Divorce and Dissolution
I was contacted this week and asked to write about a specific problem which has arisen in the life of a reader’s family member, who has suffered a relationship breakdown, and is unmarried, not on the house deeds and is unable to agree on contact arrangements for the children of the family. This made me…
The difficulty of agreeing on the values of smaller items in a divorce can present a barrier to settlement. However, we have been reminded recently that proportionality is the “name of the game”*. To resolve a financial dispute there needs to be an agreement between the parties as to the values of the assets and…
Are you cohabiting? If so, you are amongst the 15% of both men and women in this country aged 16 to 59 who are currently cohabiting. Whilst some of these couples will not buy property, many of them will, and the law used to determine the ownership of property belonging to cohabiting couples is unfit…
I am always surprised by the extent to which Milton Keynes* is dismissed as a concrete cow wasteland. It is, admittedly, a bit different to anywhere else in the UK . One of the initiatives that is taking place in MK at the moment is also a bit different: the pioneering Fast Track programme for…
The recent case of T v M* demonstrates that the answer to this question is not “wait four months and then ask the judge to change his order”. In T v M, the final hearing of the financial case was heard for four days in 2010. The district judge concluded that the right maintenance order…
Social media certainly has the capacity to get people into legal difficulties. The High Court found last week that a tweet posted by Sally Bercow was libellous, and as a result, she is going to be paying out damages for those 140 costly characters posted on the Twitter website. In the family law world last…
A recent case has highlighted the dangers of divorce for the self employed. If you are a PAYE employee, your annual salary is set out in your P60 and payslips. If you are self-employed, your income is likely to be more complex, and probably, more uncertain. Financial uncertainties can cause problems when trying to resolve…
I heard an excellent interview on Monday night on the radio during the recent debate in the House of Commons about the Marriage (Same Sex) Couples Bill. The excited presenter was crossing between the House of Commons, to find out about the results of the voting, and the patient family lawyer in the studio,who was…
An FDR is a Financial Dispute Resolution hearing, a meeting held at court for the purposes of negotiation and discussion. It is the second of three court appointments in a financial remedy claim on divorce, in which the couple in dispute must use their best endeavours to reach agreement. FDR are of course also the…
Last month I was invited to talk to a national law firm’s Wealth Preservation team about pre-nups. To talk about pre-nups, you conversely need to start by talking about what happens if there is no pre-nup. What is the default position? The Law Commission started looking at “Marital Property Agreements” in 2009, and decided they…
