Legal Question in Civil Litigation in Australia

Re: Community property

From the tenor of your question, I assume that the marriage is over.

Whether or not you are entitled to share in your wife's equity in her Australian home depends on the law in the jusrisdiction in which you bring a claim.

In Australia some relevant issues would be: the length of the marriage, the contibutions each made to the acquisition and maintenace of property (including THE property), the capacity of the parties to support themselves, the age and health of the parties and whether a party has responsibilities to care for anyone else.

There is no automatic entitlement to any set percentage of joint property (or any joint property at all for that matter) arising merely from the fact that there was a marriage.

As to the issue of the publication - it depends on what your wife said, and again what the laws relating to defamation (slander and libel) are in the particular jurisdiction.

In Australia, publication of material that tends to lower the reputation of the subject in the estimation of a reasonable reader is an actionable tort. Truth is not necessarily a defence.

Re: Community property

Since the property question is a matter of Australian law, I will defer to the reply from Mr. Wishart.

Whether U.S. tort law only applies to publications viewed in the U.S. Even then, if the publisher printed the story reasonably believeing it to be true, or as a true telling of your wife's story, then you have a very weak (if any) claim against the publisher. Since she is in Australia (as is her property) it appears that you should litigate there.