At Platts Solicitors we have specialist solicitors to deal with Family law. We pride ourselves on providing clear and coherent advice and will provide you with straight-forward legal advice on the implications of your situation.

Family Law covers from divorce proceedings and children’s matters to cohabitation and international family matters.

When a relationship breaks down there are always complicated issues that need to be addressed, especially involving custody and contact with children.

The different areas:

• Marriage and civil partnership – if you plan to get married or enter into a civil partnership, you may need or want to make certain legal arrangements beforehand. For example, a prenuptial agreement that protects your finances and property in case of separation. If the relationship breaks down, the agreement will outline who should get what and how assets should be divided.
• Cohabitation – this refers to couples who live together but aren’t married, and who want to lay out what should happen to property and assets if they should split up. This is called a cohabitation agreement, and it is similar to a prenuptial agreement. Crucially, it protects the rights of unmarried couples, especially those who have been in a relationship for a long time and have many shared assets.
• Divorce – the breakdown of a relationship is when many people need expert legal advice the most. It takes skill and experience to navigate the process of legal separation, to negotiate for a fair settlement and make all the required arrangements to the satisfaction of all parties. If your divorce involves a partner who lives in another country, the case can easily become complicated. In these cases, expert help is needed from a specialist in international divorce law.
• Domestic violence – if you have experienced domestic violence, legal advice is essential during this most difficult of times to keep you and your children safe.
  
  

Property Rights

When a relationship ends, you and your partner will need to sort out how assets such as property will be divided between you. Inevitably, this can lead to disputes over who owns what.

Children

Legal issues affecting children include:

• Parental responsibility– this refers to the legal rights, duties and responsibilities a parent has for a child, as well as property the child owns. If you want to have a say in the important decisions in your child’s life, from where they go to school and where they live, you will need to establish parental responsibility. Birth mothers have automatic parental responsibility, while the situation can vary when it comes to fathers.
• Child custody (arrangements) – Where children will live, who will look after them and how child arrangements will be split or shared are all matters that need to be decided for the good of the children.
• Children’s rights – if a couple splits up, the rights of their children need to be protected and upheld in just the same way as their parents.
• Child protection – when steps are taken to safeguard a child from harm, the courts are often involved. This is why a family law specialist is needed, to help protect the child’s rights, represent the parent and navigate the family towards a positive outcome.
• Adoption – this process can be drawn out and complicated, causing a lot of frustration for people who simply want to welcome a new member to their family.

For expert legal advice please contact Platts Solicitors on 0161 834 3114 or 0161 626 4955, out of hours number 07977 40 20 20.

Mediation

Mediation is a way of resolving disputes. It is a technique that can often be used in family and civil cases to save a lot of money and avoid going to court, particularly if used early on in a dispute and intelligently.

Mediation is a process whereby individuals involved in a dispute can decide to discuss their dispute in calm way with and through a Mediator. Qualified Mediators have specialist training and qualifications to help communications between the people on different sides of a dispute so that they can focus on the core issues in dispute, rather than the powerful emotions that often keep disputes going.

Parties in dispute with each other do not even have to enter the same room as the other side in a Mediation if they do not want to and can still resolve their dispute by reaching an agreement that they can live with, rather than having to continue to live with a life-sapping dispute and all the anxiety and disruption that feed a festering dispute.    

A Mediator is not a judge or arbitrator who makes a decision which the parties are required to live with. A Mediator does not decide who is right or wrong. The mediator is not even allowed to give the parties legal advice. Instead, a mediator stays neutral, listens to the issues that are keeping a dispute going and helps the parties work out for themselves how the dispute can be resolved to a satisfactory settlement.

Whatever the subject matter of a dispute (typically family, inheritance, business fall-out, small claim and workplace disputes are resolved by Mediation) the techniques of Mediation can be applied. In fact, increasingly, in the Family and Civil courts the judges require parties to attempt mediation (sometimes ADR – Alternative Dispute Resolution – is referred to) before listing a case for a final hearing! And so it is even better to try to avoid the costs of litigation and court fees by mediating before a court gets involved with a dispute.

The massive advantage of Mediation is that, whatever a dispute is about, once the parties have decided to mediate, the prospects reaching a mediated settlement is very real. Many mediations are deal with successfully in one working day, and those that do not usually resolve within a few days of the mediation.

In terms of saving stress, energy and legal costs, Mediation is a “no brainer”.

Platts Solicitors can help you mediate your dispute by finding a qualified and experienced Mediator and organising a Mediation meeting and by providing a Mediation Advocate to assist you at a mediation, support you through the process and advise you of how the mediation process compares to the likely outcome of the dispute if you went to Court instead.

Finally, in the rare event that Mediation is not successful, there will be nothing stopping you going to court. Mediation is just another option, but one which generally works.