What is mediation worth? How can you quantify the financial and emotional value of a successful mediation for any given family? These are surprisingly difficult questions to answer. For me, they are about as impossible to quantify as: How much money has
Getting divorced (or un-coupling as some celebs like to refer to it as), does not have to be either an expensive or lengthy exercise. I have been practising as a family lawyer for nearly 20 years so feel fairly confident that I
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” This very insightful sentence, written by the renowned philosopher and academic, Elie Wiesel, essentially explains why so many partnerships and marriages flounder or fail. In some instances, the split that is announced to
Surgeons, mediators and medicine men. Whenever we hear these job titles, we have an immediate impression as to the type of person we’re speaking about. Surgeons are seen as highly trained specialists we entrust with our lives. Medicine men, on the other
What is Collaborative Divorce? This is an alternate dispute resolution that brings both parties and both of their solicitors into the same room in a series of four-way meetings. The approach is to achieve an agreed solution to family difficulties out of
TDM speaks with Charmaine Hast, Partner and Head of Family Team at Wedlake Bell – on Family arbitration as a divorce process. If you’re going through divorce and are wondering which divorce process to use for your divorce proceedings, you may want
The Ministry of Justice recently published the Legal Aid Statistics for October to December 2015, which revealed that the number of Mediation Information and Assessment Meetings (MIAMs) have continued to decline and were down by 16% in the last quarter. MIAMs were
‘Judges say they will ignore pre-nups unless couple are rich,’ reads a recent tabloid headline, before stating that the majority of spouses who sign prenuptial agreements are wasting their time, since only the very wealthy can expect their wishes to be honoured.
Recently, a couple of mums and a dad at my daughter’s school separately asked if they could speak with me in confidence. All three are going through divorce and are in the first stages of the divorce process. All three needed to
Anyone who has been through a divorce, or is currently going through a separation will know just how challenging this time can be on all who are involved. However, knowing exactly where you stand in relation to your children can make this
Legal Aid may have gone for a lot of Family and Children legal matters but there are still other avenues to consider to complement your Family Law background. In this article Austin Chessell from FAMIA will share his experience of how to
There is one thing we can be sure of – if something is happening in California, it will be happening everywhere else within 20 years’ time. And in America we have seen a dramatic increase in the use of Collaborative Law which
