Family Law Valuations: the case for a fixed-fee valuer built for family law.

A business is usually the largest and least certain item in a property pool. It has one owner, one realistic buyer, and two people who now disagree about nearly everything. The valuation tends to decide the settlement, which makes the choice of valuer a bigger decision than most separating couples realise when they make it.

The problem this practice was built for

When our editorial team researched what business valuations cost in Australia, the honest finding was that a reader cannot really compare the market on price. Most forensic accounting and valuation practices quote on scope after reviewing the matter, and hourly billing remains common. You find out what it cost when the invoice arrives.

In a family law matter that opacity carries a second cost that it does not carry elsewhere. The valuation fee comes out of the pool both parties are arguing over. An open-ended hourly engagement is a number neither party can forecast, and it becomes one more thing to fight about on top of the valuation itself.

There is a third problem, and it is the expensive one: people commission a valuation without establishing whether the report they are paying for can actually be used for what they need. A report prepared for a negotiation is not automatically a report that can be filed.

Two services, and we say plainly which one cannot go to court

Family Law Valuations sells two things, not one, because the two situations are genuinely different.

	Settlement Valuation	Court Expert Valuation
Fee	$2,995 + GST, fixed, payable in advance	From $8,995 + GST, confirmed in writing before work begins
Prepared for	Private negotiation, mediation and property-settlement discussions	Matters where the valuation is intended for filing or reliance in court
Scope	Fixed	Depends on the business, the entity structure, the quality of the records and the issues in dispute
Timing	Generally seven business days after payment and receipt of all required information, subject to complexity	Scope-dependent; set when the engagement is confirmed
Conditions	Fixed scope, written independent report	Subject to conflict and suitability assessment, review of the proposed instructions, and acceptance by the appointed expert
Who signs	Oliver Group’s signing valuer	Delivered by a suitably qualified business valuer

Most providers would not volunteer that their cheaper product cannot be filed. We put it in the product description, on the fee page, and in the engagement terms, because the alternative is a client who pays twice. If a matter later needs an expert report for court, we assess whether the initial work can be carried forward and provide a separate quotation before proceeding. The appointed expert must independently review the material and may require further information or analysis.

Why a published, fixed fee matters more here than anywhere else

The fee is on the website. It does not move because the records turned out to be messier than expected. Three consequences follow, and they are the substance of the argument for this practice.

It is checkable. You can compare it against another quote before you commit, which is the thing our own editorial found you mostly cannot do in this market. A published price is a claim a reader can test. A “quote on scope” is not.

It is forecastable. Both parties can see the cost of resolving the valuation question before they agree to resolve it, and can weigh that against the amount actually in dispute. On a business that might be worth $400,000, knowing the number costs $2,995 rather than “somewhere between $4,000 and $20,000” changes whether the exercise is worth doing at all.

It is an independence point. Our editorial tells readers to ask a valuer: is your fee contingent on anything? It should not be. A fee fixed in advance, published, and unaffected by the concluded value is consistent with the independence the role requires. A fee that grows with the hours spent arguing is, at best, a less clean answer to the same question.

What falls outside the fee is published too, rather than discovered later. Court attendance and cross-examination, conferences of experts and joint expert reports, supplementary or updated reports, forensic accounting work, material additional document review, and responses to questions beyond reasonable written clarification are each scoped and charged separately. Our editorial tells readers to ask about exactly this before engaging. Here it is already written down.

Built around the single expert framework, not retrofitted to it

Under the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Family Law) Rules 2021, expert evidence on a significant issue in dispute should where practicable come from a single expert witness, producing one report that goes to everyone at the same time (rule 7.07). The parties give that expert an agreed statement of facts to work from, or their own competing statements where they cannot agree (rule 7.13). If a party disputes the result, the ordinary path is written questions to the expert (rule 7.27), not a second report.

The Court Expert Valuation is scoped for that role: review of formal or joint instructions, compliance with applicable expert-witness requirements, consideration of competing factual assumptions, supporting valuation schedules, a declaration of independence, the expert opinion and report, and reasonable written clarification following delivery.

The Settlement Valuation is deliberately the other thing. It exists for the stage before any appointment, when two people are trying to agree on a number without committing to the cost and formality of an expert appointment. A great many matters never need to go further than that, and the ones that do are better prepared for it.

What is actually in the report

A Settlement Valuation generally includes:

• Review of the business and ownership structure
• Analysis of financial statements and relevant management accounts
• Normalisation of business earnings
• Consideration of owner remuneration and private or non-recurring expenses
• Selection and explanation of the appropriate valuation methodology
• Consideration of business-specific risks
• Analysis of goodwill and how far it depends on the owner personally
• Calculation of enterprise value and equity value
• Valuation of the relevant ownership interest
• A written independent valuation report
• A draft for factual review before finalisation

That last item is worth dwelling on. A loan misclassified, a related-party payment missed, an add-back applied to the wrong year: these are factual errors, not disagreements about method, and they are far cheaper to correct in a draft than to litigate in written questions after a report is final. The draft stage is not an invitation to negotiate the answer. It is a check on the inputs.

Who does the work

Oliver Group reports are signed by Jackson Agresta, Founder and Signing Valuer, who holds a B.Bus (Finance) and has been valuing businesses since 2013. For a Court Expert Valuation, the report will be delivered by a suitably qualified business valuer, and the appointed expert is identified in the engagement rather than named on a website in advance.

Oliver Group provides valuations only and is not a registered tax agent. The practice serves matters Australia-wide.

What we do not claim

An advertisement that only lists strengths is not much use for making a decision. These are the limits of what is being offered.

• Not the cheapest in every case. On a very small or very simple matter, an hourly engagement may come in under a fixed fee. The fixed fee wins on complexity and on certainty, not on the floor price.
• No court record is claimed. Nothing on this page asserts a number of court appearances or cross-examinations for the signing valuer. If that history matters in your matter, ask for it in writing before appointment, of us and of anyone else.
• No professional membership, panel membership or specialist valuation accreditation is claimed for the court expert.
• No testimonials, client names or case studies. Family law matters carry publication restrictions and valuation clients are confidential, so there is nothing of that kind to show you, here or anywhere else.
• The Settlement Valuation is not court evidence. Repeated because it is the single most expensive misunderstanding in this market.
• Fees are payable in advance and are not refundable once work has begun. That is set out in the Terms of Engagement, which carry an express Australian Consumer Law carve-out; the terms prevail over anything summarised here.

When someone else is the better call

Three groups do this work in Australia. National accounting and advisory firms run forensic divisions that handle large and complex matters. Specialist forensic accounting practices work almost exclusively in litigation and family law, and several publish substantial guidance on expert appointment, among them Delbridge Forensic Accounting and Hall Chadwick. Fixed-fee valuation firms are a newer and smaller group that publish prices.

Where a matter is large, bitterly contested, or turns on tracing and forensic accounting rather than on valuation, a specialist forensic practice with a long court record is the better appointment, and we would say so if you asked. Where a matter needs one defensible number on a private trading business, at a price both parties can see before either commits, the fixed-fee model is the better buy.

How an engagement starts

An enquiry goes to Family Law Valuations. The first step is a conflict and suitability assessment: prior involvement with either party has to be disclosed and may make a valuer unsuitable, particularly for a single expert appointment. Submitting the enquiry form does not create an expert engagement.

What speeds everything up, whoever you appoint: financial statements and tax returns for the relevant years, management accounts, a clear picture of the entity and ownership structure, and above all an agreed valuation date and set of assumptions. Incomplete records are the most common cause of delay, and the assumptions handed to a valuer move the answer more than the choice of valuer usually does. Those are a lawyer’s task, and they are worth getting right before anyone is appointed.

Commercial feature. This page sets out the case for Family Law Valuations, a division of Oliver Group Business Valuations (Wellness Pty Ltd, ABN 40 684 151 013). Lawyer Reviews Australia is a separate company, Lawyer Reviews Australia Pty Ltd; both were founded by Jackson Agresta, who is Oliver Group’s Founder and Signing Valuer. It has not been produced by the editorial team, has not been reviewed by an admitted Australian lawyer, and is not a ranking, a review or an editorial recommendation. · Published 15 September 2026 · Read time 8 min. Corrections to hello@lawyerreviews.com.au. This page is general information and is not legal, taxation or financial advice. The appropriate valuation scope depends on the circumstances of the matter and any applicable instructions or court orders. Speak with an admitted lawyer about your specific circumstances.