Walk through your property settlement before you brief a lawyer.
The Property Settlement Modeller applies the Family Law Act framework to your situation — relationship duration, contributions, future needs — so you arrive at your lawyer’s office understanding what’s likely on the table. It’s free, on-screen analysis, plus a free PDF you can take with you. No account, no upsell, no email required.
The first hour with a family lawyer is fact-gathering. The second is strategy.
Family lawyers in Australian capital cities charge $400–700 per hour.
Most of the first session is the lawyer working out what you own, owe, contributed, and what your situation is. That’s factual, structured work that you can do yourself in advance.
Arriving prepared shifts the meeting from gather to strategise.
If you walk in with a clear net-pool calculation and a framework analysis already done, the lawyer’s time goes to the harder questions: how to weight your specific facts, what disclosure issues to anticipate, what offers to make.
The Modeller is free because matters complex enough to need it usually need a lawyer regardless.
Charging for the Modeller would be charging you for prep that doesn’t replace the advice you actually need. The DIY Consent Orders Pack ($249) is for cases simple enough to file without a lawyer; the Modeller is for everything else.
You don’t need your ex-partner’s involvement.
The Modeller works for one user acting alone. You don’t need their login, consent, or cooperation to walk through your own analysis — that’s often a precondition for being able to do this work at all.
s.79 contributions and s.75(2) future needs.
The Modeller walks both frameworks with plain-English prompts. Here’s what each one is.
s.79(4) — Contributions
The Family Law Act asks the Court to weight four kinds of contribution to the property pool:
- Initial financial contributions — assets brought into the relationship
- During-relationship financial contributions — income earned, mortgage repayments, capital paid in
- Non-financial contributions — renovations, unpaid family-business work, capital effort
- Homemaker and parent contributions — domestic work, child care, supporting the other party’s career
Australian family law treats homemaker and parent contributions as equal in weight to financial contributions, not less than. Many separating people don’t know this. The Modeller’s prompts surface it explicitly.
s.75(2) — Future needs
After contributions are weighted, the Court adjusts for each party’s future financial circumstances:
- Each party’s age and health
- Income, property, financial resources, capacity for employment
- Care of children under 18
- Necessary commitments and other dependents
- Eligibility for benefits
- Standard of living that would be reasonable in the circumstances
The Modeller walks each factor with a focused question and shows the directional impact on the analysis.
Honestly scoped.
What it does
- Walks through s.79 contributions step by step
- Walks through s.75(2) future-needs factors
- Produces a modelled outcome range (low / mid / high)
- Shows the framework reasoning behind the range
- Generates a free PDF you can take to your lawyer
- Methodology open-source on GitHub
What it doesn’t do
- Predict what a court would actually decide in your matter
- Give legal advice on your specific circumstances
- Produce filed consent-orders documentation (the Pack does that)
- Replace disclosure work or contested-asset valuation
- Handle BFAs, parenting orders as primary matters, or contested matters
Walk through the framework, free.
~20–30 minutes of considered work. Nothing leaves your browser unless you ask. Free PDF when you finish.