Celebrity separations keep family law in the news

Two high profile separations, one definite and the other rumoured, have kept family lawyers in the headlines over the past week.

The definite split is that of Matt Lucas, star of Little Britain and Shooting Stars, from his civil partner of two years, Kevin McGee. This story is likely to be followed closely in the next few months as they are the first high profile civil partnership to split and observers are already speculating as to any settlement. It is thought that Matt Lucas has hired Mishcon de Reya. Most of the dailies have covered the story so here's a link to just one on The Independent website.

The other rumoured pending divorce is that of Madonna and the film director Guy Ritchie, of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels fame. This time is is rumoured that Fiona Shackleton, of Payne Hicks Beach, has been instructed by Madonna to reprise the role she performed for Sir Paul McCartney. The couple have been married since 2000 and first stab at the estimated wealth of Madonna is £300m. Quite surprisingly it is thought that no pre-marital agreement was signed. Again the story has been covered in all the nationals so this time here's a link to The Telegraph website.

A fund of information

The Ancillary Actuary has a useful post here referring to an seminar handout by John Buck of Tanfield Chambers on Pensions in Divorce. The handout can be downloaded through the blog.







Tom Tyler of 4 Brick Court Chambers has also provided a seminar handout about Pensions

Macca v Mucca

Heather breaks her silence!






The full judgment in the case is now up on the Family Law Week website.



Geek Lawyer has helpfully translated selected passages into plain English.



John Bolch selects the Judge's comment on Heather Mills' self-representation on the Family Lore blog and does the maths here .







Judith Middleton on her Divorce blog concludes that neither party can claim victory.









Marilyn Stowe aka the Barracuda on her blog considers neither party to have been realistic. Macca offered too little, Mucca asked for too much.

Pink Tape analyses the number of times the word 'unreasonable' appears in the judgment. See also her excellent post on Rex Judicata on custody of family pets.

The Press has had a field day. Typing in Mills McCartney to the Google news search reveals 3,529 articles and an awful lot of references to Money Can't Buy Me Love. The Google blog list is equally enormous.

Frances Gibb in the Times reports on Heather Mills' reaction to the publication of the judgment - tipping water over McCartney's lawyer and picks out the juicy bits from the judgment here as does Philippe Naughton who also reports on her rant outside court in which she claimed to have kept silent for 21 months. Another example of the gap between her view of the world and other people's as found by the Judge?

The Telegraph picks out the juicy bits here and has more to say about the water incident or as the Sun says she chucked Shaka.

The Guardian's take on it is written by Esther Addley.

Then there is the Mirror , the Mail &the Sun (lots of capitalised OUTRAGE & the opportunity to elect Mills or Burrell as the biggest liar).

And Heather herself: the judgment was outrageous and today she just wants to rest. Paul is keeping quiet. And that is the difference between them. She has her own website , by the way, but strangely enough it does not contain the text of the judgment.

Mid-life Crises or Affairs causing divorce? Chicken or Egg?

The Guardian reports on a survey of 100 leading divorce lawyers carried out by chartered accountants Grant Thornton on the reasons for divorce. Whether the cause was adultery (29%) or mid-life crisis (14%) the straying spouse or crisis sufferer was overwhelming likely to be the man (in 78% of adultery cases & 93% of mid-life crises).

Full service restored

I hope Family Law Week’s blog readers have been able to take advantage of the natural hiatus of Christmas and New Year to take some time off and get a proper break. I have to admit that the postings on the blog have been a little thin owing to my own absence in another jurisdiction. However, I am ever alert to family law issues, even on holiday, and was interested to read that in Australia, as in the UK (see this post on the Editorial blog ), the festive season is usually break rather than make for many struggling relationships. About 10 -20% of divorces in Australia are instigated in January or at least investigated (through an initial lawyer appointment – the peak month for issue is May), brought on no doubt by close proximity and the contrast between the fantasy of Christmas versus its reality. Just as in the UK there was much news coverage of D-Day as the Monday of the first full week back in the office after the Christmas break is known. Australian popstar Natalie Imbruglia led the trend announcing her prospective divorce on January 4th.

The trouble is, of course, that this is not altogether unwelcome news for family lawyers. Happy New Year, here’s my card ...

PS In my catching up on legal news, I was shocked to read about the Medley divorce case the Times of the iniquity of one man in Yorkshire in the throes of a marriage breakdown and which David Chaplin commented on in an earlier post . His wife, on discovering that the family home was in danger of repossession sold his personalised numberplate from the Ferrari. His revenge was to take and destroy one shoe from every pair she owned and destroy a large quantity of her clothes. And he had the cheek to appeal against his conviction for criminal damage. If he came up in front of me on a charge of messing with a woman’s shoes he would be lucky to escape with his life.

What should you look out for in a family mediator?

Picking up on other posts about the need to check out expert qualifications Are the Experts Expert?) (and see Chris Mc Watter’s article on Using the Web to Find an Expert), I also agree with the post on mediation on Divorce Solicitor’s blog that it can be difficult to know what to look for in this fairly unregulated area. I also wonder if one of the problems with in-court conciliation (see earlier post) is that those doing mediation work are not mediation trained. There are, however, things to look out for in evaluating the expertise of a mediator.

Anyone can practice as a private family law mediator and can have gone on any course by any provider (or indeed none at all). Mediators may also be qualified as lawyers, social workers or counsellors but this is not compulsory. The lack of regulation of mediators is not satisfactory as the quality of mediators in the private field varies from excellent to poor and is not regulated by a core professional body. However, in order to take on public funded cases they have to be approved to the LSC standard which is usually done by the following route. Mediators undertake a foundation mediation course by a provider accredited by the UK College of Family Mediators. There are five providers who run family mediation courses to the standards of the UK College of Family Mediators. These are National Family Mediation (NFM), Resolution, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), Hertfordshire Family Mediation and Key Mediation.

The foundation course usually contains five modules taken over the course of a year. The trainee must then complete a period of supervision taking cases from induction through to agreement and writing a portfolio relating core criteria to evidence from cases. On satisfactory completion of a portfolio it will be signed off by the supervisor and sent to the UK College of Family Mediators to be assessed. If passed, the mediator is deemed suitably qualified to undertake public funded mediations by the LSC. College membership, assessment and continuing professional development is specified as a requirement (except for members of the equivalent Law Society family mediation group) by the Legal Services Commission for family mediators who wish to work with publicly funded clients in England and Wales.

Therefore mediators accredited by the UK College of Family Mediators or who have completed a mediation course with one of the UK College’s approved providers and/or those who take on LSC mediations have been trained well. This does not mean that they are all excellent mediators nor that mediators without college approval do not do a good job but it is at least an assurance of a standard of basic and ongoing training and accreditation.