Surveilled, scared and broke: How Emily’s ex is ruining her life through the Family Court

“The system itself is used as an insidious form of domestic violence … a form of payback for leaving,” he said.

Neville said this abuse spanned all income levels, particularly when a perpetrator realised they could not maintain control.

“[They think] I’m going to do whatever is necessary to make sure there’s nothing left,” he said.

“It just becomes a pattern of behaviour: sinister, controlling, coercive – the worst sides of humanity.”

Neville said parties regularly drained savings, borrowed from grandparents or relied on loans as legal fees surged to “eye-watering” amounts.

“Once you’re tied to the litigation chariot, it’s really hard to break that bond because you get dragged around,” he said.

While judges have tools to sanction vexatious litigants, Neville said the legal threshold was high, and costs orders, as in Emily’s case, remained exceptionally rare.

Now working as a mediator, Neville advises parties to negotiate early and avoid the courts where possible.

False police reports, fishing expeditions and fake court dates

Melbourne Law School professor Heather Douglas conducted 65 in-depth interviews with women in the Family Court. Thirty-five of them had experienced systems abuse.

Systems abuse can include filing baseless applications – including for non-existent properties – adjournments, appeals, variation applications, false child abuse or drug allegations to trigger investigations, and launching broad subpoena “fishing expeditions”.

She is also aware of cases where ex-partners have given false information to police, causing tactical raids on the victim’s elderly parents, and unsuccessfully launched defamation proceedings over the woman’s court testimony.

“There is a problem with overuse of subpoenas, especially to medical and counselling records, and applications that have no basis,” she said.

Douglas said forcing victims into court for frivolous appearances was not only a major emotional stressor, but meant they had to fund childcare, take time off work, travel and pay legal bills.

Court was often the only venue where a perpetrator could legally see their victim, while inflicting stress serves as an extended form of control.

“All these things demonstrate his continuing control over her as part of the abuse,” she said.

Court consequences ‘dire’ and inconsistent

Since 2024, the courts have undergone significant reform, including introducing training for staff and the judiciary, expanding domestic violence screening and referral programs, prioritising child safety over shared parental responsibility in custody orders, and empowering judges to bar vexatious litigants from launching proceedings.

However, the efficacy of these reforms is not known. The courts do not collate or release data on the reform’s implementation. While compliance with goals under the court’s Family Violence Plan is assessed annually, the court does not publicly release this data.

Domestic Violence Commissioner Micaela Cronin in September said some judges still held horrendous views about women, while a 2025 study found Family Court judges reinforced gender bias.

A court spokesperson declined to provide figures on the number of judges and staff who had undergone annual training.

University of Technology Sydney professor and investigative journalist Jess Hill, who is leading an independent evaluation of the reforms, raised concerns that a small percentage of judges resisted the training or did not see it translate into practice, with identical cases yielding wildly different outcomes depending on the judge.

She said some legal practitioners would consider negotiating an agreement, even if it were not ideal, if it were placed before a specific judge, for fear that a judicial decision would be worse.

Just 20 per cent of cases across the courts are decided by a judge, with parties entering mediation and making decisions by consent. Hill said this was true even for cases assessed as being high risk for violence.

“Mediation relies for its success on both parties having basically equal negotiating power,” she said. “In coercive control, the power is totally unequal.”

While exemptions exist for domestic violence, Hill’s research shows those exemptions are incredibly hard to come by.

“In our data set, there were a number of women who said that they had been pressured or forced to consent to orders they believe were unsafe,” Hill said.

“The process makes people, especially victim-survivors, mentally unwell because it keeps them in a state of prolonged hypervigilance and ongoing contact with the perpetrator.”

The threat, complexity, confusion, and inconsistency of the court and the broader family law system could have “dire consequences”.

“If you don’t succeed, maybe your children have to spend time with or live with someone you’re afraid might harm or kill them,” she said.

“There’s no more consequential law system than family law, and people don’t necessarily have a choice whether or not to engage.”

A spokesperson said the courts report on their performance through internal reviews, which are not published, and were working to improve transparency on specific orders, including those barring vexatious litigants.

The spokesperson said family violence can make it “unsafe or impossible to negotiate freely” and said the courts assessed suitability and safety, with most mediations conducted electronically, which helped “manage safety concerns”.

“The courts are working to improve timeliness through early risk identification, active case management, urgent hearing pathways and specialist lists,” the spokesperson said.

Addressing systems abuse a ‘key focus’ of government

Scores of recent parliamentary inquiries, studies and reports have highlighted how the courts are contributing to further harm for people experiencing violence.

A 2025 parliamentary inquiry found the Family Court was not equipped to respond to family violence, with drawn-out and costly proceedings keeping victim-survivors tied to their abusers despite the safety risks, while a recent paper in the journal Violence Against Women found the courts were being used to inflict long-term financial and psychological harm as a form of “post-separation coercive control”.

The issue is so ubiquitous that the domestic, family and sexual violence commissioner called in her annual report, released in September, for the courts to be transformed into a family violence court.

Federal Attorney-General Michelle Rowland said while “incremental change” was being achieved, roundtables showed systems abuse was still a serious concern.

“There is still a long way to go,” she said. “And whilst we are making progress, we’re coming off a base that is a really serious one … That would be small comfort to people who are going through this system.”

Rowland said the government had recently agreed in principle to a 2022 Australian Law Reform Commission recommendation to establish a federal judicial commission as an oversight mechanism.

“The key issue is about accountability … in terms of how the law is being used,” she said.

The government has begun an audit of abuse in Commonwealth systems.

The National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) offers support for emotional, physical and financial abuse. Support is also available from Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; Lifeline 131 114; Beyond Blue 1300 224 636.

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