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PRD Family Law

Systems Abuse: When the Litigation Itself Becomes the Family Violence

systems abuse family violence Victoria litigation coercive control

Control that outlives the relationship

Separation is conventionally understood as the point at which a controlling relationship ends. In practice, for a significant cohort of clients, it is the point at which control changes its instrument.

Australian courts have increasingly recognised this as systems abuse: the use of legal systems, institutions or processes as mechanisms of ongoing control. McCreadie’s 2026 paper Like a Puppet on a String identifies its familiar manifestations — repeated litigation, excessive subpoenas, tactical applications, complaints processes, and litigation conduct intended to destabilise or exhaust the other party.

The significance of the concept is that it explains something practitioners see constantly and often struggle to characterise. A file that never settles. An opponent who is not trying to win so much as to continue. Correspondence that is voluminous, aggressive and pointless. Interlocutory applications that achieve nothing except another four months and another twenty thousand dollars.

Sometimes that is simply a difficult litigant. Sometimes it is the continuation of a pattern that began years before the first application was filed, and the court file is the newest tool.

The conceptual footing

Systems abuse sits comfortably within s 4AB of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth). The definition captures behaviour that coerces or controls a family member or causes them to be fearful, and it does not require physical violence, a particular mechanism, or proof that the perpetrator intended the effect.

What makes systems abuse conceptually coherent is the same principle that underpins coercive control generally: individual acts that appear unremarkable in isolation may, examined collectively and contextually, reveal a deeply oppressive pattern. A single subpoena is procedure. Forty subpoenas, issued to a party’s employer, her treating practitioners, her new partner and her family, are something else.

McCreadie observes that judicial recognition of systems abuse reflects an awareness that coercive control may persist long after physical separation — and, as in Melounis & Melounis (No 6) [2025] FedCFamC1F 938, after final orders have been made. That is the crucial temporal insight. The making of orders is not necessarily the end of the pattern; it can be the beginning of a new phase of it.

Vacek & Novosel: findings on the conduct of the proceedings

The clearest recent illustration identified in the paper is Vacek & Novosel (No. 5) [2026] FedCFamC2F 261, delivered by Judge Beckhouse. Her Honour found that the father had used systems and agencies to control, punish, threaten, harass and intimidate the mother; had monitored the mother’s movements and communications; and had engaged in a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour throughout the legal proceedings.

The point of interest for practitioners is not the outcome but the source of the evidence. Findings of that character are drawn substantially from the conduct of the litigation itself — material that is already before the Court, already indexed, and already admissible.

The boundary, and why it matters more here than anywhere else

Every practitioner running a systems abuse argument needs Pickford & Pickford [2024] FedCFamC1A 249 in mind from the outset.

The Full Court cautioned against conflating ordinary disagreement with coercive control, and put the principle in terms that bear directly on this topic: one litigant does not commit family violence against another merely by refusing to consent to the orders that other party seeks.

That is not a technicality. It is the load-bearing distinction. A parent is entitled to bring proceedings. A parent is entitled to defend them, to decline an offer, to seek disclosure, to test evidence, and to lose. If the mere fact of contested litigation were capable of grounding a family violence finding, the definition would swallow the process by which it is applied.

The Victorian reform discussed below appears to draw the same distinction, and practitioners should expect any systems abuse allegation to be tested against it first.

So the allegation cannot be “he keeps litigating”. It has to be built on what distinguishes this litigation from ordinary hard-fought litigation: the absence of any forensic purpose, the disproportion between the step taken and anything it could achieve, the targeting of third parties who have no relevance to the issues, the timing of applications against events in the other party’s life, and the pattern’s continuity with pre-separation conduct.

The Victorian development

Victoria has now given the concept express statutory footing. The Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Stalking and Other Matters) Act 2026, which commenced on 10 February 2026, expanded the definition of family violence in s 5 of the Family Violence Protection Act 2008 (Vic) to include systems abuse, alongside stalking and conduct involving harm to animals.

Commentary on the amendment describes systems abuse as covering patterns of using legal processes and institutions to continue control and intimidation after separation, including malicious allegations made to government organisations, police or child protection, and the intentional misuse of court processes to coerce or control a family member. Consistently with Pickford, the reform is described as distinguishing this from the legitimate act of bringing proceedings to obtain financial or parenting arrangements.

For Victorian practice this matters in a specific way. It means the same conduct can now be put to a Victorian court on an intervention order application and to the federal court in a parenting or property matter, drawing on a common evidentiary base — and that FVIO material generated on that basis may be directly relevant to the s 4AB analysis.

Building the evidence

The distinguishing feature of a systems abuse case is that most of the evidence already exists and does not require the client to prove anything about a private interaction.

The procedural history. A chronology of applications, adjournments, discontinuances and orders, with the outcome of each. Applications brought and abandoned are frequently more revealing than applications pressed.

The subpoena record. Who was subpoenaed, on what stated basis, what was actually relevant to a live issue, and what proportion of the material was ever used. Subpoenas to employers, new partners, schools and treating practitioners warrant particular attention.

Correspondence volume and tone. Solicitor-to-solicitor and party-to-party. Volume alone can be probative, and it is objectively measurable.

Costs. What the litigation has cost each party, and what the disparity in capacity to sustain it is. Where exhaustion is the object, cost is the mechanism.

Complaints to third parties. Reports to child protection, police, professional regulators, licensing bodies or employers, with their outcomes. A pattern of unsubstantiated reports is significant; a substantiated report is not systems abuse.

Continuity with the pre-separation pattern. This is what converts a difficult litigant into a coercive one. If the client was monitored, isolated and financially controlled during the relationship, and is now subpoenaed, reported and litigated against, that is one pattern in two phases, and it should be pleaded as one.

Pleading it, and defending it

Plead the pattern, not the grievance. Set out the conduct, its context, and — as Pickford requires — its actual impact on the client, particularised rather than asserted. Impact evidence in these matters is often distinctive: the effect of perpetual proceedings on employment, on capacity to parent, on financial position and on the ability to make ordinary decisions about the future.

Anticipate the boundary expressly. Explain why the conduct complained of is not the ordinary exercise of procedural rights. If you cannot articulate that distinction, the allegation is not ready.

For those defending: the answer is usually forensic purpose. Each step, explained on its merits at the time it was taken, is the most effective response to a pattern allegation, and Pickford requires that the alleged perpetrator’s explanation be considered as part of the context.

A Victorian practice note

Where a client is experiencing this, obtain the FVIO material early. Since 10 February 2026 the Victorian scheme addresses systems abuse directly, and an application made on that footing may be the first contemporaneous record of the pattern. The two systems remain distinct and a finding in one does not decide the other, but the evidence overlaps substantially and clients rarely volunteer that the material exists.

PRD Family Law acts in parenting and property matters involving family violence from offices in Dandenong and Pascoe Vale. We welcome professional referrals and are happy to discuss a matter before it is briefed.

This article is general information for legal and allied professionals, current as at August 2026, and is not legal advice.

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