The following article is well worth a look – www.thetimes.co.uk Living together and cohabiting is not the same as being married, and for unmarried couples even with children they are largely unprotected, if the partner dies or they split up. Millions of people live together just as if they were man and wife, but there is no marriage license. The solution is to sign a living together agreement. This can be done quickly and cheaply, and Hylton- Potts provide the service the £595 including VAT. It may seem unromantic, but unforeseen things can happen, such a serious injury and nobody can…
An Article in the Solicitors Journal 21 July 2015 www.solicitorsjournal.com is well worth a look. It is said that 1 in 8 of couples in the UK who live together are not married, both in different and same-sex relationships. The legal rules affecting living together are confusing. There is no such thing as a common-law wife, although in a survey 58% thought otherwise. When these relationships break down, the fallout can be significant, particularly when the couple have children. Hylton- Potts can help with problems like this. We operate from London offices but help clients all over the country at highly competitive…
An article in The Times 24th July 2015 page 7 www.thetimes.co.uk is well worth a look. If you worry about temptations facing your fiancée, after marriage consider a prenuptial contract with a fidelity clause. This means that if either partner is unfaithful they will lose much of their share of any divorce settlement. Rodney Hylton-Potts one of London’s most prominent divorce lawyers, said that adultery clauses were now a common feature of pre-nuptial agreements. They have yet to be upheld in British courts, however, and the idea of identifying fault in divorce cases runs counter to the trend in courts to…
No matter what anyone tells you, divorce is never as simple as you expect it to be. This is the case even when a couple is in complete agreement with each other that it is time to each go their separate ways, and even when there is no dispute over who gets what. That is an ideal divorce, and it still is very likely to be far more complicated than you would initially expect. When a couple parts on less-than-friendly terms, which is very often the case, the result can be far worse. Divorces are usually emotionally charged. Even though…
It seems that there are no other groups the government like to single out more than the jobless and low-income earners. This works because it is a proven publicity generator that pulls results. The problem is that much of the information reported in the news is just so much flim-flam and a classic case of misdirection and sleight-of-hand from the masters of illusion and deception, otherwise known as your elected officials. The unbelievable hype that is getting believed If you are a regular reader of our law blog – as indeed you should be if you want to stay up…
Just recently we featured a blog post about how the government’s austerity project is causing great financial losses and administrative problems to the health care industry through cuts to the NHS and higher education. In this follow-up article, we will discuss the problems that the cuts to Legal Aid are causing in the Family Law system. Soaring Numbers of Litigants-in-Person Cases Family Law courts are not traditionally a place where litigant-in-person matters arise. Usually those are found in small claims courts where the cost of legal representation would not always be worth the investment. Besides, in the past, Legal Aid…
The UK Government is rolling out a new benefits credit scheme called Universal Credits. This new scheme will merge six existing benefit payments into a single payment and rather than introducing the new scheme simultaneously across the nation, the decision has been made to do it district by district. Because there is still a lot of confusion over the new scheme, I’ve decided to outline the main points of it in this post. Anyone who is about to go through a divorce, or who has been previously divorced, should take special note of the final section which outlines some special…
This Solicitors Journal article is well worth a read for those whose marriage arrangements include a prenuptial agreement. Since the landmark Radmacher case there have been other court cases which have clarified how Radmacher is applied in practice. Luckwell v Limata In this case there was a prenuptial agreement where the parties had three children and the effect of the prenuptial agreement would leave the husband in a ‘predicament of real need’. The wife had an allowance of £81,000 p.a. and £7m of assets in her own name. The husband was on the minimum wage, and had no property. A…
When divorcing, a failure to make a complete and truthful statement of one’s financial circumstances when ordered to do so by the court can prove to be a costly mistake, as a wealthy man has found. The millionaire executive lied in an attempt to hide his true wealth from his wife in the midst of their bitter divorce. His reward for being economical with the truth was to be ordered to hand her the keys to their £2 million home, following a ruling of the Court of Appeal. The husband claimed that he had no interest in and derived no…
A woman who sued her ex-partner for a half share of his £500,000 home – on the basis that she and members of her family had put two years of toil into renovating the property before the relationship ended – has had her claim rejected by a judge. The woman had been ‘devastated’ when her boyfriend broke up with her four months after moving into his new home. There was no dispute that she and her relatives had worked hard restoring the property to a good state of repair and decoration in the belief that the couple would live there…
