If Justin Sun and Jing Tian Were in Australia, Could Sun Get His Bride Price Back?

Introduction

What Counts as a De Facto Relationship Under the Law?

A de facto relationship is a legal test, not just a label you give your own relationship. Under section 4AA(1) of the Family Law Act 1975 (FLA), two people who are not married or related have a de facto relationship if they have "a relationship as a couple living together on a genuine domestic basis." That single sentence does most of the work, and courts unpack it using the checklist in section 4AA(2):

1. The duration of the relationship — how long the couple has actually been together.
2. The nature and extent of their common residence — whether they lived together, and how continuously.
3. Whether a sexual relationship exists — one factor among many, never decisive on its own.
4. The degree of financial dependence or support between the parties, and any arrangements for financial support.
5. The ownership, use, and acquisition of property, including whether assets were pooled or kept separate.
6. The degree of mutual commitment to a shared life.
7. The care and support of any children of the relationship.
8. The reputation and public aspects of the relationship — how the couple presented themselves to family, friends, and the world.

No single factor decides the case, and a couple can be found to be de facto partners even if they score weakly on some of these. But the law also builds in a second, separate hurdle that matters even more in a short relationship: section 90SB of the FLA says a family court generally cannot make a property adjustment order between de facto partners unless the relationship lasted at least two years. A relationship of seven months falls well short of that line, so it needs to fit inside one of the statutory exceptions in section 90SB, most commonly section 90SB(c): the applicant made substantial contributions, and a failure to make an order would cause them serious injustice.

Core Point: a seven-month romance does not automatically give an Australian family court the power to divide property between the couple. Unless the relationship independently qualifies as de facto and clears the two-year threshold (or fits an exception like a substantial contribution combined with serious injustice), the dispute is not a family law matter at all.

Why Does It Matter Whether the Court Calls This a De Facto Relationship?

Getting the legal characterisation right decides which set of rules applies to your money. Family law and general civil law start from completely different premises about who is entitled to what.

• The applicable law changes entirely. If the relationship is de facto, the case is governed by the Family Law Act's four-step property process. If it is not, the dispute is decided under ordinary contract and equity principles, where a completed gift is normally irrecoverable unless a specific legal doctrine applies.
• The available arguments change. In family law, a party can point to financial and non-financial contributions across the whole relationship. Outside family law, the donor typically has only one real argument: that the transfer was conditional, not an outright gift.
• The result can swing from returning everything to returning nothing. A gift made unconditionally out of love and affection, with no evidence it was tied to marriage, is generally not recoverable at all once it is handed over. A gift proven to be conditional, by contrast, is routinely ordered returned in full when the condition fails.

This is why courts and lawyers spend so much energy on the threshold question before ever discussing dollar figures.

Key Point: whether or not the family law door opens, a large, one-sided financial contribution made early in a short relationship is very hard for the other party to dilute. The real fight in a case like this is almost always about which legal pathway applies, not about the underlying fairness of returning the money.

What Happens If the Relationship Never Qualifies as a De Facto Relationship?

Common Misconception: many people assume that because a gift has already been physically handed over and accepted, it can never be taken back.

Legal Truth: under general law, an outright, unconditional gift is indeed irrevocable once completed. But a gift made expressly or impliedly on the condition that a marriage will follow is a different legal creature altogether. If that condition fails, because the relationship ends before any marriage takes place, equity treats the recipient as holding the gift on trust for the donor, and compels its return to prevent unjust enrichment. This principle applies to cash and property just as much as it applies to the engagement ring cases where it is most often discussed.

If a woman who has received a ring in contemplation of marriage refuses to fulfil the conditions of the gift she must return it... If the engagement to marry be dissolved by mutual consent, then in the absence of agreement to the contrary, the engagement ring and like gifts must be returned by each party to the other.

The same reasoning is not limited to rings, and applies just as much to larger transfers of money or property made expressly on the basis that a marriage would follow.

If you are the donor in this scenario, the strength of your case depends heavily on what you can prove:

• Keep any written record (a message, email, or card) that ties the transfer to marriage, not just to the relationship generally.
• Note whether the transfer happened close in time to an engagement or a specific marriage plan, rather than being spread out as ordinary generosity over the relationship.
• Avoid describing the transfer, in writing or otherwise, as a birthday gift, a loan repayment, or a no-strings-attached present, since this language can be used against a conditional gift argument.
• Understand that this claim is brought as an ordinary civil case (commonly framed in detinue, unjust enrichment, or resulting trust), not as a family law property application.

What Happens If the Court Treats This as a Short De Facto Relationship?

Common Misconception: many people assume that in a very short relationship, the court will simply split whatever is in dispute down the middle, or that the passage of only a few months means neither party can claim much.

Legal Truth: short relationships are a recognised exception to the usual family law approach. In long relationships, courts tend to apply a rough equality-or-thereabouts starting point, reflecting years of merged effort, homemaking, and parenting. Courts have repeatedly said that a property case is not meant to be a line-by-line accounting exercise, but they have just as repeatedly carved out an exception for short relationships.

If you are facing this scenario, a few things consistently help a court reach a fair outcome quickly:

• Keep the disputed funds identifiable and unmixed with other assets where possible, since a traceable lump sum is easier to deal with than money folded into shared spending.
• Document the size and timing of the contribution, and any statements made about its purpose, just as you would for a conditional gift argument.
• Do not assume a short relationship automatically means a small entitlement. As the cases above show, short relationships often produce more lopsided outcomes than long ones, not less.

For a closer look at when a de facto gift cannot be clawed back at all, see De Facto Gifts: When Australian Courts Refuse Clawback. If the relationship in your case went through repeated breakups and reunions before it ended for good, De Facto Property Settlement After On-Off Separations explains how courts date the relationship for the two-year test. And for more on how one-sided contributions are weighed even outside very short relationships, see Do Initial Contributions Still Count Years Later?

What Should You Do Before Making a Large Gift During a Relationship?

Three lessons come out of the cases discussed above, and they apply whether or not a marriage or a two-year relationship ever eventuates.

A conditional gift must actually look conditional. In Papathanasopoulos v Vacopoulos, the court looked past emotionally charged, in-the-moment statements and focused on the true basis on which the gift was originally made. Say, in writing, what a large gift is for if you want to preserve the right to ask for it back.

A short relationship does not protect the recipient of a large contribution. Hadleigh & Hadleigh (No 2) and the comparison cases above show that courts are comfortable awarding 85 to 95 per cent of a pool to whoever supplied almost all of it, precisely because there has been no time for the other party's contributions to even things out.

An adjustment away from the dominant contributor still needs a specific, evidenced reason. Ferman & Lapham shows a genuine factor, the other partner's future needs, shifting an outcome by five percentage points, not by half. A recipient cannot expect a large adjustment just by pointing to the relationship having existed.