The proposals announced by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith that have called for more work on keeping families together, and ways to make it harder for couples to divorce, have also called for and end to the public celebrity divorce case in London.
This is after many celebrities have flocked to London to take part in their public, and often bitter, divorce cases. The plans Iain Duncan Smith has put together also call for restrictions on the financial awards that court judges are able to give out, and the control they have on granting custody and access to children.
This move by the Tories follows the recent high profile cases such as Heather Mills’ £24.3 million award from her divorce with former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, and the public custody wrangle between Guy Ritchie and Madonna that has seen Ritchie hiring the country’s best children’s lawyer.
The problem with the legal system as it stands, claims Iain Duncan Smith, is that the divorce courts are too adversarial, meaning that children and finances are being used as pawns by warring divorce lawyers. Iain Duncan Smith stated:
There is so much leeway around what a judge will decide on. That allows huge territory for the legal profession to have a field day.
You don’t normally associate divorce lawyers with match makers, but law form Pannone recently played cupid to many of its divorce customers, in an attempt to find divorcee love.
120 divorce clients of the legal form were invited to meet up in a matchmaking ‘date’ of sorts in a bar in Manchester. The dating forum wasn’t just to find love for the clients, Pannone also wanted to showcase their other services.
The unlikely group date took place in a Manchester bar called Panacea, a bar that describes itself as:
A unique setting for any occasion, where day melds seamlessly into night.
Whether any matches were made isn’t sure, as the results were completely confidential, but if anyone did find romance from the event, you can be sure that they kept a card for Pannone just in case!
The family law section at Pannone was a growth area at the beginning of the year, which made a hefty contribution to the legal firm’s six year turnover of £27 million.
Carol Williams sued her divorce lawyers over her huge £1.4 million divorce settlement, claiming that the money she received wasn’t enough. However she has lost her case against her lawyers, and has been branded a liar in court. As a result she’s lost almost all of the money that she won in her divorce settlement.
The judge ruled that Williams was an unreliable witness and had attempted to hide her affair from a singing teacher during her divorce case.
She has reportedly lost most of her payout on legal fees totalling £400,000, and on ill-advised property investments, succumbing to the current financial crisis in the housing market.
Carol Williams accepted the payout from her husband John in 2000, and was awarded £1.4 million. Three months after she accepted the money the House of Lords ruled that wives could receive larger payouts from their husband’s wealth, prompting Carol Williams to sue her divorce lawyers for poor advice. She says they should have warned her of the impending ruling. However they claim that she wanted a quick settlement and favoured the £1.4 million settlement offer.
Judge Justice Field stated:
Regrettably, I am obliged to record that I found Mrs Williams to be a profoundly unreliable witness.
Her evidence was self-serving, evasive and, on occasion, knowingly untruthful.
The evidence is overwhelming that Mrs Williams was determined to have a clean break from her husband who had controlled and humiliated her over many years.
In her eyes, her husband was ruthless and she knew that if she postponed the negotiations he would be furious and likely to fight her every inch of the way, a prospect she was very anxious to avoid.
Carol Williams invested £1.1 million from her settlement into buy-to-let properties; however they have all now been repossessed.
After weeks and months of rumours about their marriage failing, Madonna and her British film director husband Guy Ritchie have finally announced that they are getting divorced. This news has sparked the beginning of what is likely to be one of the most public divorce cases in celebrity history.
Two of the most high profile, and successful, divorce lawyers are lined up to go head to head on behalf of the couple, with Fiona Shackleton representing Madonna. Shackleton was the divorce lawyer who represented Sir Paul McCartney in his very public and very bitter divorce from Heather Mills, reducing his payout to just £24.3 million.
Representing Guy Ritchie will be Helen Ward. Ward acted for Beverley Charman, winning her £48 million when she divorced her husband, the insurance magnate John Charman in 2006. That win is thought to be the largest in UK history.
According to the legal firm’s website who Helen Ward works for:
Lady Ward specialises in family law, with emphasis on the financial consequences of the breakdown of relationships with particular expertise in cases involving substantial assets, complexity and an international element.
Where it is necessary she also deals with cases involving the resolution of disputes relating to the children.
This all leads to a very public and bitter legal showdown between the two that could run for some time, and prove to be very costly for both of them.
It’s common during a divorce case to argue over custody of the children, but in South Africa battles over custody of the pets are proving more common. Recently in the UK a woman won a divorce settlement that sure land £50,000 per year for the upkeep of her horses, and South African legal experts claim that settlements involving pets are becoming more and more frequent.
Billy Gundelfinger is a divorce lawyer in Johannesburg, he says that the arguments over pets can be the deciding factor in a divorce settlement.
I’ve had cases where that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, where they’ve settled the residency of the children, they’ve settled the finances, the antiques and the paintings, the cars and the holiday homes, and then they fight over the pet — and one of them says the whole deal is off, we’re going to court.
Gundelfinger also gave an example where a couple’s divorce hung in the balance as the two couldn’t agree over custody of their dog, a Staffordshire terrier. The couple were involved in a multi million pound divorce, and the dog proved the sticking point.
They both wanted the Staffie … we started the trial and then, in the tea break, I persuaded my client that this was absurd.
Fashion magazine Vogue has declared the divorce lawyer as the must have accessory this season. They conducted a survey of the hottest trends for the coming autumn season, and of the top forty, the divorce lawyer came in at number eleven.
Vogue usually tells its readers what they should be wearing and what they should be seeing, rather than whether they need a divorce or not. However, the fashion magazine declared that the divorce lawyer should be your new best friend in the wake of the current financial climate.
The new best friend, a good divorce lawyer, cometh the credit crunch, cometh the great settlement.
A family solicitor who works with a Wigan based law firm, Mandy Rimmer, says the findings from Vogue are a ‘sign of the times’ of the current situation in the UK, with couples arguing over finances and not being able to afford to make ends meet.
She states:
I’m not surprised our profession has made it onto Vogue’s ‘what’s hot’ barometer.
Unfortunately, relationship breakdowns are another fall-out from the credit crunch and I would expect to see an increase in divorces, particularly between people in high-pressured jobs, as it continues.
When couples divorce it’s more common than you’d think that one of the partners, usually the husband, attempts to conceal assets in order to avoid having to give them up during the settlement. They hide their assets, or undervalue them, in order to retain a larger portion of their money.
With this becoming more and more common, forensic accountants are starting to play a larger role in divorce cases in the UK. Recently, cases involving Sir Paul McCartney and footballer Ray Parlour have been in the spotlight, and have required forensic accountants to ensure that no money or assets were being diverted.
Forensic accountants even play a part in helping the CSA calculate the required payments for the parent with care.
David Liddell is a partner in an accountants firm, working as a forensic accountant. He says that usually it’s the husband that looks to hide their true wealth.
They are often the business-owning spouse, which gives them a greater opportunity to hide assets. Or perhaps men view divorce differently?
In such circumstances a forensic investigation could put the financial cheat at a disadvantage.
If you can reveal that an errant spouse has been hiding their true wealth he or she will face great difficulty in court.
If there was more transparency and trust during a divorce, the role of the forensic accountant wouldn’t be necessary.
When you’re going through divorce you’re sure to be offered advice from a great many people, from friends and family, to newspapers, magazines and even the Internet. Divorce is a hot topic at the moment, and opinions and advice are everywhere. It’s important though that wherever you get your advice from, you don’t act upon it without first getting genuine legal advice from a trained practitioner.
A website in Washington, USA, was offering legal advice for people going through their divorce, for anyone who wanted to spend $249. However, the website wasn’t run by anyone trained as a lawyer, so the legal advice they were offering was in violation of the law. The website was forced to cease offering its divorce advice service by the attorney general’s office.
Paula Selis, an assistant attorney general, stated:
Divorce Online could resume operating in Washington under the direction of a lawyer.
This shows that you can get advice on your divorce proceedings from a great many different sources, but if you want genuine advice that will stand you in good stead, you need to consult a qualified divorce lawyer.
Fiona Shackleton, who represented Sir Paul McCartney in his divorce from Heather Mills, has taken the title of the most high profile lawyer in the UK, according to a survey from Sweet & Maxwell.
She’s taken the title of most high profile lawyer from Anthony Julius, who represented Princes Diana during her divorce from Prince Charles.
Fiona Shackleton received the most press mentions in the last twelve months, totalling some 274 press cuttings. Julius fell from the top spot to fourth place with just 69 press cuttings in the past year, compared with 195 press cuttings in 2007. Julius acted as Heather Mills’ divorce lawyer at the beginning of her battle with Sir Paul McCartney.
The second most high profile lawyer in the UK in the past twelve months was Bruce Buck, from ‘Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom’. He attained 234 press cuttings, largely through his being the chairman of Chelsea FC.
Alina Lourie, the author of the report, claims that it shows the sort of issues that the UK public have interested in during the last twelve months.
While cases associated with high-profile public figures naturally receive a large slice of press coverage, the overall levels of press coverage devoted to lawyers represents the important role they play in shaping current affairs.
It may not come as much of a surprise to many, but sex has been revealed as the biggest factor in divorce. According to research conducted by a Bedfordshire based family law firm, sex between married couples has been identified as a factor in 43% of divorces.
Included in the reasons were infidelity or adultery, one partner using Internet based sex forums and cross-dressing!
Second on the list of common reasons for divorce, being a factor in 37% of divorce cases is lifestyle reasons. This included pressures of work and pressures in the home, such as moving home or matters to do with children.
Lisa Smith, a divorce lawyer, stated:
The squeeze of the current economic climate is definitely starting to have an effect and we would expect to see the number involving money issues continue to rise.
In particular, couples who perhaps enquired about how they might go about splitting assets and selling a house earlier in the year have now come back, wanting to move things along very quickly.
It will be interesting to carry out another survey in 12 months and see if these figures have changed though.
Out of the people polled, the reasons given for divorce were:
Sex - 43%
Lifestyle - 37%
Personality - 24%
Power - 21%
Money – 11%
Technology - 11%
