Thursday April 29, 2010 at 5:33pm
Change is inevitable. Ask Gordon Brown. Change is also a good thing more often than not – though we will often suggest the opposite. Some people just won’t look at the positives sometimes though. Take the Lawyers Defence Group for example. They are calling on the Government – whoever it is currently running the country that is, as all the politicians seem to be out knocking on doors, leaving the proper work to the auto-pilot I guess – to move to protect local “High ....
Tuesday April 27, 2010 at 9:35am
It is unfortunate that the divorce process is so heavily process driven. Like most things linked to the law, there is protocol to be followed, records to be kept, applications to be filed and papers to be served. Sometimes it can seem a bit like letter-writing tennis as representatives for the two camps exchange views and crawl slowly towards agreement – or at least a position that both can live with going forward. When I established Woolley & Co in 1996, I wanted to do what I could to....
Tuesday April 27, 2010 at 9:18am
Single parents! Slovenly, all on benefit, all fat and lazy and their kids are all badly brought up and likely to be poorly educated drug taking criminals.
That is, if you believe the papers especially those on a Sunday. It seems never a week goes by without some "single parent bashing". Even at worst, surely the papers understand that for 50% of single parents it wasn't their fault that they are single!
It is time to stop. Single parents have to deal with access problems (now called....
Wednesday April 21, 2010 at 3:48pm
There is one ground for dissolution of a civil partnership: the partnership has irretrievably broken down. To establish irretrievable breakdown the court has to be satisfied on one of the four facts laid down in CPA 2004: •the respondent has behaved in such a way that the petitioner cannot reasonably be expected to live with the respondent •the parties have lived apart for a continuous period of at least two years and the respondent consents to a dissolution order being made •the ....
Tuesday April 20, 2010 at 9:56am
You see? The system does work. Sometimes. A six-year old girl and her two brothers are to be allowed to stay living with their mum in the UK after an Appeal Court ruling took into account where the little girl said she would rather live. I think perhaps outside of legal circles, this will not be seen quite as the landmark that it actually is. Years ago, it used to be the case that children could be put in the horrible position of going to court, being put on the spot and being asked to choose be....
Tuesday April 13, 2010 at 2:02pm
Custody and access must be among the most misunderstood terms in family law – because they don’t officially exist any more. They used to of course, before the Children Act changed the terminology. But the 20th anniversary of that particular piece of legislation has been “celebrated” over the last couple of weeks and it is quite amazing that two words have stuck so strongly in the public’s consciousness, still bandied around 20 years after being replaced with “....
Wednesday April 7, 2010 at 3:04pm
In the old days, when I started off as a specialist
divorce lawyer, everybody knew where they stood when they wanted a divorce.
1. They went to a solicitor2. They had to go to Court about the divorce itself let alone the financial divorce settlement
Mind you, they didn't know how much it would cost! And the going to Court is the really expensive bit. Happily things are now different, except for the cost of Court. But almost all of our clients are helped by us to avoid a physical Court app....
Wednesday April 7, 2010 at 11:12am
You would think that 25 years is a long enough time to settle all the arrangements surrounding a divorce wouldn’t you? After all, that is significantly longer than the original marriage is likely to have lasted and an awful lot of water will have passed under the bridge in a quarter of a century. One couple in the news last week though demonstrated that they couldn’t quite put the past behind them and were facing each other across a court room. Perhaps not for the first time. Philipp....
Wednesday April 7, 2010 at 8:59am
As The Guardian reported, the law has now changed to make it easier for gay couples to have chidren via the surrogacy route and be named as "parents" on the birth certificate. Indeed it will be possible, for the first time, for two men to be named as parents on the birth certificate.
Fertility law, surrogacy and same sex parenting is a complex area, albeit now somewhat simplified, but the article under the preceeding link gives an outline.
What amazes me is the reaction in the ....