Family Law

In a divorce case with modest assets, financial matters will often focus primarily upon the matrimonial home. In a situation where the desire is to stretch one home into enough capital to buy two, or where one party wishes to purchase the other’s share in the home, the value of that home can be very […]

A Get is a divorce document which according to Jewish Law must be presented by a husband to the wife to enable the divorce to be recognised. Only the husband can obtain a Get. This can cause difficulties when a wife Petitions for a divorce but the husband refuses to obtain a Get. The wife […]

In 2010 Mrs McNicholas was divorced from her husband. During the financial proceedings information was obtained about the value of his pension. Mr McNicholas’s financial advisor wrote to Scottish Widows http://www.scottishwidows.co.uk/ requesting “a transfer value for divorce purposes” which is normal practice. In reply Scottish Widows stated that the value of his pension in relation […]

In October 2012 the Court of Appeal gave its decision in the Petrodel Resources v Prest  case. The companies had successfully appealed an earlier decision when the Wife was awarded £17.5 million upon her divorce. Moylan J had initially decided that he could make Orders directly against the Husband’s companies and Ordered that eleven London […]

For many years the Child Support Agency (CSA) have based their assessments upon the “non-resident parent” paying a percentage of their net income. That percentage has been 15% for one qualifying child, 20% if there are two children and 25% for three children or more. That figure is then reduced by 1/7th for each night […]

At the present time in the UK, whilst same-sex couples cannot marry they can enter into a civil partnership. Although in many ways this is similar to marriage in terms of the legal position, critics have long argued that marriage should be open to both same- sex as well as heterosexual couples. The Netherlands was […]

A report recently published by the Phoenix Group contains some interesting findings about the treatment of pensions on divorce. The findings suggest that: Only 6% of divorcees received a pension sharing or earmarking order as part of their divorce settlement 42% of women say that they were financially worse off after divorce After getting divorced […]

Around 14 million Britons are thought to regularly use social networking sites and Facebook is now said to have 1 Billion users. Therefore it is hardly surprising that the site is being blamed for a rising number of marital breakdowns One Solicitors firm has recently claimed that one in five petitions have cited Facebook using […]

Last Wednesday Mike Philpott was jailed for life by Mrs Justice Thirlwall after being convicted of the manslaughter of six of his children. Whilst many individuals, including the Chancellor George Osborne, have been sidetracked into considering whether the killings are connected to the welfare state, Mrs Justice Thirwell focused more on Mr Philpott’s history and […]

The Office for National Statistics report released 30 January 2013 shows that the number of UK residents living in a married household has declined 6% in ten years. The report also shows: Cohabiting couples increase by 2% Lone parent households increase by 1% The percentage of usual residents in households living in one person households in […]

Last night at 7:00pm it was announced that Government voted in favour of the Marriage (same Sex Couples) Bill. Yesterday’s vote took most of the day to decide but eventually it was approved by 400 votes to 175, a majority of 225. The Bill will allow same sex couples to enter into a marriage instead […]

Findings have recently been published by the Office for National Statistics which show that divorce rates, particularly for the over 60’s are on the increase . The results show that during 2011, 8.0% of males divorcing and 5.0% of females divorcing were aged 60 and over. This compares with just 4.6% of males and 2.6% […]