parties to resolve their differences with a mutually acceptable agreement through our dispute resolution and conciliation processes.”
Alliance Family Law director Cristina Huesch said all parties in cases had a responsibility to minimise costs and time spent.
She said one option was for judges to issue more cost orders against professionals where time had been wasted and there were not “valid reasons” for delays.
Ms Huesch said she had one case in which a judge advised that a hearing next year would not be possible and they would have to “come back in 2021”.
“At least by saying that we can then find other mechanisms to settle, arbitration is a good way, or mediation.”
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Attorney-General Christian Porter said the government had a plan for fixing the broken structure of the family law system.
“We need to ensure our courts which deal with these matters are focused on helping families get through the process as cheaply, quickly and efficiently as possible and that legal fee structures do not create a situation where asset pools are all but diminished, making it extremely difficult for people to move on with their lives once their court matters are concluded,” he said.
Mr Porter is currently trying to push through reforms including merging the Family Court and Federal Circuit Court, in order to fix a system he said had exacerbated delays and increased costs to families.
Changes have been resisted by some federal MPs, while a new review of the family law system, co-chaired by Pauline Hanson, has sparked controversy.