Executive Summary

1​This report considers whether law reform is needed to ensure a child can continue to have the protection of a family violence intervention order (FVIO or order) after they turn 18. It completes Stage 1 of our two-stage community law reform project: Examining Aspects of Family Violence Intervention Orders for Children and Young Adults. The remainder of the terms of reference for this project will be considered in Stage 2.

2​The idea for the first stage of our community law reform project came from young people who were concerned about their FVIOs not continuing past 18 and the trauma this caused them. Young people told us that it was extremely upsetting that despite no change in their circumstances—aside from turning 18—they lost the protection of their FVIO while other family members remained protected.

3​For young people, the time of transition to adulthood can be particularly challenging. It often coincides with the end of school, entry to the workforce and for some, moving out of home. We heard that the expiry of a young person’s FVIO at 18 heightens their exposure to risk and can cause severe emotional distress.

4​Young people with lived experience, and people who assist them, told us that having to re-engage with a court to seek a new order after turning 18 can be confusing, daunting, and deeply traumatic.

5​Over the course of this project, in addition to meeting with young victim-survivors, we met with community legal centres, advocacy organisations, the police and the courts to discuss their views about the application of the law and ideas for reform.^[42] Through these conversations it became clear that many people shared similar concerns about children’s orders expiring simply because they turned 18 (sometimes referred to as ‘ageing out’). However, it also became clear that some children do want their orders to end at 18, and that central to this distinction is the need for courts to hear from children about what they want.

Family violence and the impact on children

6​Family violence is a significant community problem that has a profound effect on children and young people. According to the Crimes Statistics Agency, in the year ending March 2025, Victoria Police recorded children as being present in over a third of family violence incidents they responded to (35.2 per cent or 37,471 out of 106,247 total incidents).^[43]

7​Children can experience family violence directly through physical, sexual, emotional, psychological and economic abuse. They can also experience it indirectly by witnessing or hearing the violence or its after-effects.^[44]

8​Family violence has serious impacts on ‘children’s current and future physical, psychological and emotional wellbeing’.^[45] Children from some groups and communities experience family violence at a higher rate and have distinct risk factors and impacts. They also face additional barriers when seeking help. This includes First Peoples’ children, children with disability, children from migrant and refugee backgrounds, and children who are LGBTIQA+.

Protection through family violence intervention orders

9​The purposes of the Family Violence Protection Act 2008 (Vic) (the FVPA or Act) include maximising the safety of children and adults who have experienced family violence and preventing and reducing family violence to the greatest extent possible. One way the Act does this is to provide the court with the power to make a FVIO to stop a perpetrator from using further violence. Because the law recognises how seriously family violence harms children, the Act provides for their simple and sometimes automatic inclusion on a FVIO that protects an adult family member.

10​The FVPA allows several different categories of people to apply for an order to protect a child who has been a victim-survivor of family violence, including the police, adult family members, other adults permitted by the court and, in some cases, a child or young person themselves. The FVPA sets out what a person can do to get immediate or temporary protection before the court makes a final decision. It gives the court the power to make a final order and to extend, vary (change), or revoke (remove) the order on application by a party.

11​The FVPA specifies that the magistrate who is making a FVIO has the power to decide how long the order should last. The magistrate can decide duration based on individual cases. A magistrate can make an order for a specific length of time or indefinitely, which means the order continues until someone comes back to court to request a variation or revocation.

12​When a magistrate is deciding on the length of an order, the Act stipulates that they must consider the safety and views of the people who are being protected by it. However, we heard that, for a number of reasons, magistrates often do not consider the views of children and young people about the duration of their orders.

What happens to family violence intervention order protection when a child turns 18

13​The FVPA is silent about whether a FVIO can be made to last beyond a person’s 18th birthday. It does not say that orders must expire at 18 or at any other age, but it also does not clearly say that they can continue beyond 18. The FVPA also does not explain what happens if a magistrate makes an order that is indefinite or includes an expiry date that falls after a child protected by the FVIO turns 18.

14​We were told that because the FVPA is silent on these matters, magistrates are taking varying approaches to the issue of children turning 18 while protected by a FVIO.

15​Consultations and submissions revealed that while many magistrates think the law gives them the power to make an order that lasts beyond 18, some do not. This inconsistent practice led to queries from police members and resulted in Victoria Police issuing guidance to its members in May 2024 to indicate that orders can endure beyond 18.

16​Community legal centres told us they have seen the courts remove young people who have turned 18 from orders in some instances when a protected parent went back to court to seek a slight variation to the order. We have heard that the court did not ask these young people what they wanted. Instead, the court advised that they should apply for their own orders.

17​We were told that the approaches to children, hearing their voices, and deciding the duration of their FVIOs can vary between the Magistrates’ Court, Specialist Family Violence Courts in the Magistrates’ Court and the Children’s Court. We also heard approaches differ between the regions and metropolitan Melbourne, and even between different magistrates within the same court. This uncertainty causes confusion among lawyers, police and members of the community.

Why is this problem happening?

18​People we consulted with and submissions we received made a number of observations about court decisions. We were told that some magistrates are making orders that expire at 18 because they believe that the law requires them to do so. This may be because many children are connected to their parent’s order where that parent is the primary affected family member/applicant for the order. As parental responsibility ends at 18 when a person becomes legally independent, there may be confusion about whether an order can continue to protect the young person after they turn 18.

19​We also heard that some magistrates may consider that experiences of indirect violence do not warrant an order beyond 18 years, believing that any risk will be minimised when the child becomes an adult.

20​Other kinds of orders (such as parenting orders or child protection orders) end at 18 and we were told that it is possible that some magistrates and legal practitioners may, as a result of confusion in the state of the law, mistakenly believe that FVIOs must also expire at 18.

21​We also heard that magistrates may make FVIOs that expire at 18 because they think children can make up their own minds about having an order when they are adults, and can come back to court if they need to when they turn 18 to obtain a new order.

22​We heard that children’s views about the duration of the order and the severity and impacts of the family violence they experienced are often left unheard, and that this may contribute to a magistrate deciding to end an order at 18. Children in the Magistrates’ Court are usually not at court for FVIO hearings and the provisions of the Act have the effect of discouraging the participation of children. Additionally, we heard that children are not always viewed as victim-survivors in their own right, and that generally the court will focus on what the primary affected parent has to say.

How does this issue impact children and young people?

23​We heard that the expiry of FVIOs at 18 can heighten risk and vulnerability for children and young people. When a young person about to turn 18 still needs protection, this puts tremendous pressure on them and their family to re-engage with the court to apply for a new order or seek an extension before expiry. We were told many accounts of how traumatising and confusing it can be for children and young people to have to go back to court in these circumstances, and that this has flow-on impacts on their families. It can also affect relationships with parents, siblings and other family members.

24​We heard that for some children and young people, the expiry or impending expiry of their FVIO caused such severe stress that they were too scared to leave the house, which disrupted their schooling and meant they were unable to socialise with friends or live the normal life of a young person. In Chapters 2, 4, and 5, we recount stories of young people who talk about what happened to them when they turned 18.

25​Young people who ‘age out’ of orders are confronted with a range of practical and legal difficulties when they try to extend or apply for a new FVIO. We have been told that often young people about to turn 18 do not know that their FVIO is about to expire so they do not know to apply to extend it. We were also told that it is much harder for a young person who has turned 18 to meet the test for a new order. For example, we heard that it can be difficult to demonstrate an ongoing risk of family violence, which is required for a new order, where there have been no recent incidents since the childhood FVIO expired.

26​For some perpetrators, we heard that an order expiring acts as an invitation to contact the young person who has turned 18.

27​We heard impacts, risks and barriers are compounded for First Peoples children and young people, children and young people with disability, children and young people from migrant backgrounds, and those living rurally and regionally.

28​Lack of consistency in FVIO outcomes diminishes victim-survivors’ trust in the judicial system because it creates the sense that the system is unfair and arbitrary. It causes some young people to disengage from the justice and service systems leaving them without the protection of a FVIO and fearful for their safety.

Clarifying the law

29​The Commission makes three recommendations for reform (listed next on page xx).

30​Two amendments to the Act are recommended. The first to make it clear that the court has the power to make a FVIO that continues to protect a person after they turn 18. The second to require magistrates to consider two additional factors when determining the duration of orders—the impact the duration of orders has on young people, and where appropriate to obtain the views of the child about the duration of the order.

31​Ultimately, it is important that magistrates retain the clear discretion and power to determine the duration of orders so they can tailor them to individual circumstances.

32​Reforms aim to create a clear, balanced approach to the exercise of the courts’ discretion to hear from children and young people about the duration of their FVIOs while being mindful of minimising trauma.

33​The third recommendation is for updates to judicial guidance in the Family Violence Bench Book and the Children’s Court Bench Book, and training to support magistrates to navigate the issue of ‘ageing out’ and understand the basis for the recommended amendments to sections 97 and 99 of the FVPA. These bench book updates aim to benefit magistrates as well as other relevant agencies, including the legal profession and Victoria Police, who access the Judicial College’s resources. Victoria Police should also review its practice guidance to members to ensure it aligns with updates to the two bench books.

34​The Commission’s recommendations focus on bringing about consistent decision-making and certainty for young victim-survivors, their families, and the professionals who support them.

35​Reform will also provide clarity and assistance to magistrates who make difficult decisions in very busy family violence lists at courts, as well as to police, when they are enforcing and applying the law. Reforms also aim to minimise trauma and distress for victim-survivors by removing the burden of having to return to court to apply for an extension or new order.

36​The recommendations align with the broader purposes of the FVPA to provide an effective and accessible system of intervention orders, to maximise the safety of children and adults, and to prevent and reduce family violence ‘to the greatest extent possible’.^[46] They also align with Australia’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Reform proposals for further consideration in Stage 2

37​Consultation participants and submissions proposed many additional reforms.

38​Some of these broader ideas directly concern the issue of ‘ageing out’ of FVIOs but go beyond the recommendations made in this report. They merit further consideration and are highlighted in Chapter 7 to give the community and courts additional time to consider them before we begin Stage 2 of this project. The proposals include:

•​notifying children and young people about the upcoming expiry of a FVIO, to enable them to decide whether to seek ongoing protection. This proposal also includes a suggestion that children and young people be provided with age-appropriate information about a FVIO when it is made to help them keep themselves safe and understand their rights.

•​introducing a mechanism for young people who no longer want to be protected by a FVIO after their 18th birthday to ‘opt out’ of an order. This proposal also includes the development of a streamlined process for young people to ‘opt in’ to the continuation of an order which expires at 18 to minimise their exposure to court processes. It has been suggested that this could also potentially include a ‘right to reinstatement’ of an order that has lapsed without a young person being aware.

39​Additional reform ideas were raised with the Commission in Stage 1 that relate to the broader issues being considered in Stage 2. Some of these are discussed in Chapter 7, including looking at youth-focused services and supports, examining whether the FVPA should provide additional legal options and protections for young people beyond the age of 18, and exploring how we can monitor whether reforms are working to meet the needs of the people the law is designed to protect.

40​We also briefly examine concerns about how data about children and young people is currently captured in court, police and service provider systems, and the need for this to be improved to ensure children and young people are more visible in the FVIO system.

41​In Chapter 7 we also discuss the call for a comprehensive review of the FVPA. We have included this suggestion because it reflects concerns expressed to us about how the law addresses the misidentification of perpetrators, treats children who are respondents to FVIOs, and whether the FVPA continues to meet the needs of the community in 2025.

41. ​Submission 12, Stage 1 (Name Withheld).

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42. ​Please see Appendices A and B for lists of consultation participants and submissions.

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43. ​Crime Statistics Agency (Vic), Family Incidents (Web Page, March 2025) T1. Family Incidents: Family incidents recorded and rate per 100,000 population by child present flag <https://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/crime-statistics/latest-victorian-crime-data/family-incidents-2> (accessed 1 July 2025).

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44. ​Family Violence Protection Act 2008 (Vic) s 5.

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45. ​Ibid Preamble.

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46. ​Ibid s 1.

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