How to Find Out What Superannuation Your Former Partner Has

There is no login that shows you your ex's super balance. No public register, no consumer search, nothing you can quietly check for yourself. What you can do is compel the information, and there are two ways to go about it. If you know which fund holds the account, you send that fund a request directly. If you have no idea where the money sits, and you are already a party to a financial or property case, you can ask the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia to pull the details the ATO holds. The court route can surface funds you never knew existed. It does not promise a match every time.

Your myGov account, linked to ATO online services, is keyed to your own tax file number and nobody else's. It is genuinely useful for your own affairs. You can track your super, hunt down lost super in your own name, see every account linked to you and roll several accounts into one. Then it stops. It shows your record and only your record. A super fund is in the same position. It cannot tell you a thing about a member who is not you, unless a specific legal mechanism forces its hand.

So which mechanism you use comes down to one question. Do you know which fund your former partner pays into?

If you already know where the super sits, you do not need a court, their consent or even their knowledge. You send the fund a Superannuation Information Request, and the fund has to answer a properly made request. That obligation comes from the Family Law (Superannuation) Regulations (Cth). Your ex is never told you asked.

It is three documents, not one. The Superannuation Information Request form identifies the member and asks the fund for the super information. The Form 6 Declaration states that you are eligible to apply, as a spouse, a de facto partner or someone weighing up a superannuation agreement. The Superannuation Information Form is the accompanying information form that travels with the request, and the kit and the fund will tell you which one they want.

Download the current forms and kit from the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia's Superannuation Information Kit page before you send anything. Do not reuse a copy saved from an old matter. The forms and the prescribed declaration name change from time to time, so confirm the current titles with the court registry or your family lawyer before you lodge.

A few things quietly derail these requests. Fees, processing times and valuation dates differ between funds and between types of super interest, so read the fund's current family-law request instructions and ask what fee, what identification and what processing period apply. Response times vary too, so start early rather than waiting for a mediation date to force the issue. Names matter more than people expect. If your former partner has changed their name the fund may not match the record, so include both names and, where you have them, the date of birth and any old membership number off a payslip or a historic statement. The same goes if your own name has changed since the account opened.

Be clear about what actually comes back. The fund sends a letter stating the information as at a date it nominates, not today. For an accumulation account that figure is usually the withdrawal benefit. For a defined benefit scheme it is a set of factors and service dates rather than a dollar amount, which is exactly why those interests need separate treatment. Our page on how superannuation is valued for a property settlement explains why the member balance is not always the number that ends up being used. One last thing. Send the request to the fund's family law or member services address, not a general PO box. Requests that land in the wrong department are one of the most common reasons for delay.

If you cannot name the fund, you go the other way and ask the court to get the information from the Australian Taxation Office. Since 1 April 2022, a party to a current financial or property proceeding can ask the Court for the superannuation information the ATO holds. You give the identifying details the form asks for, and the more complete those details are, the better your chance of a match. The ATO might identify super, it might come back with none, or it might not be able to locate the person at all.

That is the real value of this route. It can find super even when you have no idea of the fund name, which saves you trying to reverse-engineer the account out of old employment or banking records. It can also surface what people call lost super, an account a fund has flagged as uncontactable or inactive, or one that has been handed to the ATO as unclaimed money. A former partner genuinely may not remember a fund from a job years ago. The process can turn up accounts they have forgotten, though it cannot promise to find every last one, so read the response carefully and still get current information from each fund.

A few conditions attach to it. You have to be a party to a current proceeding seeking financial or property orders, and the online form for eligible proceedings sits on the Commonwealth Courts Portal. Do not assume that separating, negotiating informally or filing some particular document switches this on by itself. Check your eligibility with the Court or your lawyer. You apply through the court, not directly to the ATO, using the online Superannuation Information Request process set out on the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia's visibility of superannuation page. The Court says a response should generally be available on the Commonwealth Courts Portal within seven days, visible to the parties and their lawyers. Check its current guidance before relying on that timing. What it gives you is the fund names and account information the ATO holds against that tax file number. It is not a family law valuation.

You do not need your former partner's tax file number for any of this. The ATO matches the record from the identifying details you provide through the court, and you should never obtain or use someone else's tax file number without authority. So treat the response as a starting point, not a finish line. Once you have the fund names, send each of them a Superannuation Information Request to get the actual value. Use what you learn only for the proceeding it belongs to, and keep it away from anyone outside that case.

Most of the time you should simply ask, and treat a refusal as a reason to get advice rather than a dead end. Both people in a property settlement carry a duty of disclosure, and it reaches every superannuation interest. That means the small dormant account, the self-managed fund, the super still sitting in an old employer's default fund. Nothing is too minor to mention.

In practice a letter from your family lawyer asking for fund names and recent statements sorts most matters out, without any of the formal machinery above, and the parties agree on the numbers. If that letter does not produce the full picture, a lawyer can tell you whether starting property proceedings is a proportionate step or an overreaction for your situation. Litigation does open the ATO information process, but filing is a decision to make alongside the cost, the timing and everything else in your matter. Sometimes just spelling out the disclosure and court options in correspondence is enough to prompt the other side to hand over the fund details. Sometimes it is not. It depends on who you are dealing with.

Hiding super is a bad plan, and not a safe one. Deliberately leaving an account off the table is non-disclosure, and it exposes the person who did it to a costs order and to an application to set aside orders or an agreement reached in ignorance of it. The ATO pathway makes concealment harder still, because an account left off a disclosure list is likely to be found anyway. If delay rather than concealment is the tactic, our guide on what to do when an ex-partner is delaying property settlement covers the wider options.

Possibly, yes, your former partner is entitled to some of it. Superannuation counts in the property pool for married and de facto couples alike, and either party can ask for a splitting order or agree to one. That does not make it automatic, and it is not a tidy half of the gap between the two balances. The court runs the same four-step process it applies to all property, weighing what each person contributed and what each will need in future, and super is simply one asset sitting alongside the house, the savings, the debts and the rest. Our page on the 4-step process for property settlement walks through how that assessment actually runs.

Two points matter especially for de facto couples. Splitting can apply to a de facto relationship as much as a marriage, subject to the jurisdiction and the legal requirements. And the time limits differ. Broadly, it is two years from the end of a de facto relationship and twelve months from a divorce order becoming final. If you think you may be out of time, get advice about consent, permission to proceed and which information options are still open to you. Being out of time does not automatically slam every door. Our property settlement time limit page sets out the detail.

The values let you build the property pool. Then comes a separate decision. Do you split the super at all? Splitting is not compulsory. Plenty of couples leave each super account untouched and adjust the division of the other assets instead, which saves the paperwork and the fund fees. That only works when there is enough property outside super to make the adjustment, and it shifts the tax and access position for both people, because super cannot be drawn on until a condition of release is met while money in the bank can be spent tomorrow.

Picture a pool with a home, some savings and two accumulation super accounts. Finding the fund is only the opening move. The parties still need current figures, still have to decide whether a split is the right answer, and still have to remember that super does not behave like cash in an account.

One question always comes up here. Is splitting super taxed? The tax treatment depends on the fund, the interest and how the split is implemented. Tax components and future access rules still matter, particularly where a self-managed fund transfers assets. This is legal information, not financial or taxation advice, so read our page on the superannuation split tax implications and get advice from a financial adviser or accountant alongside your lawyer.

Run each fund's response past this list before you negotiate or take advice on the numbers:

• The account holder's name and details match your former partner's record, including any change of name.
• The valuation date the fund used, and how recently it was struck.
• Whether the interest is accumulation or defined benefit, because the two are valued in completely different ways.
• The tax components the fund has reported.
• The preservation status, meaning whether and when the benefit can actually be released.
• Any pending withdrawal or benefit payment that could move the figure.
• Whether a self-managed fund's underlying assets need a valuation of their own, separate from the account figure.
• Whether every fund turned up through the ATO or otherwise has actually supplied its own current information, rather than being left on the ATO's list unconfirmed.

When a split goes ahead, it must be formalised through a court order, made by consent or after a hearing, or a compliant superannuation agreement. A private deal, a text message or a signed letter between the two of you means nothing to a super fund. The trustee will not move without a court order or a compliant financial agreement, and it is entitled to procedural fairness before any order is made. In practice that means serving the draft on the fund and giving it the chance to object.

A self-managed super fund is the first. One or both of you may be trustees, and the fund may hold property or other assets rather than a neat, divisible cash balance. Get current financial statements, the trust and corporate documents, asset valuations and specialist advice before you agree on any value or split.

A defined benefit interest is the second, and it is common among Queensland public servants, teachers, police and QSuper members. Its value comes from a formula rather than a balance, and it often takes an actuary to work out what it is really worth.

The third is a payment that is about to be made. If your former partner is near retirement or about to resign and pull the money out, a flagging order can freeze that payment until the split is sorted.

We help separating clients with superannuation disclosure, valuation requests and splitting arrangements that actually hold up. We prepare Superannuation Information Requests, run the court application for the ATO's superannuation information when the fund is a mystery, and draft the consent orders or financial agreement that makes a split binding on the trustee.

Call (07) 3172 3777, email enquiries@qflp.com.au, or book your consultation online. If you only want legal advice on a single issue, we can do that too. If you would rather understand the wider picture first, start with our property settlement page.

This page is general legal information about Australian family law. It is not legal, financial or taxation advice for your circumstances. Splitting super usually needs a financial adviser or an accountant in the mix as well as a lawyer.