National Domestic and Family Violence Bench Book

 

Click on the image to access the Bench Book

Guide to Using the Bench Book

A short video presentation by Professor Heather Douglas on how to navigate the National Domestic and Family Violence Bench Book.

There is also a step-by-step guide on how to use the National Domestic and Family Violence Bench Book here.

UPDATED for 2025

The purpose of this bench book is to provide a central resource for judicial officers considering legal issues relevant to domestic and family violence related cases that will contribute to harmonising the treatment of these cases across jurisdictions along broad principles and may assist them with decision-making and judgment writing. This bench book does not seek to represent the opinions or preferences of judicial officers, or to direct judicial officers as to the way they should respond to domestic and family violence related cases. Rather, it provides background information and knowledge supported by research, links to a range of legal and related resources, and practical guidelines for courtroom management that judicial officers may consult when considering the breadth of issues and appropriate course of action in any individual case. In deciding whether, or how, a particular issue may be dealt with, the judicial officer must necessarily balance the interests of all participants in a case.

The 2025 update includes 101 new resources including:

• Summaries of 44 new academic articles and reports linked across 19 sections of the Bench Book.
• Links to 11 new ‘other resources’ including fact sheets, government statements and webpages linked across 8 sections of the Bench Book.
• 46 new summaries of cases from Commonwealth and all states and territories.

The 2025 update also includes substantially updated content on:

Family Law – the following sections have been substantially updated to reflect the introduction of family law changes under the Family Law Amendment Act 2024:

• Animal Abuse – a framework for dealing with family pets in property cases
• Recognition of dowry abuse under an expanded definition of economic or financial abuse
• Fair hearing – less adversarial approaches that may be used by family courts with the aim of reducing the intimidation and stress of court proceedings for families
• Family Dispute Resolution
• Property matters – the key legislatives changes in family law in 2025 introduced through the Family Law Amendment Act 2024 relate to property proceedings
• Hague convention international return and removal of children

Forced Marriage – the new section outlines the known statistics around forced marriage, the relationship of forced marriage to domestic and family violence and links to relevant laws and new resources on the topic.

The 2025 version also includes updates to content and links across various sections of the Bench Book, removal of older and dated materials, checking of cases for appeals and relevance and revised language where appropriate.

Notably, references to material from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS), including the 2021-22 Personal Safety Survey (PSS) have been updated, as have references to bench books in other jurisdictions.

An offline print version of the site (last updated August 2025) is also available here.

We invite you to share any feedback you have on the new site with us at aija@aija.org.au