The Cost of the “Silver Bullet” in Family Law- obtaining a “forensic advantage”.

Learn how procedural misuse in family law undermines justice and drives a systemic crisis — and share your experience to help expose the pattern.The “Silver Bullet”

A conspiracy to pervert the course of justice for custody and financial gain

In family law disputes, allegations are increasingly deployed not to protect, but to trigger state power in order to obtain immediate custody advantage — which in turn yields decisive financial leverage.

This tactic is colloquially known as the “silver bullet.”

Call it what it is.

It is the deliberate coordination of allegations and legal process to distort outcomes before evidence is tested.

That is not advocacy.

It is a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

How it works

1. An allegation is escalated into police, child protection, or emergency court processes

2. Interim orders restrict or suspend parenting time

3. Parenting imbalance becomes “status quo”

4. Property settlement is delayed or distorted

5. The accused is financially and psychologically exhausted

6. The advantage hardens — regardless of ultimate findings

The outcome is achieved before trial, before proof, and often without accountability.

Why custody advantage equals financial advantage

In Australian family law:

• Parenting arrangements shape negotiating power

• Property division is frequently stalled until custody is resolved

• Interim restrictions destroy earning capacity and liquidity

• Legal costs double — for both parties — but asymmetrically

Immediate custody advantage becomes financial control.

That is the incentive.

The cost to the justice system

This conduct consumes enormous public resources:

• Police responding to tactical reports

• Magistrates’ courts processing urgent applications

• Child protection investigations that do not meet statutory thresholds

• Supervised contact services funded by the state

• Prolonged family court proceedings driven by precaution, not proof

The cost is borne by taxpayers, while trust in the system collapses.

The role of lawyers

Lawyers are officers of the court.

When a practitioner encourages, engineers, or knowingly exploits the use of state processes to secure custody and financial advantage — rather than protection — they cross a line.

If proven, this conduct is:

• Abuse of process

• Professional misconduct

• Potentially criminal

A conspiracy does not require success. Only agreement and intent.

Why it persists

Because the system fragments responsibility:

• The accused is least able to complain

• Oversight bodies see isolated pieces, not the pattern

• Outcomes are framed as “precautionary”

• No one accounts for the cumulative harm

What this project documents

We collect de-identified accounts to expose:

• The pattern

• The incentives

• The custody-to-financial leverage pathway

• The cost to families, children, and the state

This is not about gender. It is about integrity of process.


The funding loop no one acknowledges

This custody-to-financial leverage does not operate in isolation.

It feeds a government funding loop.

• Allegations inflate incident counts

• Inflated counts are treated as prevalence

• Prevalence is framed as crisis

• Crisis attracts large-scale government funding

• Funding incentivises volume, not accuracy

• Volume further inflates the data

The result is a self-perpetuating system in which allegations — including false or tactical ones — are never properly filtered, because doing so would undermine the justification for ongoing expenditure.- this could be seen as a form of corruption.

Australia now has hundreds of millions of dollars allocated on the basis of this constructed crisis.

That money is not neutral.

It sustains:

• expanded reporting pipelines

• low-threshold intervention

• precautionary decision-making

• institutional risk aversion

• data narratives that cannot tolerate contradiction

Who pays the price

This funding loop does not primarily benefit genuine victims at it;

• diverts resources away from high-risk cases

• overwhelms police and child protection capacity

• normalises untested allegations as truth

• entrenches adversarial escalation

• destroys trust in the justice system

And it does so at the expense of:

• falsely accused parents

• children whose relationships are collateral damage

• genuine victims competing for attention and resources

The incentive is clear

Immediate custody advantage becomes financial control.

Financial control reinforces allegations.

Allegations justify funding, perhaps viewed as a corruption loop.

Funding rewards volume.

The system is no longer correcting for error. It is rewarding it.