about this tool

The Last Step is an Australian built self-service tool, developed by an Attorney-General’s Department registered family dispute resolution practitioner (Reg. No. F2003011), in consultation with a panel of family lawyers. It is not a law firm and this tool does not give legal advice.

Why it exists

Most separating couples who reach an agreement do not need a courtroom. They need their agreement written into the Court's own forms correctly, and then filed. That last step is where people get stuck, and it is where the cost jumps from nothing to several thousand dollars.

It matters because an informal agreement, however carefully written and however sincerely reached, binds neither of you. A property claim stays open until the Court seals orders, superannuation cannot be split by agreement alone, and the usual stamp duty concession on transferring the home between separating partners generally depends on formal orders. Sealed consent orders are the thing that makes a separation final. This tool exists to get you there.

The Court publishes the forms for free and expects people to complete them themselves. In practice the forms are long, the arithmetic has to reconcile, and a small mistake comes back weeks later as a requisition. This tool does the checking and the filling. You still make every decision in it.

What it will not do

Some of this product is defined by refusals, and they are deliberate.

• It does not suggest a division. It will not tell you that 60/40 is fair, or nudge you toward a number. The moment software starts choosing terms for an individual it stops being a document kit.
• It does not prepare parenting orders. That pathway requires risk certifications about children, and we do not think those belong in unsupervised self-service software. Agreements are usually the better outcome anyway.
• It does not guess. If the tool cannot complete the Court's form correctly, it stops and says so rather than producing a document you cannot trust.
• It does not pretend to be a lawyer. There is no advice here, and it never ticks the box that says you have had legal advice. Only you can do that.

The lawyers who advise on it

A panel of Australian family lawyers advises on how the product is governed. That is a governance role, and we are careful about how we describe it. It does not mean a lawyer has reviewed your documents, and it does not mean a lawyer is advising you or is available to.

If you get stuck, or want advice

If the two of you get stuck on a point while using the tool, mediation is often the fastest way through. We have no mediation service to sell you and no one to steer you toward: the national register of accredited mediators is at amdras.au/mediators, and the Family Relationships Advice Line on 1800 050 321 can point you to free and low cost services.

If you want legal advice at any point, and it is always your right, the Court’s own directory is the neutral place to start: fcfcoa.gov.au — find a family lawyer.

How it is built

The tool runs entirely in your browser. Your answers, and the documents built from them, are never stored by us and never reach us in a form we can read. There are no accounts and no database of matters. That is a design decision with a real cost to us, because it means we cannot help you recover lost work, and a real benefit to you, because there is nothing on our side to leak. The privacy policy sets out exactly how far that goes and where it stops.

Contact

Use the support form. If something has gone wrong with your documents, say so plainly and we will fix it. The form deliberately has nowhere to attach anything: we do not want your documents or your financial details, and we never need them to help you.

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