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Key decisions

  • Whooten & Frost (Deceased) [2017] FamCA 975
  • Thatcher & Thatcher & Ors [2017] FCCA 3008
  • Weldon & Levitt [2017] FCCA 3072
  • Edmonds & Whyte & Anor [2017] FCCA 2733

Property

Wife’s application filed electronically after 4.30pm accepted (despite FLR 24.05(2)) as filed before husband’s death hours later

In Whooten & Frost (Deceased) [2017] FamCA 975 (29 November 2017) the wife filed a property application when she learned that the husband (from whom she had been separated for two years) had been placed on life support after a farming accident. Her application – for an order that she be excused from particularising her final orders until the husband had made full and frank disclosure – was electronically filed at 7.40 pm. The husband died at 11 pm.

His estate relied on FLR 24.05(2) (an electronic filing ‘after 4.30 pm according to legal time in the [ACT] is taken to have been received … on the next day when the … registry is open’) to argue that the wife could not apply after the husband’s death (at [22]) and that her application needed amendment to claim some relief if it was to invoke jurisdiction (at [44]). Cronin J disagreed (at [45]):

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