Family Law Blog : April 2012

Finding the right lawyers to work with at a firm is a bit like trying to find the right partner in a personal relationship. Of course they need to have the requisite professional level of qualification and experience. This is perhaps something you wouldn’t ask a partner on a first date. However, beyond that, it is more down to their personal traits as to whether or not they will “fit” and so work well with the...

Three years. That’s the amount of time a modern couple are most likely to stay in marital bliss before things go wrong according to a new survey. The study of 1,500 people for netmums found that couples are now more than four and a half times more likely to split up after three years – well ahead of the famous seven year itch. So why is this? What has changed to turn a seven year itch into a...

Many people believe divorce is expensive but it depends entirely on the context. Is it expensive compared to buying a pound of potatoes? Definitely. More expensive than a trip to the doctor? Yes (unless you go private). More expensive than the dentist? Now it gets tricky. Yes, the overall bill is likely to be higher for a divorce, but if you compare the amount of time you use that professional person’s time for, to the amount of time...

It comes as no surprise to me, and I am sure many others will not be raising an eyebrow at this either. A Resolution survey coinciding with the end of the first year of mediation assessment meetings reveals they are not working as they should be. This is not news. The figures are interesting though. It was only a few weeks ago when I gave some thoughts on the first year of mediation (A year of mediation, are things...

There is still a lot of confusion about collaborative family law and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) generally. The Government is moving to help this by dropping the “alternative” from the name so it will just be termed dispute resolution. I’m sure there must have been a committee agonising over this for months but it's not really likely to help that much is it?As I have mentioned previously, the formal collaborative law approach has failed...