The forum clause in Australian consumer credit agreements

Australian regulated consumer-credit litigation must start near to where debtors live. Despite a prohibition against it, many credit-providers’ standard form contracts mandate terms that choose the property location or courts convenient to the creditor as the venue for proceedings.

Read the detail

Forum selection forms part of the general administrative terms that you find toward the back of many contracts. This blog post sets out constraints that arise under consumer credit legislation in Australia. Read it here

Role play

This issue has been used in To which court do we go?. Role play the processes that you might experience in interacting with those in your workflow, if you work in a legal, compliance or consumer advocacy role.

Clause & Effect

Join the beta to use the toolkit. It contains a forum clause checker for consumer credit contracts. Use it to generate a due diligence checklist, and suggested elements of the analysis.

The library

The annotated checklist identifies the elements that might be considered in the context of compliance with the venue rule.

Last updated

October 2025