Introduction
Q1: I have been raising the kids on my own since we split. Does any of that still count?
A: It counts, and it can count for a lot. The court weighs your parenting and homemaking after separation alongside the money the other side earned in the same period. Reference: Trask & Westlake [2015] FamCAFC 160
Q2: My ex got a big payout after we separated. Is that money off limits to me?
A: Not automatically. The payout goes into the pool as a strong financial contribution by them, but what you were doing in that same period is weighed against it. Reference: Gully & Aksoy [2017] FCCA 118
Q3: I bought a place on my own years after we split. Can my ex still claim a share?
A: Often not. If you acquired it with no reference to the other person and none of the shared assumptions of the marriage, the court may leave it entirely with you. Reference: Zaruba [2017] FamCAFC 91
What counts as a contribution after you separate?
Australian property settlement runs on section 79 of the Family Law Act 1975, which lets the court change who legally owns what. For de facto couples the equivalent is section 90SM, and courts apply the same principles to both.
Section 79(4) tells the court which contributions to weigh:
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Financial contributions, made directly or indirectly, under s 79(4)(a). Wages, savings, a deposit and mortgage payments, and also money that reaches the asset less directly, such as covering the household bills so the other person's income can go onto the mortgage.
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Non-financial contributions, made directly or indirectly, under s 79(4)(b). Renovating the house with your own hands, or running the books for the family business.
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Homemaking and parenting contributions under s 79(4)(c). Raising the children and running the household, which the law treats as no less valuable than the money coming in.
Nothing in any of those paragraphs stops on the day you separate. That single point drives almost every dispute in this area, and four rules follow from it.
Separation is not a cut-off line. The court does not draw a line at the separation date and treat everything after it as belonging to whoever earned it. Contributions run to the date of the hearing, which in Causey [2018] FamCAFC 81 meant six years of post-separation contributions had to be weighed inside a 28-year assessment.
The court looks at the whole period, not slices of it. In Gully & Aksoy [2017] FCCA 118 the court said both parties' contributions must be looked at over the whole of the period, during the marriage and after separation.
It is judgment, not arithmetic. Courts refuse to run a ledger of who did what. Trask & Westlake [2015] FamCAFC 160 confirmed that assessing contributions is a matter of judgment and not of computation.
Time apart inside a relationship counts too. In Whiton & Dagne [2019] FamCAFC 192 the couple separated and reconciled around 20 times across 18 years. The trial judge treated each separation as an end point and only counted the wife's work during the periods they lived together. The Full Court called that an error.
"But, importantly, it is not the fact of separation or when contributions are made that is the delineator. It remains crucial to analyse and weigh the nature, form and characteristics of all contributions across the whole of the period under consideration."
One note on the case law below. These judgments refer to s 75(2) factors, meaning age, health, income earning capacity and the care of children. The Family Law Amendment Act 2024 commenced in June 2025 and moved those factors to s 79(5) for married couples. The labels changed. The reasoning in these cases did not.
Core point: contributions under s 79 have a start date but no end date. Whatever you were doing for the family after separation goes into the same assessment as whatever the other side was earning.
Why does getting this wrong cost so much?
Most people assume the pool freezes at separation and everything after it belongs to whoever earned it. Run your settlement on that assumption and three things happen.
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You hand over years of your own work for free. If you carried the children and the house for five years after separation, that is five years of s 79(4)(c) contributions you never put on the table.
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You accept a percentage that was never argued properly. A 10 percent swing on a $3 million pool is $300,000. Post-separation contributions routinely move the number by that much or more.
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You end up in an appeal that costs years. Trial judges get this wrong often enough that appeal courts keep sending these cases back for a rehearing, and you pay for both hearings.
The couple were married 21 years and had three children. They separated and then spent roughly a decade apart before the property case came to court in 2010. The husband stayed with the employer he had joined in 1981 and was earning about $13,000 a week, which is roughly $640,000 a year before bonuses. Over the ten years after separation he paid $2.6 million for the benefit of the wife and children and put a further $1.3 million into the pool, buying several investment properties after 2000. The wife had not worked for pay since 1983. She lived on a Newstart allowance plus board from the youngest child, $467 a week in total.
The husband argued the growth after separation came from his money alone and asked the court to quarantine the properties he had bought. The net pool had grown from $3.5 million at separation to $4,780,215 by trial.
The Federal Magistrate assessed contributions to separation as equal, then gave the husband a 20 percent adjustment for his post-separation contributions, taking him to 70:30. A 10 percent adjustment back to the wife for future needs produced a final 60:40 in the husband's favour, leaving him $1,912,086 ahead.
Outcome: The Full Court set the orders aside and sent the case back for a rehearing. The trial judge had failed to give proper weight to the wife's continuing homemaker and parenting contributions after separation, and had overlooked that the post-separation investments were built on assets and income the wife had already contributed to.
Key point: the husband in this case was not wrong that he had contributed heavily after separation. He was wrong that his contributions were the only ones still running.
How do courts handle the common situations?
Three patterns cover most disputes. The money in each is different, but the question the court asks is the same: while one person was building the asset, what was the other person doing?
Situation one: one side earns big money or lands a windfall after separation
Common belief: I earned it after we split, so it is mine.
What the law says: the money goes into the pool. Whether you keep most of it depends on what the other person was doing while you earned it, and on whether the gain came from your own effort or from luck.
"His Honour plainly, and with respect correctly, recognised that the wife's contributions did not cease upon separation but, rather, continued in circumstances made more difficult by the fact of separation."
A 13-year marriage with four children ended in February 2009. The husband then moved to a new employer and his income, already very high, climbed sharply. He earned $9 million in the four years after separation, and when he was retrenched he collected a further $2,577,000 plus restricted share units worth $187,397. The wife stayed on as a full-time single parent to all four children. The net pool at first instance was $7 million.
The husband argued that an equal or near-equal division could not be just when he had injected that much money after separation, and he wanted the court to calculate exactly what percentage of the pool his post-separation earnings represented.
The trial judge assessed contributions as equal, then adjusted 10 percent to the wife for future needs, giving her 60 percent overall.
Outcome: The Full Court dismissed the husband's appeal on contributions. His post-separation earning did not cancel the wife's post-separation parenting, and the court refused to reduce the exercise to a calculation.
The result flips when nobody is holding the family together in the background.
| Comparison | Trask & Westlake [2015] | Varnham & Moses [2021] |
|---|---|---|
| Relationship | 13-year marriage | Just under 10 years, second marriage for both |
| Children after separation | Four children in the wife's full-time care | No children of the relationship |
| Money after separation | $9 million earned in four years plus a $2,577,000 retrenchment payout | $529,003 redundancy earned over 21 years of service |
| What the other side was doing | Single parenting four children | Chose not to work despite having the capacity |
| Result | 60:40 to the wife, contribution appeal dismissed | 70:30 to the wife set aside and sent back for rehearing |
Key: post-separation earning gets discounted when someone else is absorbing the family load that makes the earning possible. In Varnham & Moses there were no children of the relationship, so nothing freed the husband to work, and the Full Court held that more than half of the service behind his redundancy fell outside the relationship altogether.
Luck is treated differently again. In Whiton & Dagne the family's main asset jumped to $2,336,288 because the State Government compulsorily acquired it. The Full Court held that a sharp rise from a resumption or rezoning is a windfall for which neither party can take sole credit, so the husband could not claim it as the fruit of his own investment judgement.
Practical steps:
- Pull together the payslips, tax returns and payout letters covering the whole period since separation. You cannot argue about money nobody has quantified.
- If a payout was earned over years of service, work out how much of that service sits inside the relationship. That split did the work in Varnham & Moses.
- If an asset jumped in value, find out why. A rezoning, a resumption or a market surge is luck. Your own development work is a contribution.
Situation two: one parent carries the children and the house alone
Common belief: the other side paid child support, so their obligation is covered.
What the law says: child support and s 79 contributions are separate questions. Carrying the children and maintaining the home after separation is a contribution in its own right, and a long run of it moves the percentage.
"The period between separation and trial was approximately six years and as a consequence bore significance in assessing contributions over the whole of the 28 year period between cohabitation and the hearing."
The couple lived together for 20 years, from 1976 to 1996. Their daughter X was nine when they separated, and the case did not reach trial until two decades later. X lived with the wife in the former matrimonial home the entire time. The husband paid no child support beyond about 18 months of school fees. The wife worked full time and ran a catering business on weekends to put X through university. Meanwhile the husband drew down on the mortgage over that home without telling her, funding his business and living costs, and ran up $500,000 of personal debt with $343,580 secured against the house.
The husband argued that letting the wife and X stay in the home for 20 years was itself a contribution by him, and asked for half its value. The court dealt with the assets one by one and excluded the superannuation, cars and tools each of them acquired after separation, so section 79 applied only to the home, worth $1,325,000.
Outcome: contributions to the home were assessed at 75:25 in the wife's favour. The husband's superannuation was almost nothing, so the court adjusted 2.5 percent back to him for future needs, leaving her with 72.5 percent. She refinanced the secured debt into her own name and paid the husband $20,795. His remaining debts stayed his alone.
The same logic runs the other way. In Kashani [2014] FamCAFC 139 it was the father who raised the child alone for 13 years after separation, and the Full Court upheld a 55:45 split in his favour on that basis. Sole care is what matters, not which parent provides it. And in Coventry & McNamee [2011] FamCAFC 123 the husband was the only person contributing to his $581,457 superannuation after separation, yet the wife still took 40 percent of it, because her parenting was what let his career keep moving.
Practical steps:
- Write down the actual timeline of care. Which nights, which school runs, which medical appointments, and for how many years.
- Keep the receipts for the house. Rates, insurance, repairs and mortgage payments made alone are direct financial contributions on top of the parenting.
- Record what child support actually arrived against what the children actually cost. In Causey the shortfall was part of why the wife's post-separation contributions were revalued upward.
- Do not assume a disabled or high-needs child is factored in automatically. In Gully & Aksoy the wife's lifelong sole care of a child with a severe intellectual disability produced a 15 percent adjustment in her favour, and it had to be argued.
Situation three: you built something on your own after separation
Common belief: we are still legally married, so everything I buy is half theirs.
What the law says: not necessarily. Under s 79(2) the court has to be satisfied that altering property interests is just and equitable at all. An asset acquired with no reference to the other person, no common use and none of the shared assumptions of the marriage can stay where it is.
"On no view of the evidence can it be said that any express or implicit assumptions arising from the marriage relationship underpinned the acquisition, preservation or improvement of Mindarie."
This couple separated their finances in 1988 and divorced in 1996, but kept living under the same roof until 2005. A vacant block at Mindarie came into the wife's name in 1993, priced at $74,000, and every dollar of that purchase came from a friend of hers, Mr S. A house went up on it in 2004, funded by $125,500 from her mother and about $146,000 from Mr S. She moved there with her twins in 2005. The husband put in nothing and only found out about the property years later. By trial it was worth $1 million, unencumbered.
The husband claimed an interest in it, saying he had done some parenting for the twins while everyone shared the house. The trial judge gave him 10 percent, worth $100,000.
Outcome: The Full Court allowed the wife's appeal and left her with 100 percent of the property. Mindarie had been acquired, built and kept entirely without reference to the husband, and helping with children who were not his was a future needs factor rather than a contribution to that asset.
Be careful with how far this runs. Separate treatment of an asset is the exception, and it turns on genuinely separate financial lives over a long period. A house you buy 18 months after separation while the settlement is still open is a very different case from Mindarie.
Practical steps:
- Date everything. When the financial separation happened, when the funds came in, and where they came from.
- Keep the money genuinely separate. Assets that pass through a joint account or get used by the whole family lose the argument.
- Finalise your settlement rather than leaving it open. Long delays are exactly how post-separation assets get pulled back into someone else's claim.
If you want the broader picture on how the percentage gets set in the first place, see 70/30 Divorce Settlement Australia: What Courts Order (2026). For contributions made at the other end of the relationship, see Do Initial Contributions Still Count Years Later?. For spending after separation rather than contributing, see Is Post-Separation Spending Considered Waste in Australia?. And for how homemaking is valued when the pool is very large, see Large Asset Pool Divorce in Australia: Do Homemakers Get Equal Share?.
What should you do about contributions made since you separated?
Separation stops the relationship, not the contribution assessment. Marsh failed because the trial judge treated the years after separation as belonging to the earner alone.
Parenting after separation is weighed against money after separation. The wife in Trask & Westlake held 60 percent against $9 million of post-separation income because she was raising four children through it.
A long stretch of sole care moves the number a long way. Twenty years of it took the wife in Orchide to 72.5 percent of the family home while the husband's private debts stayed with him.
Windfalls are not achievements. A resumption, a rezoning or a payout calculated on service you completed before the relationship gets weighed differently from money you went out and earned.
Assets built in genuinely separate lives can stay separate. Zaruba kept the whole property, but only because the finances had been apart for decades and the husband had no connection to it at all.
| What works | What does not |
|---|---|
| Keeping a dated record of care, payments and household costs since separation | Relying on memory years later about who did what |
| Quantifying post-separation income and payouts for both sides | Arguing the pool froze on the day you moved out |
| Splitting a payout by the service period that earned it | Treating a redundancy or compensation payment as untouchable |
| Asking why an asset rose in value before claiming credit for it | Claiming a rezoning or resumption as your own investment skill |
| Finalising the settlement promptly | Leaving it open for years and hoping nothing changes |
