Jenson & Lockridge [2025] FedCFamC1A 242 (18 December 2025)

Note: This copy of the Court's Reasons for judgment may be subject to review to remedy minor typographical or grammatical errors (r 10.14(b) Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Family Law) Rules 2021 (Cth)), or to record a variation to the order pursuant to r 10.13 Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Family Law) Rules 2021 (Cth).

Part XIVB of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) makes it an offence, except in very limited circumstances, to publish an account of proceedings that identify persons, associated persons, or witnesses involved in family law proceedings.

IT IS NOTED that publication of this judgment by this Court under the pseudonym Jenson & Lockridge has been approved pursuant to subsection 114Q(2) of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth).

1. These reasons partially determine an Application in an Appeal of Ms Jenson ("the appellant") sealed on 31 October 2025 and accepted for filing on 3 November 2025 (for the purposes of these reasons taken to be filed on 31 October 2025) seeking:

1. Access to full transcript at court's cost or deferment.

1. Issue of subpoena to NSW Police Force for all occurrence/event records regarding [Mr Lockridge] (including COPS event entries, Domestic Violence Evidence in Chief recordings, risk assessments, incident logs, 000 audio, and any statements) for the period 1st January 2020 to 30th May 2022.

2. Leave to adduce further evidence being the respondent's 20 Oct 2025 affidavit regarding his application for costs and the results of the NSW police subpoena.

4. Orders for electronic access and redactions

(As per the original)

1. The Application in an Appeal is supported by the appellant's 230-page affidavit filed on 31 October 2025, her 10 pages of written submissions filed on 17 December 2025 and her oral submissions today.
2. Mr Lockridge ("the respondent") opposes the application.
3. As was advised, that part of the Application in an Appeal seeking leave to adduce further evidence on appeal, the further evidence being the affidavit filed on 20 October 2025, will be adjourned to the hearing of the appeal and determined at the same time as it is listed on 11 March 2026.
4. The appellant and the respondent commenced cohabitation in August 2017, married in December 2018 and separated in December 2021. They have one child born in mid-2019.
5. The primary judge found that the appellant at cohabitation had no assets, significant debt and an older child from a prior relationship; that the respondent made significant direct financial contributions; and significant disclosure failures by the appellant as to her relevant financial circumstances.
6. The trial as to parenting and financial matters commenced on 30 June 2025, continuing until 3 July 2025. It was adjourned part heard and concluded on 8 and 9 September 2025. Final consent parenting orders were made on the fifth day of the trial on 8 September 2025. The orders provided for the respondent to have sole parental responsibility for the child, for the child to live with the respondent and spend limited fully supervised time with the appellant.
7. Both the appellant and the respondent had the benefit of solicitors and counsel at trial.
8. The primary judge made significant adverse credit findings against the appellant including that her evidence was either mistaken or deliberately deceptive. The reasons record that these matters were not necessary to determine the property proceeding. The appellant for the purposes of the appeal puts that finding in issue.
9. The primary judge found that the net non-superannuation property of the parties was $494,295 and their superannuation interests were $158,132 such that the total non-superannuation and superannuation property was $652,427. The appellant challenges on appeal some of the findings as to items of the property and liabilities of the parties, and as to their values.
10. During submissions the appellant conceded that the respondent made the overwhelming majority of non-financial and financial contributions, and majority of the homemaking contributions (at [106]). The appellant now on appeal puts this concession in issue.
11. A contribution finding was made as to the non-superannuation property pool of 80 per cent in favour of the respondent and 20 per cent to the appellant. The superannuation interests of the parties were considered by way of s 79(5) factors together with other factors as mandated by the section. The primary judge found that the appellant had obtained the benefit of significant property post separation, impacting on the current financial circumstances of the parties, and determined that it was just and equitable for the appellant to "keep whatever cash and property she has already taken" resulting in the appellant receiving "more than the twenty per cent division" on the contribution finding.
12. A Notice of Appeal was filed on 20 October 2025 from the s 79 orders made on 22 September 2025. That Notice of Appeal identifies 23 separate grounds of appeal. An Amended Notice of Appeal was filed on 27 November 2025 comprising 14 pages of small font closely typed grounds. While it contends two primary grounds, the first ground contains 10 sub-grounds with multiple particulars, and the second ground contains 37 sub-grounds with multiple particulars. The grounds of appeal, as constructed, are difficult to distil. The grounds conflate procedural, legal, factual and discretionary error.
13. The core of the grounds of appeal is as to errors in the identification of the property and liabilities of the parties, inadequacy of reasons, challenges as to credibility findings, a failure to consider evidence as to family violence, and complaints as to the competence of legal representation.
14. Buried in the grounds are broad complaints as to a failure to afford procedural fairness. The particulars of some of those failures are also difficult to distil in circumstances where both parties were represented by solicitors and counsel.
15. On 1 December 2025, orders were made by an appeal judicial registrar preparing the appeal for hearing. The following order was made:
    1. Noted that the appellant has filed an Application in an Appeal seeking "access to full transcript at court's costs or deferment" and such Application in an Appeal will be listed for hearing on a date to be fixed.
16. The Appeal Book alone comprises 1,467 pages. In addition to the Appeal Book there is a supplementary digital appeal book. There is also a digital appeal book for each party. They all have been filed. The documents tendered into evidence at trial comprise 2,871 pages in the digital exhibit books filed on 25 November 2025.
17. The appellant says she cannot afford the transcript of the proceedings before the primary judge. In her affidavit filed on 31 October 2025, accompanying her Application in an Appeal, she says the following:
    1. I have not worked since 4th July 2025 as I have required medical treatment for my complex post traumatic stress disorder. I have attached evidence of my financial hardship in records of my Centrelink payment. I have no financial means to fund the transcript, as evidenced by Annexure [One]. The cost of the remaining transcript is $15,273.72 (Annexure two). I have exhausted my savings purchasing part of the transcript which was from 10am to 1pm 8th September 2025.

1. Over the course of the hearing today, the appellant has indicated that if her application for the court to provide the outstanding transcripts is refused, she would seek an extension of time to file those transcripts, in circumstance where she hopes to achieve further employment in the near future, generating income to meet that cost. She consequently seeks an extension of time to comply with the order made by the appeal judicial registrar on 1 December 2025 that she file her Summary of Argument and List of Authorities on or before Monday 22 December 2025.
2. The Court is not provided with funding to provide transcripts to litigants who have appealed, and accordingly the Court does so only in exceptional circumstances.
3. The matters to be taken into account in such an application were identified by the Full Court in Sampson & Hartnett (Provision of Transcript) (2013) FLC 93-542. Relevant to the present case is the fact that this appeal is about financial matters only. The consent parenting orders are not subject to challenge on appeal. The Court is more likely to provide the transcript in parenting appeals, particularly where there is evidence as to a risk to a child.
4. The appellant has not engaged in her evidence in support of the Application in an Appeal with the findings made by the primary judge as to she receiving the benefit of property post separation. She has not engaged in her affidavit with the use and application of that property.
5. The costs of the balance of the transcript are $15,273.72, the appellant having purchased the transcript for the hearing on 8 September 2025, it now being available and forming part of the digital transcript for the purposes of the appeal. Her contention in her affidavit that she cannot settle an accurate Appeal Book, supplementary digital appeal book or digital exhibit book without the transcript is not accepted. They have been produced.
6. As best as I can distil, most contended errors asserted by the appellant can be identified from the judgment and the digital appeal books. If there is a document that the appellant contends should have been adduced into evidence but was not, then this can be the subject of an application to adduce further evidence on appeal to be considered at the substantive appeal hearing. I accept that the transcript would assist in identifying contentions as to failures to afford procedural fairness, but nonetheless on balance, the transcript is not required for the vast number of sub-grounds of appeal as prosecuted by the appellant.
7. Taking into account all of these matters I am not satisfied the Court should take the exceptional step of obtaining and funding the balance of the transcript.
8. In circumstances where the appellant today has indicated that she wishes to avail herself of the opportunity to purchase and provide the balance of the digital transcript, and where there is no apparent prejudice to an extension of time being granted to the appellant to undertake that process, the hearing of the appeal being listed for 11 March 2026, orders will be made extending the time for the appellant to file the balance of the digital transcript and to file her Summary of Argument and List of Authorities until 30 January 2026. This will permit the respondent adequate time to consider the contents of the transcript if filed and to file and serve his Summary of Argument and List of Authorities.
9. In the event the appellant does not file the digital transcript within the specified time provided by way of indulgence, an order will be made dispensing with any rule requiring her to file the transcript for the hearing of the appeal or discharging an order as to the filing of that transcript for the hearing of the appeal.
10. A subpoena must be issued for a legitimate forensic purpose. It must have apparent connection to a ground of appeal. The subpoena sought to be issued by the appellant for the purposes of the appeal seeks documents from the NSW Police. The appellant has not tendered into evidence a draft of any schedule proposed to be incorporated in the subpoena to the NSW Police should leave be granted as sought.
11. The appellant identifies in her affidavit the relevance of the subpoena as follows:
    1. I say that a subpoena should issue to the NSW Police Force for all occurrence/event records (including COPS event entries, Domestic Violence Evidence in Chief recordings, risk assessments incident logs, 000 audio, and any statements) for the period 1st January 2020 to 30th May 2022, being the dates during which the physical family violence occurred and immediately thereafter. The Independent Children's Lawyer previously issued a subpoena confined to records commencing nearly two years after the first incidents which created a material evidentiary gap that was was relied upon in submissions adverse to my credibility [62]-[69].

...

1. Subpoena: Issue subpoena to NSW Polce Force (Officer in Charge, Information Access nit) limited to: COPS event records, DVECs, risk assessments, incident logs, 000 audio, and any statements naming the parties, for the period l January 2020 to 30 May 2022, returnable to the Appeal Registry, publication restricted to the appeal and subject to s 121 FLA.

(As per the original)

(a) Documents in the range of dates sought from the NSW Police would have been available during the course of the litigation and the trial; and

(b) The appellant has not identified a circumstance or event to which the documents sought on subpoena are specifically targeted.

1. The proposed subpoena, as constructed by the appellant, would be an abuse of process on appeal. The application for leave to issue the subpoena directed to the NSW Police on appeal will be refused.
2. As identified earlier in these reasons, the balance of the Application in an Appeal seeking leave to adduce further evidence on the appeal will be adjourned to the hearing of the substantive appeal on 11 March 2026.
3. Ultimately it is a matter for the appellant in the event the Court will not provide the transcript to run the appeal without it. If she does so she needs to understand that it might not be possible to fully argue some of her grounds without the transcript.
4. For all the above reasons I make the orders set out herein.

I certify that the preceding thirty-four (34) numbered paragraphs are a true copy of the Ex Tempore Reasons for Judgment of the Honourable Justice Campton.