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miln@mmlaw.co.uk
It is probably the most persistent misconception of all – the idea that you acquire legal rights if you live with someone, or live with them for a certain length of time. “But we’re common law husband and wife”. There’s no such thing as common law marriage. If you live with someone without marrying them
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I was asked recently to comment on a financial divorce settlement that a client had agreed with her husband. I advised her that it was just possible that the deal was acceptable from her point of view but that I doubted it. My main point was that I could not properly advise my client because there had
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‘FDR’ stands for ‘Financial Dispute Resolution’. Both parties attend the appointment with (except in the case of a ‘self-represented person’) their solicitor or barrister. The judge who conducts the hearing has in front of him copies of all settlement offers made by the parties and also (usually – it is not compulsory) a written summary
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At the First Appointment the judge decides on the next steps to be taken in the case. Which questions in the questionnaires need to answered and which need to be amended or struck out? Is permission needed for the parties to obtain a valuation report on the matrimonial home? Is permission needed for written statements
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Never assume anything about how a pension scheme operates. For example, if the scheme member dies while he is still married, does his widow get a widow’s pension? It may depend on whether the couple have separated or are still living together. Does pronouncement of decree nisi make a difference? Or the issue of divorce
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You can’t share a pension without a divorce and a court order. Any of the other financial transactions that a separating couple can agree on (eg maintenance, lump sum, property transfer) can be done voluntarily without involving the court. The one exception is pension sharing, for which you need a court order. Because the court
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When there is a financial application in divorce proceedings, one of the factors that the court can take into account is ‘the conduct of each of the parties’ but only if the court believes that it would be ‘inequitable to disregard it’. This has been interpreted very narrowly by the courts and an instance of
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Talk about serendipity. On Friday evening I was watching ‘Later with Jools Holland’ on TV – a programme I hadn’t watched for years – when on came the Carolina Chocolate Drops with ‘I’m no man’s momma now’. I’d wondered if anybody had ever written a really good song expressing their feelings after a divorce,
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My thanks to Marilyn Stowe for an interesting article on what happens on divorce when it’s the wife who’s the breadwinner.
From 1 August 2012 child contact orders will be automatically enforceable internationally as though the order had been made as a domestic order in the court which is asked to enforce. For further details, follow this link (the relevant bit is at section 2.2 ‘The 1996 Hague Convention’).