Family Violence Protection Act 2026: Victoria's Changes Explained
photo credit: Javier-allegue-barros
On 10 February 2026 amendments to the Family Violence Protection Act came into effect. These changes align Victoria’s family violence legislation with the federal Family Law Act, to include the following:
Family violence can include acts towards animals, such as threatening to or actually causing, death, injury or mistreatment of an animal. Note that at this stage there is no definition of “animal”, so it remains to be seen if it just includes pets, or livestock as well.
This includes regardless of whether the animal belongs to the family member to whom the behaviour is directed and includes using the animal to control, dominate or coerce the family member.
The behaviour can include:
a. Withholding, or threatening to withhold, the animal’s food, water, shelter or medication.
b. Threatening to sell, rehome, abandon or surrender the animal.
Jurisdiction has been given to the Court to require the animal be returned to the family member, along with any items reasonably necessary to the care, health or wellbeing of the animal.
Stalking as an act of family violence, including making it a criminal offence.
Systems abuse as a means of coercing or controlling a family member. This can include making malicious allegations to government organisations, police, or child protection, as well as intentional misuse of court processes for the purpose of coercing or controlling the family member.
This is not to say that simply initiating family law proceedings to obtain financial or parenting arrangements, of itself, is an act of family violence.
Provides for a default duration of a final intervention order of 2 years, unless the respondent is in jail for certain offences.
Requiring the Court and police to consider whether there may have been misidentification of the respondent. This is particularly important where there may be a history of family violence in the relationship - on a particular occasion family violence may have been committed by the respondent in self defence against family violence being committed by the other partner, thus “misidentifying” the party as being the perpetrator where they were defending themself.
However, it is important to remember that whether the above actions are actually family violence will depend upon the Court determining that the actions are family violence.
If you have questions about how these changes may affect your matter, it is important to get advice from an experienced family lawyer. The team at CE Family Law is here to help.
Author: Sarah Pullan, Independent Children’s Lawyer, Special Counsel