Sarah Minnery
Partner
Practice Area
Experience
Sarah is an Accredited Family Law Specialist and has practiced exclusively in the areas of family law for almost 10 years. She specialises in complex property settlement matters involving companies, trusts, self-managed superannuation funds, unit trusts and other corporate entities.
Sarah is nationally recognised as a leading author in family law property settlement matters. Sarah is a contributing author to the CCH Australian Family Law and Practice publication, used by family lawyers nationally. Her contributions to this publication include the intersection of property settlement with bankruptcy and debt as well as property settlement disputes involving the death of a spouse. Sarah is also an original author of CCH's Family Law Act Partner publication.
Sarah is regularly involved in industry events and is a regular presenter on family law topics for the profession. Her past papers include "Information is Power: What to look for and where to look in complex property matters" for LexisNexis Masterclass and other papers based on identifying and valuing matrimonial assets in cases of complexity or non-disclosure.
Recent Matters
- Obtained an urgent Order in less than 24 hours preventing children being taken from Australia to reside permanently overseas including obtaining an Order that the children be placed on the Airport Watch List.
- Advised an Investor looking to establish a mining venture on how to structure his interest in the venture to protect the mining company from any future matrimonial disputes between investors and their spouses.
- Assisted parties to a surrogacy arrangement obtain one of Queensland's first parentage orders transferring parentage from the birth parents to the intended parents and providing the necessary independent legal advice pursuant to the Surrogacy Act (QLD) 2010.
- Acted for a Third Party company in negotiating a buy out of a divorcing shareholder's interest within 6 months which saved the company over $100,000 in anticipated legal fees and prevented the company being joined to the proceedings.
- Acted on behalf of a Wife against her Husband and companies controlled by the Husband's family in parallel Family Law and Corporations Law proceedings in the Family Court and expanded the net assets by $3.1 million (or almost 35%) resulting in the Wife receiving an additional $1.4 million in her property settlement.
Professional Background and Education
Qualifications
- Bachelor of Laws (Honours), Queensland University of Technology
- Bachelor of Business (Accountancy), Queensland University of Technology
- Master of Laws (Litigation and Dispute Resolution), University of Queensland
- Queensland Law Society Accredited Specialist - Family Law
Admissions
- Supreme Court of Queensland
- High Court of Australia
Professional Memberships
- Queensland Law Society
- Family Law Practitioners Association (Qld)
- Family Law Section, Law Council of Australia
- Queensland Collaborative Law
Recent Publications
Family Law Matters: A Guide for GPs (Australian Family Physician, 19 December 2011)
Who's My Daddy and why do I have Two Mummies: Negotiating the Surrogacy Act 2010 (Paper presented at Queensland Law Society Symposium, March 2010)
Where assets and income meet: Establishing a favourable status quo in the post separation period (Paper presented at LexisNexis Annual Family Law Summit, June 2010)
The further adventures of Dr Spry: Stephens & Stephens (Enforcement) [2009] Fam CAFC 240 (Proctor, June 2010)
