Stant & Stant & Anor

The parties, Stant and Stant, sought consent orders for property settlement, which included a provision for a specified sum to be paid from one spouse's superannuation fund to a non-spouse third party. The application came before Stevenson J.

The central legal issue before the Court was whether it possessed the power, under the relevant family law legislation, to order the payment of a sum from a party's superannuation fund to a third party who was not a spouse.

Stevenson J determined that the Court's power to make orders concerning superannuation under the *Family Law Act 1975* (Cth) is limited to orders made in favour of a spouse or a de facto partner. The legislation does not extend this power to direct payments to a third party who does not fall within these categories. Consequently, the Court found it lacked the statutory authority to make the consent orders as proposed by the parties.

Accordingly, the application for consent orders to be made in accordance with the proposed document was refused.