The parties cohabited from June 1998, married in November 1999, and separated in 2018, a relationship of roughly 20 years with three adult children. The appellant, aged 54, had limited capacity for employment following a workplace assault in 1997 that left her with post-traumatic stress disorder and a permanent back injury; the respondent, aged 66, was a tradesperson. In 2016 the appellant received an inheritance from her late father's estate valued at approximately $3,300,000, including a property the father had earlier purchased in her name. The respondent commenced property proceedings in April 2022 under Pt VIII of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth). The primary judge found a net pool of $6,641,254, assessed contributions at 60:40 in the appellant's favour, then applied a 4 per cent adjustment to the respondent under s 79(5), producing an overall division of 56:44.

On appeal, Schonell J found the primary judge had erred by assessing contributions in a segmented and compartmentalised manner, addressing initial contributions, contributions during the relationship, the inheritance, and post-separation contributions under separate headings before making a discrete "adjustment" for the inheritance. Drawing on Benson & Drury (2020) FLC 93-998 and Dickons v Dickons (2012) 50 Fam LR 244, the Court reaffirmed that all contributions must be weighed collectively, and that compartmentalising them and then adjusting for a single contribution is contrary to the holistic evaluation required by s 79(4). This approach had led the primary judge to give insufficient weight to the inheritance. Although no ground squarely raised the error, the Court applied Warren v Coombes (1979) 142 CLR 531 to correct it.

Both parties invited the Court to re-exercise discretion rather than remit. Adopting the primary judge's unchallenged factual findings, Schonell J assessed contributions at 65 per cent to the appellant, recognising the inheritance as representing nearly 50 per cent of the parties' existing property. The Court was not satisfied that age, health, income, earning capacity, or the appellant's non-disclosure warranted any adjustment under s 79(5), the non-disclosure going to the difficulty of ascertaining existing property rather than pointing to undisclosed assets. The property was divided 65:35, with costs certificates granted to both parties under the Federal Proceedings (Costs) Act 1981 (Cth). The decision is a clear reminder for family lawyers that contributions are a single holistic judgment, not a sum of separately quantified parts.