Monday November 29, 2010 at 1:25pm
For most people, winning the Lottery is a dream. It becomes a reality for a precious few. One of those was Nigel Page who picked up £56 million on the Euromillions draw earlier this year. Can you imagine how much something like that would change your life?
However, the dream was tainted when his ex-wife, who left him ten years ago for another man, tried to claim as much as £8 million of his win for herself. It was reported last week that he reached an out-of-court settlement for ....
Friday November 26, 2010 at 9:35am
Woolley & Co was founded 14 years ago through a desire to challenge the way law firms work. The idea was to embrace new technology, do away with expensive town centre offices and build a world class service around the needs of the customer. That meant fewer face to face meetings, emailed documents, appointments out of normal office hours, home working and transparent pricing. Our website was, and still is, the shop window for our services. Since then, the ranks of senior level lawy....
Tuesday November 23, 2010 at 9:29am
No matter how hard you might have tried over the last seven days, you will not have been able to avoid hearing that a certain high profile couple are getting married. After ten years together, with speculation of a royal wedding spanning nine-and-a-half years of that at least, Prince William and Kate Middleton announced their engagement. The simple announcement from Clarence House prompted wall-to-wall coverage on every news channel and magazine programme, newspaper and radio bulletin for severa....
Monday November 22, 2010 at 9:00am
I did a double take when I first read the story in the paper about Ed Miliband making his second son “official”. Was first born, Daniel, borrowed then, or in some way not real? What did new arrival Samuel have that his older brother didn’t?
When I got down to the details it was simply the press’s usual caring way of explaining a specific situation arising from family law, akin to the mythical “quickie” divorce that enrages me so much whenever I see it.
The....
Thursday November 18, 2010 at 8:28am
I was always a sceptic about couples counselling. After all, you can’t manufacture love. You can’t ‘talk’ it into existence if it has been extinguished. Isn’t it better to simply accept that love is gone?
But dealing day in, day out with people whose loves have been trampled by anger, humiliated by betrayal, frozen by grief and withered by neglect, it is clear than love never really is extinguished. It remains, squashed, around the edges, sometimes transformed into....
Monday November 15, 2010 at 1:28pm
Regular readers of this Blog will by now know that I tend to get quite worked up about celebrity divorce and also the phrase "quickie divorce". When they are together that is almost too much for me!
Celebrity divorce annoys me mainly due to its constant presence in the media and the fact that it is so easy for a belief to grow up that the legal aspects of such a
financial settlement are relevant to the lives of the rest of us--they are not. It is just a question of exactly how many &p....
Monday November 15, 2010 at 12:33pm
There are many great resources out there to help people going though – or thinking about – a life-changing relationship break-up. With so many things to consider, from where you are going to live, to what happens to the children, to how will the finances and possessions be split, my belief is that the more support people can get, the better. That’s why we have produced a number of handy reference books for people on divorce, including Surviving Family Conflict and Divorce and E....
Friday November 12, 2010 at 11:52am
Often, being involved in someone’s divorce (from a legal point of view of course) is a little like having a window into someone else’s world. It can seem like you are intruding on the most personal details of their life sometimes, but for most of the time it's more a feeling of being able to do something to help, guide people through difficult times and watch as they become more confident and get back on track.
Solicitors are perhaps in a unique position with this so when we decide....
Monday November 8, 2010 at 3:11pm
Cat litter trays and Neil Diamond CDs, dog-eared paperbacks and screwdrivers. So often these are what a marriage can come down to – or a divorce, to be more accurate. Haggling over who gets final custody of items with little intrinsic value when a couple decide to go their separate ways is often what drags out a divorce. I wouldn’t want to put a figure on how much extra each year this costs UK couples in fees, but it’s A LOT.
A survey out this week revealed, none too surprisi....
Wednesday November 3, 2010 at 2:31pm
I was enjoying a good debate with a friend the other day on the reasons why people marry. Initially it came from the story behind the blog last week about the heterosexual couple who want a civil partnership instead of a marriage but cannot because they are not a same sex couple. That got us onto talking about the reason people get married. Of course, I said, it’s for love, security and to show commitment. He agreed but cited a number of other reasons, and among the more cynical ones (for ....