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A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
We value companies, trusts, professional practices and family farms for separating spouses, de facto partners and their lawyers in Hobart and across Tasmania, whether the matter is filed in the Federal Circuit and Family Court's Hobart or Launceston registry or settles by agreement.
Indicative valuations from A$799. Certified Summary and Detailed reports from seven business days.
A business in a Hobart property settlement is usually valued when orders are made or terms signed, not at separation. A certified valuer strips private spending and family wages from the accounts, prices the profit a new owner could keep earning, checks it against sales and net assets, and sets aside goodwill personal to the owner.
Most Tasmanian property pools hold a home, some superannuation and, where one partner is in business, an asset with no public price. A house in Sandy Bay can be measured against recent sales in the same streets. A Moonah electrical contractor, a Rosny Park dental surgery or a Salamanca Place restaurant cannot, so each side tends to arrive with the figure that suits its case.
Section 79 of the Family Law Act 1975 has the Court identify and value the parties' property before it turns to contributions and their future circumstances, and section 90SM applies the same steps to de facto couples, whose property matters Tasmania referred to the Commonwealth. A wrong business figure flows into every later step. Set it too high and the partner keeping the business pays out on value that is not there; set it too low and the other partner gives up part of something real.
Tasmania's business base is small and largely family owned, so the business often sits in a family trust, rents its premises from a related entity or employs both partners and their relatives. Each of those arrangements has to be unwound before the earnings mean anything. The partner who controls the books also carries a disclosure risk: both parties owe full and frank disclosure, and thin accounts or slow answers are easily read as concealment.
We act as single expert on joint instructions, as shadow expert for one party's lawyers and as reviewer of other valuers' reports, for families across Greater Hobart and the rest of the state. Matters are filed in the Hobart registry, in the Commonwealth Law Courts building on Davey Street, or in the Launceston registry, and many more settle by consent orders or a binding financial agreement without a hearing. Consultations are by video call and phone, wherever in Tasmania you are.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
Nothing in the Family Law Act tells a valuer which standard of value to use, so that choice comes from your lawyer's instructions. Market value asks what an outside buyer would pay; value to the owner asks what the business is worth to the partner keeping it. We work on the instructed basis and, where the two diverge, report both.
When nobody intends to sell, the instruction is often value to the owner, which can keep value a buyer would mark down, such as heavy reliance on the owner, and can set aside a minority discount. A pharmacy is a common Tasmanian example: the Tasmanian Pharmacy Authority controls who may hold an interest in one, so a transfer to a partner who is not a pharmacist may not be an option. The report names the basis used and shows the market value figure next to it.
The pool is valued when orders are made or the agreement is signed, not when the couple separated. A building business that has won a run of new contracts since separation is valued with that work in hand; whether the growth came from one partner's effort after the relationship ended is a contributions argument, and a figure at the separation date as well lets the lawyers argue it on numbers.
The Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia expects the parties to retain a single expert jointly, and that expert's overriding duty is to the Court, in Hobart and Launceston as in every other registry. Either party may still engage a shadow expert to test the report, draft written questions and advise on a sensible settlement range. That advice is usually privileged and rarely filed.
A valuer does not fill gaps in disclosure with guesses that favour the partner holding the records. The report lists what was requested, what was produced and how each gap affects the figure. That gives the Court a footing for an adverse inference, and in practice it is often what brings the missing documents out.
The error we see most is treating a practitioner's earnings as goodwill and then counting the same earnings again as earning capacity when the parties' future circumstances are weighed. Income that depends on the person would not pass to a buyer and does not belong in the pool as capital. Our reports say how much of the profit would survive a change of owner, so the lawyers and the Court can put the rest where it belongs.
Capitalising the profit the business can maintain is the usual starting point for a trading business or practice. We normalise three to five years of results, settle on the earnings a new owner could rely on and apply a multiple or capitalisation rate that prices their risk. Family lawyers and the Court are familiar with testing this income approach, and it mirrors how an informed buyer thinks.
Where a dependable forecast exists and the earnings are changing, a discounted cash flow takes over: a physiotherapy group that has just opened a second clinic, say, or a contractor that has lost its biggest customer. The asset approach sets the floor and leads for entities that mainly hold property or investments, such as a family trust owning a commercial building or farmland in the Derwent Valley. The market approach tests the result against business sales and industry benchmarks; a rule of thumb such as a percentage of recurring fees is a sense check and never the method.
Two judgements settle most of these matters. The first is goodwill: how much of the profit would follow the business to a new owner, and how much stays with the partner through skill, reputation, referral relationships or a licence, as with a building business that can only take on work because one partner holds the builder's licence issued through Consumer Affairs Tasmania. The second is control: a partner who holds a minority parcel but runs the company and sets the dividends should not receive a textbook minority discount, and the report works from how decisions are really made in the company, not from the share register.
An opposing shadow expert starts with these, and anything they miss, a prepared cross-examiner usually finds.
Pick the report by who will test it. If the figure is going into a single expert process, to a shadow expert or before a judge in the Hobart or Launceston registry, it needs the full reasoning set out. If one partner simply wants to know whether an early offer is sensible, a shorter, private report is enough.
A reader should be able to rebuild our figure from the report alone. It starts with the instructions, the basis and date of value and the documents we saw, then lists every adjustment with the evidence behind it, explains why one method leads and how the others check it, and gives goodwill and control a section each. Anything the parties failed to disclose is stated up front, and the whole report meets the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia's expert evidence requirements, starting with the expert's overriding duty to the Court.
If the matter runs, the same certified valuer stays with it: meeting the other expert, settling a joint report on what is agreed and what is not, answering written questions and giving evidence in the Hobart or Launceston registry, side by side with the other expert if the Court directs. We do not issue a family law valuation we would not defend in the witness box.
Ask your valuer to name the weakest assumption in the report and show you where it is supported. A valuer who cannot do that before the report goes to the registry is leaving the other side's barrister to find it for you.
Talk your situation through with a certified valuer before you commit to anything, at no cost.