When a marriage or de facto relationship ends, the family home is usually the largest item in the property pool. Business premises, investment properties and interests in land held through companies or trusts often sit alongside it. Before anyone can talk sensibly about who gets what, those assets need a value that both parties, both sets of lawyers and ultimately the court can rely on. That is where a registered valuer comes in, and family law has developed a particular way of using us.

One valuer, not one each

The rules of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia are built around the single expert witness. For a question like the value of a house, the starting position is that the parties jointly appoint one valuer, agree the instructions and share the cost. Each side does not turn up with its own expert and a number pitched to suit. A party who wants to rely on a separately retained expert generally needs the court’s permission, and the court is slow to give it without good reason.

Duelling valuations add cost and delay to proceedings that already have plenty of both, and one properly instructed and qualified expert usually gets the parties closer to settlement than two partisan reports.

Independence is the whole point

A single expert’s paramount duty runs to the court, and it overrides any duty to either party or to the lawyers who sign the engagement letter. That duty shapes the rest of the engagement. The valuer should have no prior relationship with either party worth speaking of, and must disclose any that exists. Instructions come in writing, agreed between the parties or settled by the court. The report has to set out the instructions received, the facts relied on, the inspections carried out and the reasoning that leads to the figure.

This means the valuer inspects with both parties aware of it, answers to both sides equally, and writes the report knowing a judge may read it closely. A valuer who leans toward the party paying the larger share of the fee is not meeting that duty.

Where the valuation sits in the settlement

Family law property settlements broadly follow a structured path: identify and value the asset pool, assess each party’s contributions, weigh future needs, and check that the outcome is just and equitable. The valuation belongs to the first step, and an error there flows through every calculation that follows.

Two points trip people up. First, the relevant value is current market value, generally assessed close to the date of settlement or hearing rather than the date of separation. Markets move, and Brisbane’s has moved plenty. Second, market value is what a willing but not anxious buyer would pay a willing but not anxious seller. The insured value, the rates valuation and what a neighbour reportedly got two years ago do not meet that definition.

When a party disagrees with the figure

A single expert’s report is not the end of the conversation. The rules provide proper channels for testing it.

  • Written questions. Each party generally has one opportunity to put clarifying questions to the single expert within a set time after the report is delivered. Good questions probe the comparable sales, the adjustments and the assumptions.
  • Shadow experts. A party may privately retain another valuer to review the report and advise on its strengths and weaknesses. That adviser usually stays behind the scenes, shaping the questions and the cross-examination rather than giving evidence, unless the court grants leave for a second expert.
  • Conference of experts. Where the court does allow more than one expert, it will often order them to confer and produce a joint statement recording what they agree on and precisely where and why they differ. Done properly, this narrows a dispute to a handful of identifiable judgment calls.
  • Cross-examination. At a hearing, the single expert can be required to attend and defend the report in the witness box.

Method matters more than the number

Every one of those testing mechanisms is aimed at the reasoning behind the headline figure. Nobody cross-examines a number. They cross-examine the selection of comparable sales, the adjustment for the missing second bathroom, the treatment of the granny flat, the capitalisation rate on the commercial shed. A valuation that states a figure without showing its working collapses the moment it is tested. One built on verifiable sales evidence, with transparent adjustments and reasoning a stranger can follow, will hold even where another competent valuer might have landed a little higher or lower.

Since a single expert is appointed for both parties, a reputation for favouring high or low figures helps nobody, and the better basis for choosing a valuer is rigour.

The same discipline in deceased estates

Deceased estate work runs on the same rails. Executors generally need market value at the date of death. For capital gains tax purposes, assets the deceased acquired before 20 September 1985 generally take a cost base equal to their market value at death, while later acquisitions carry the deceased’s cost base forward, and the ATO expects those values to be supportable. The exceptions matter, so take advice on your own facts. Where beneficiaries fall out, or a family provision claim is made, an estate valuation gets tested exactly as a family law valuation does. Retrospective dates, independence from every beneficiary and a fully reasoned report are the standard in both jurisdictions, because either court will want the evidence and reasoning set out in full and a valuer prepared to stand behind the figure.

If you are separating, administering an estate, or briefing a single expert as a solicitor, it pays to get the valuation framework right at the start. Call the practice on 07 5550 4055 to talk through your situation.