Michael Aloysius Rafferty, who is a Stipendiary Magistrate, drives to work in an old blue VW Kombi van. He owns a cat named Rhubarb. Rafferty is separated from his wife, with whom he had two children (a son and a daughter). Rafferty also has an older daughter, Rebecca Browning, who is in her early twenties — and of whose existence he was unaware until she contacted him after she had grown up (Rebecca's mother is a woman who Michael Rafferty had known before he met his wife, and who he had not seen since his marriage). Rafferty also has a brother, Patrick Rafferty, who is a State Member of Parliament.