The Super Members Council has strongly backed a much-anticipated proposal to close a loophole in super law that allows perpetrators of domestic and family violence to financially benefit from the harm they inflict.
Under existing super law, a family violence perpetrator can claim and be paid their victim’s super even in cases involving clear, sustained abuse of their spouse or prior convictions for family violence. The only current legal exception is where the perpetrator’s actions are found to have directly caused the death.
In a submission to Treasury, the Council has backed a proposal to introduce a clear, national “forfeiture‑like” rule in superannuation law, giving super trustees the legal certainty and power to block perpetrators from being paid the death benefits of their partner where abuse or unlawful killing has occurred.
The Council has also backed a related reform to allow super trustees to consider domestic and family violence when distributing death benefits even where abuse did not directly cause the member’s death.
Such a reform would better reflect community expectations of justice, recognise the lived experiences of victim‑survivors, and safeguard members’ interests amid coercive control, elder abuse or long‑term harm.
The Council cautioned against an alternate proposed reform option to send such cases to the courts, which would risk forcing grieving families into expensive and lengthy court processes with a perpetrator.
As a better approach, it advocates that super trustees should be appropriately empowered, with clear legislative guidance and backing, to make fair, trauma‑informed decisions on behalf of the member who died.
The SMC submission also highlights the need for Government to consider similar victim-centred reforms for self-managed super funds, and ensure trustees can apply the proposed new law to different types of super arrangements such as reversionary pensions and defined benefit schemes. Leaving holes in the system would undermine reforms.
The Council has long championed reform to close this shocking legal loophole, including in its policy asks which it asked all parties and independents to back last election to strengthen and safeguard people’s super.
The proposed reforms could not have been achieved without the crucial multi-partisan work in the last Parliament by the Parliamentary Joint Committee in Relation to Financial Abuse chaired by Senator Deborah O’Neill and Deputy Chair Alex Hawke that helped to build strong community and Parliamentary momentum for this reform, and collective advocacy across the super system.
The Council’s CEO Misha Schubert says the reforms are essential to ensuring super delivers dignity, safety and financial security — and that it can’t be used to entrench harm.
“It is fundamentally wrong that a perpetrator of domestic or family violence can still inherit their victim’s super,” Ms Schubert said.
“At the moment, super trustees can be left with their hands tied — even in cases involving clear patterns of abuse. That is not acceptable, and it is not aligned with the community’s expectations.”
“We welcome these reforms and these steps to close a loophole no Australian would consider fair.”
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The opinions above are those of the author in their capacity as spokesperson for Super Members Council of Australia (SMC). SMC, the authors and all other persons involved in the preparation of this information are thereby not giving legal, financial or professional advice for individual persons or organisations.
