When I decided to write a piece about Divorce, I had a look on the internet at accessible resources, and this took me on to the www.gov.uk website. There is a fair amount of information to be found there. Some of it is useful, but other parts are less helpful. I have posted a piece on the grounds of divorce. Here is a piece on the Divorce process. The site content is in green and italics. There is a lot of content, so I only made notes against the main sections.
The Basic point, is that there is that the importance of Legal Advice is downplayed. There is a lot of complex and vague law surrounding divorce and finance. It has always been the case that Mediation has as a fundamental principle that couples are making informed choices. Informed choices mean accessing legal advice and understanding what their rights are. There is a lot on the my site about the importance of Legal Advice, both on its own and in the context of mediation. But the www.gov.uk treats it almost as an optional extra, rather than an essential.
The other thing, is that there was very little mention of domestic abuse and safety in the Divorce and related pages, or if there was, well, I couldn’t find it.
Lets start (more…)
Domestic Abuse Awareness week is 4 weeks away. The idea is to have a series of events around Devon to raise awareness of services to victims of abuse, to make it easier for them to take the first step of seeking assistance.
I was therefore extremely dissapointed to receive the following email yesterday
Dear Colleague, I am writing to inform you about a number of changes that we have needed to make to our referral services. This is due to SAFE having a 15% reduction in funding from 1st October which has had implications (more…)
Dear Colleague,
I am writing to inform you about a number of changes that we have needed to make to our referral services. This is due to SAFE having a 15% reduction in funding from 1st October which has had implications (more…)
It has been a very busy few weeks and the dust is starting to settle.
Last spring I made the momentous decision to start my own practice from scratch and to apply for Legal Aid contracts.
It has been a lengthy process.
As part of the Legal Aid contract tendering process, I had to demonstrate that I had plans in place that would allow me to meet the required quality standards. These are the Mediation Quality Mark (MQM) and the Specialist Quality Mark (SQM).
I was awarded the Legal Aid Contracts for Family Law and for Family Mediation (on condition of achieving the full quality standards). The Practice was authorised by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. There was loads of other stuff to sort out, such as offices, branding, website, precedents etc.
By the time I arrived in my office in February, I had passed desktop Audits for both Quality Standards.
In April, I passed the first of two on site audits for (more…)
Here is a scenario
A couple have separated for several months. They have two children who live with the Mum. Before separating the Dad pushed the mother and once hit her during an argument, but the police were not involved and the Mum did not tell anyone. The Mum still finds the Dad to be a bully. The children see the Dad, but the Mum finds him unreliable. The Dad finds the Mum messes him around. He accepts that they had arguments, but he says that in his view the Mum is not scared of him and that she gave as good as good as she got. They communicate badly on the doorstep and through Texts. The Mum doesn’t think the Dad would deliberately harm the children, but doesn’t like the sound of his new partner.
They both want to sort out the arrangements for the children and some financial issues.
The Mum would have been eligible for Legal Aid before April 2013, but has been told that she will only get Legal Aid for Mediation now.
Could mediation be suitable?
Could Mediation be a safe process? (more…)
This means National Family Dispute Resolution Week and the idea is to promote dispute resolution in the context of family disputes. In other words; Family Mediation, Collaborative Family Law and Arbitration.
National Family DR Week will be taking place this year between 25-29 November. By unfortunate coincidence this is also Domestic Abuse awareness week. This is such a shame because this clash may well reduce the effectiveness of both weeks.
Of course, as someone who has years of experience both as a mediator and as a Solicitor with special expertise in assisting the victims of abuse, the last thing that I would want to do is to encourage those who are victims of abuse into a mediation process that is unsafe. I will talk more fully about mediation and safety in a forthcoming blog. Suffice to say, that before setting up a mediation, I will always undertake a thorough risk assessment. But I hope the victims of abuse will not in any way feel pressured to attempt mediation.
Whist the timing this year is unfortunate, National Family DR Week is a very worthy event indeed.
We have signed up to DR week. There is a website at the end of the following link; DR Week Website As I write, we are recorded on the list as “Family Law and Mediation Solicitors” rather than “Ian Walker Family Law and Mediation Solicitors” which is our trading name. I have asked for this to be corrected. But we are certainly in the list.
Basically, the idea is that (more…)
As a long standing member of the Law Society Children Panel, I have acted for numerous parents who have succeeded in keeping their children when Court Proceedings have been brought by Social Services. I have also acted for others who have not followed my advice and lost their children.
As ever, there are cases reported in the media, where children have died because agencies have missed vital warnings, or have not passed information. Naturally this can lead to a lowering of the threshold when cases are brought before the Court. I have acted for numerous parents who have said, that they know they are not perfect, but they are aware of a dozen or families who are worse; so why are they picking on me? This can make it difficult for them to accept the need to make their own changes.
With changes to the speed in which cases are dealt with (half the time or less of 2 years ago) and a “push for adoption” (which has seen the age where children are routinely considered for adoption), the stakes could not be higher. Here are a few simple tips;
1. Avoid pointless disputes
“Judge: couple’s £850,000 divorce is financial suicide; Mr Justice Holman calls legal battle a tragedy and begs doctor and lawyer to resolve their differences. Aloke Ray, 41, and his estranged wife Charoo Sekhri, who is in her late 30s, had each spent a “staggering” £430,000 after starting divorce litigation, said Mr Justice Holman…” Guardian Newspaper 25 July 2013. The report said this was nearly a quarter of their combined wealth of around £4m. The report continued… “Their dispute had centred on which country their divorce should proceed in. The judge said “somewhere” Ray would have to make “fair provision” for Sekhri. And he said their “sustained forensic struggle” had been “painful to observe”.”
“Judge: couple’s £850,000 divorce is financial suicide; Mr Justice Holman calls legal battle a tragedy and begs doctor and lawyer to resolve their differences. Aloke Ray, 41, and his estranged wife Charoo Sekhri, who is in her late 30s, had each spent a “staggering” £430,000 after starting divorce litigation, said Mr Justice Holman…” Guardian Newspaper 25 July 2013.
The report said this was nearly a quarter of their combined wealth of around £4m. The report continued…
“Their dispute had centred on which country their divorce should proceed in. The judge said “somewhere” Ray would have to make “fair provision” for Sekhri. And he said their “sustained forensic struggle” had been “painful to observe”.”
In other words, it does not appear that this couple has started to look at how their wealth should be divided. They were simply arguing where the divorce should take place. Most would dream of being able to spend money in this way. Sadly however pointless and costly disputes are played out all over the country on a very regular basis (more…)
On Friday 26th July I attended some training from Exeter Barristers; Magdalen Chambers. The subject was Family Justice Reforms and the Public Law Outline.
What is/has been happening is a major shake-up of how child Law cases are dealt with by the Courts.
Of particular concern have been Child protection cases brought by Social Services. These are what we call “Care Cases”. We had reached a stage where these cases commonly took over a year from start to finish. There were increasing numbers of experts. The cases were costly and slow and of most concern, children were being left in limbo.
The Public Law Outline is the initiative of the most senior Family Law Judge; Mr Justice Mumby (President of the Family Division of the High Court). The intention is to (more…)
Language is a funny thing. The answer is of course one, but when you acquire a new skill, it is said that you have “added another string to your bow”. I had one of those moments today. I was already on the Law Society Children Panel and The Law Society Family Mediation Panel, as well as being a Resolution Family Law Accredited Specialist and a Resolution Collaborative Family Lawyer….and a Civil/Commercial Mediator accredited by the ADR Group.
Well today, I have joined ADR Net and their Civil & Commercial Mediation and the Family Mediation Panel and Hybrid Family Mediation Panels. I am not sure about another string to the bow; my bow is more of a guitar! I am not just “trying to blow my own trumpet” (I don’t have a trumpet), but drawing readers attention to the fact that I am both a civil and a family mediator. I think this is important to both areas of practice. Firstly, as a family mediator, I like to think that I am empathetic and attentive and have an easy style, which I use to try to put clients at ease; I like to think this makes me better able to mediate civil disputes, such as probate/inheritance disputes, Neighbour disputes and partnership disputes, which often revolve around relationships. I am used to emotion and distress, in a way that a mediator from, say a commercial law background probably isn’t. But secondly, the commercial mediation model is perhaps better able to deal with more complex divorce finance cases than (more…)
