Kate is a Senior Associate who specialises in family law and has an interest in helping families navigate the complexities of separation. Kate takes a commercial approach to her matters, while appreciating that an effective advocate understands the nuances of the personal relationships involved.
Expertise
Prior to specialising in family law, Kate worked in estate, commercial, property and criminal law. As well as complementing her work in family law, this broad experience allows her to provide her clients with holistic legal advice.
Kate is experienced in all aspects of family law, including complex parenting and property matters, de facto and same sex relationships, financial agreements both pre- and post-relationship, spousal maintenance and child support, relocation and appeals.
She also has a passion for assisting not-for-profit organisations, having volunteered for Townsville Community Law and the Women's Legal Service. Kate was also a Management Committee Member for Althea Projects, a service providing emergency, crisis and foster care for children, amongst other community initiatives.
Kate areas of expertise include:
- marital, de facto and same sex relationships
- complex property settlements, including intricate corporate structures, trust disputes and self-managed superannuation funds
- financial agreements, including pre, during and post-relationship
- spousal maintenance applications
- cross-border disputes involving property and children, including recovery orders
- Binding Child Support Agreements
- acting for third parties whose proprietary interests may be impacted by separation
- acting in matters where parties have complex mental health issues, including acting for litigation guardians
- domestic and family violence
- divorce
- pro bono and community legal assistance
Career highlights
Kate's career highlights include:
- successfully obtaining interim orders for parental responsibility for a grandparent ex parte in a same-day application for a baby requiring urgent medical attention. Both parents of the child had passed away in the previous days. Further complexity came from numerous parties later seeking primary care of the child, and Kate was successful in opposing interim orders for the child to be removed from her client's care
- obtaining an enforcement warrant for the sale of a property after a party had breached final orders and subsequently recovering the unpaid funds on her client's behalf
- receiving an indication from the presiding Judge midway through a trial that His Honour would be making the orders sought in her client's application
- successfully arguing that the other side had joined the wrong party to proceedings, and that an alleged loan from a third party should be excluded from the asset pool on the basis the funds were a gift
- acting in complex property matters, including acting for a litigation guardian where the respondent to the proceedings did not have capacity due to mental health concerns and later passed away, opposing an argument for a common endeavour and acting in cross-jurisdictional matters involving estate disputes as the result of the death of a party