Free Consultation
Book a Free Consultation
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
We value companies, professional practices and businesses held in family trusts when a Gold Coast couple separates, on joint instructions or for one side's lawyers, whether the matter is filed in the Court's Brisbane registry or settled by consent orders without a hearing.
Indicative valuations from A$799. Certified Summary and Detailed reports from seven business days.
In a Gold Coast property settlement the business is normally valued as it stands today, not at separation, on the basis the lawyers instruct. The valuer resets owner pay, private spending and related-party dealings, capitalises the earnings the business can sustain, checks the result against sales and net assets, and separates goodwill personal to the spouse.
Most Gold Coast property pools contain a home, superannuation and, where one partner is self-employed, a business with no published price. A unit in Broadbeach or a house in Robina can be measured against last month's sales nearby. A physiotherapy clinic at Varsity Lakes, a tiling contractor working the new Coomera estates, a boat repair yard in the Coomera marine precinct or a cafe on the Burleigh Heads strip cannot, and each partner tends to arrive with the figure that helps their own case.
Section 79 of the Family Law Act 1975 has the Court identify and value the parties' property before it turns to contributions and to each party's position going forward. Section 90SM does the same job for de facto partners, whose property disputes Queensland referred to the Commonwealth, so a Southport couple who never married deals with the same Court under the same Act. Everything that follows rests on that valuation of the pool. A figure that is too high leaves the partner who keeps the business paying out on value that does not exist; one that is too low means the other partner gives up part of a real asset.
Seasonal and event-driven trade adds a local complication. A Surfers Paradise tour operator, a Main Beach restaurant or a short-stay letting business can post a strong year and a weak one back to back, and each side will point to whichever year suits it. Both partners also owe full and frank disclosure, so thin accounts or a slow answer to a document request are quickly read as concealment. A figure from a valuer tied to neither side gives the lawyers one shared starting point, and in our experience that is often what moves a file from letters to signed terms.
We act as single expert on joint instructions, as shadow expert for one party's lawyers and as reviewer of reports written by other valuers, for clients from Coolangatta to Coomera and up to Tamborine Mountain and Canungra. Contested matters run through the Brisbane registry of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia; most separations resolve earlier, by consent orders or a binding financial agreement, and the same valuation serves either path.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
The Family Law Act does not prescribe a standard of value. Your lawyer instructs whether the interest is valued at market value or at its worth to the partner who keeps it; the valuer applies that basis consistently and shows the other figure wherever the choice moves the result.
Where no sale is planned, the usual question is what the interest is worth to the party retaining it rather than what a stranger would pay. On that footing, value a buyer would mark down, such as heavy reliance on the owner, can remain, and a minority discount a purchaser would insist on may not apply. We name the basis used and set the market value figure alongside it when the two differ.
The pool is measured as it is when orders are made or the agreement is signed. A Molendinar joinery business that has doubled its order book since separation is valued at its present size. Whether that growth came from one partner's work after the relationship ended is a contributions point for the lawyers, and a second valuation at the separation date supplies the figures they need to argue it.
The Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia expects one expert on an issue, with a paramount duty to the Court, and Gold Coast matters handled through the Court's Brisbane registry proceed on that footing. Each side can still retain a shadow expert to test the report, prepare questions for the single expert and advise on settlement. That work is usually privileged and rarely filed.
A gap in the bank statements, ledgers or tax returns is never filled in favour of the person who left it. The report lists what was asked for, what was provided and how the gap affects the conclusion, which leaves the Court room to draw an adverse inference and usually prompts the missing papers to appear.
Reports often capitalise a practitioner's income as goodwill and then count the same income a second time as earning capacity when each party's future position is weighed. If the earnings depend on the individual, most of them would not pass to a buyer and do not belong in the pool. We state how much of the income would survive a change of owner, so the lawyers and the Court can place the rest correctly.
For trading businesses and professional practices the income approach usually leads, by capitalising future maintainable earnings. We take three to five years of results, normalise them, settle on the earnings the business can keep producing and apply a multiple or capitalisation rate that reflects the risk in them. That is how an informed buyer would look at the business, and the income approach is the method family lawyers and the Court see most often.
A discounted cash flow is used when a dependable forecast exists and the earnings are shifting, such as a specialist group in Southport that has just taken extra rooms near the Gold Coast University Hospital at Parklands, or a Helensvale building contractor that has lost its main developer client. The asset approach sets the floor and takes the lead for entities that mainly hold property or investments, such as a family trust that owns a strata office in Bundall. The market approach tests the result against practice sales and industry benchmarks; a per-chair figure for a dental practice or a percentage of recurring fees for an accounting firm is a sense check only.
Two judgements settle most of these files. Goodwill comes first: how much of the earnings would move to a new owner, and how much stays with the partner through skill, reputation, referrers or a licence held in their name, as with a builder whose Queensland Building and Construction Commission licence depends on that partner's own qualifications. Control comes second: a partner with a minority parcel who in practice runs the company and decides its dividends should not receive a formula minority discount, so the report works from how the company actually operates rather than from the share register.
These are the first things a shadow expert checks, and a capable barrister will find whatever the shadow expert overlooked.
Choose the report by who will read it. A settlement figure is examined by the other side's lawyers, frequently by a shadow expert and occasionally by a judge hearing the matter through the Court's Brisbane registry. An Indicative report is for one partner alone, as a confidential first look at the range before choosing between an early offer and a contested hearing.
Each report states the instructions, the basis of value, the valuation date, the documents examined and the assumptions adopted. Every normalisation is listed with the reason for it and the evidence behind it. The report explains why the leading method was chosen, sets out the cross-checks, gives goodwill and control their own sections, and puts any limit caused by incomplete disclosure where no reader can overlook it. It is written to satisfy the expert evidence rules of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, including the expert's overriding duty to the Court.
The certified valuer who signs it attends conferences of experts, contributes to joint reports, answers written questions put through the proper channel and gives evidence, alongside the other expert if the judge directs concurrent evidence, when a Gold Coast matter in the Court's Brisbane registry reaches that stage. A valuer who will not defend a figure under oath has given neither partner anything useful, and we do not issue reports on that footing.
Which assumption will the other expert attack first, and where does the report deal with it? If your valuer cannot answer that before the report is filed, cross-examination is where you will find out, and it is the most expensive place to learn.
Talk your situation through with a certified valuer before you commit to anything, at no cost.