In April 2022, the High Court heard a case concerning the mental health of an employee and the employer’s duty to their employee. In Kozarov v State of Victoria, Ms Kozarov suffered post-traumatic stress disorder because of the type of cases she dealt with as part of the Victorian Office of Public Prosecution’s Specialist Sexual Offences Unit. She sued the Office of Public Prosecution (OPP) because they had failed their duty of care and the case ended up before the High Court.

In May 2022, the FWC completed their four yearly review of the modern awards, including consideration of whether modern awards should be varied to include paid FDV leave. As part of its review the FWC made significant findings in relation to FDV:

When you think of domestic violence, the first thing that comes to mind is most likely physical or verbal abuse. However, domestic violence includes a wide variety of acts and behaviours, many of which you may not be aware of. One example of this is coercive control.

Matters involving relocation are often considered some of the toughest family law disputes for the parties and for judges to decide. The outcome of these cases usually means there is a clear “winner” and “loser.” The process can be lengthy, expensive and carry a significant emotional toll for everyone.

Each year the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) announces the areas they will be focusing on.

The FWO has announced their priorities for 2022-23. Their key focus remains protecting small business employers and employees and vulnerable workers.

Generally, a de facto relationship boils down to you and your partner having a relationship, living as a couple for two years but not being married. However, when a de facto relationship ends has always been somewhat unclear.

Since 2018 the National Employment Standards (“NES”) have made a provision for 5 days unpaid domestic violence leave as a minimum entitlement for all federal system employees, which is most people.

Domestic violence leave allows employees to take leave if they need to deal with family violence and/or domestic violence and it is not practical for them to do so outside of their ordinary hours of work. The employee could take the leave to go to court, communicate with the police or take steps to ensure their safety or the safety of their family.

The concept of the employee’s duty of fidelity to their employer is an implied obligation central to all employment contracts. The implied obligation is that the employee has a duty to serve their employer faithfully. Employees must also avoid situations where their interests and those of their employer conflict.

A large proportion of family law matters deal with children after the breakdown of a relationship. This leads many parents to ask: ‘What are my rights are as a parent?’

What is a Power of Attorney?

There are two main types of power of attorney:

• a general power of attorney ends when you lose the capacity to make your own decisions

• an enduring power of attorney continues even after you lose the capacity to make your own decisions.

A brief run down of what we will be covering in each seminar.

Underpayment is an ongoing and increasingly commonplace issue in Australia.

That having been said, in Australia there is a complex set of employment law legislation on a Commonwealth level, with some variance from State to State as well as over 100 employment awards. In addition to the assorted employment awards, employees may be covered by an enterprise agreement or another form of registered agreement, in which case the Awards don’t apply. However, this complex web of legislative obligations, agreements and awards can be difficult to navigate and not all instances of underpayment are intentional. Unfortunately for Australian employers, this opaqueness does not absolve them from understanding their obligations.

One of the most immediate issues to deal with, particularly after a sudden or acrimonious split, is who’s going to be packing their bags and finding a rental. This is a short-term issue, completely separate to the question of who will actually retain ownership of the family home – the question is only who lives where while the parties are dividing up their property.

As workers begin to head back into the office after the Christmas holidays, a new wave of COVID-19 infections has spurred more changes to the rules. These can be hard to keep up with. Here are some of the latest changes, as of 17 January 2022.

Generally, the rule in Family Law proceedings is that each party to the proceedings shall bear their own costs. However, the Court can depart from this rule and order that one party pay some (or even all) of the other party’s legal costs, if the circumstances justify it.

In this episode, Nicole speaks with Kayte Lewis from Voice Lawyers about the confronting issues of the Covid 19 vaccination and health orders in the work place.

If there are no Court Orders in place, and the parents don’t get along well enough to work out an informal solution together, problems may arise. Some parents simply decide to keep the children over Christmas, regardless of what the other parent wants – after all, who is going to stop them from spending time with their own children?

Over the last few weeks, we have received an influx of phone calls from concerned parents, about the possibility of their children being vaccinated against COVID-19. These parents fall on either side of the issue – some are eager to have their children immunised as soon as possible, while some are concerned about potential adverse effects and want to make sure their children aren’t put at risk.

Do I need to finalise my property settlement with orders? And how long do I have?

What if I dont get orders - How long after can I or my partner bring an application to the court?

Can my property orders be set aside?

On Friday, August 13 the Fair Work Ombudsman updated its advice in relation to the issue of COVID vaccination and the workplace. This topic has become quite controversial over recent weeks and looks to be posing businesses with significant issues going forward.