Family Law Collaborative Divorce Blog : Bath Divorce Solicitors : Sharp Family Law : UK Collaborative Law & Family Mediation : Bristol, Swindon & Southern England

BBC News reports today that both marriage and divorce can trigger weight gain. This is the finding of research being presented at the American Sociological Association. Their study of 10,071 people from 1986 to 2008 showed that there is an increased risk of piling on the pounds in the two years after a marriage starts or ends.

Newly-divorced women and men had between 21% and 22% increased risk of a small weight gain after divorce. The report concludes: "All marital transitions act as a weight shock, encouraging small weight gains regardless of the destination marital state."

In my practice as a family and divorce solicitor in Bath and Bristol, UK, I witness clients, going through the significant transitions brought about by divorce, including stressing over having to find alternative accommodation, stretching finite finances resources, and strained contact with friends and families. Divorce is one of the most intense stressors and it can lead to disturbed sleep, reduced exercise and poor diet

To try and reduce those personal, financial and legal stresses, I encourage clients to consider choosing a non-adversarial approach to divorce, like Collaborative Practice or Family Mediation. Not only might that approach help them achieve reasoned settlements but it could be healthier for them, than a positional, adversarial Divorce Court hearing.

But away from the Divorce Court clients still need to be good to themselves. In her article Nine Tips for Taking Care of Yourself During and After Divorce, Cathy Meyer relationship coach and divorce mediator encourages clients to see their doctor regularly, take vitamins, get regular exercise and plenty of sleep, let off steam, change the scenery, practice good hygiene as well as eating a good diet. All perhaps obvious actions but quickly and easily forgotten or ignored in times of significant life transitions.

As the research above highlights a divorce can stretch waistlines. But by taking care of oneself, by focusing on keeping active and healthy, by choosing a constructive process like collaborative practice that focuses on settlement and reduces conflict, it is possible to minimise the damaging effects of divorce and move on with life without too many extra pounds.

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I am excited to be able to announce the expansion of our professional services to clients in Bath and Bristol.

Clare Webb, a specialist family lawyer, has joined the Firm. She will advise and assist those going through the changes brought about by family and relationship breakdowns.

She shares with me the commitment to help clients reach an early resolution of issues and avoid the prolonged conflict of court proceedings.

Clare’s puts great emphasis on providing an exceptional, individually tailored and client-focused service to those experiencing one of the most difficult and emotional times in their lives. Clare believes it is integral that her client feels in control and yet supported by a lawyer who will respect them, listen to what they say and act in their best interest. Above all Clare wants her clients to come out of the process with their heads held high and with a result, both personal and financial, that they and their family as a whole can accept and live with.

To contact Clare email her at clare@sharpfamilylaw.com or telephone her on 01225 448955

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‘Tis the time for New Year’s resolutions. Our perennial attempt to lose weight, pay off debt, quit smoking, become organised and spend less time at work.

For divorcing and divorced couples, one of the best New Year resolutions you can make is to resolve conflict with your ex-spouse or partner. Dealing with a difficult ex can be very discouraging, frustrating and defeating. Your efforts to minimise conflict may not be returned. Attempts to foster a working relationship with the ex, for “the sake of the children”, may prove a thankless task.

“..the rewards for you ...and your children can be significant”

But the rewards for you and in particular your relationship with your children can be significant. What parents do during and after a separation or divorce – how they parent, how they handle their emotions, how they relate to each other and work together – is the key to their children’s resilience in coping with their parent’s separation or divorce. Research has shown that it is not the divorce but the way you divorce that impacts children

The following five tips may help you to minimise if not resolve that conflict with your ex.

1. Try and respect your ex-spouse/partner and his/her household - find ways of being respectful rather than resentful. Do not personally criticize them, but don’t make excuses for their behavior either.

2. Do not allow financial issues to control your behavior – Live with the agreement reached or the order handed down by a Judge that has addressed financial arrangements. Do not let your attitude towards it, after the fact, taint your relationship with your ex or your children. If you came to an agreement with your ex, live up to that agreement. If you have a court order, follow that order. No amount of anger over financial issues is worth contaminating your relationship with your ex or your children.

3. Work at forgiving - Hurt feelings from the past is the number one reason you and your ex overreact with one another. Do your part by striving to forgive for the offenses of the past and present. This will help you manage your emotions when dealing with your ex in the present. It also helps cut down on the degree of stress you will have during and after the divorce.

4. Find Common Ground - This good business principle applies to parenting as well. Even if you disagree with the main point, find some common ground and work from there. Be willing to see the situation from your ex’s perspective and to give a little instead of taking much. You may no longer be married but the concept of give and take is still very important.

5. Put your children first - You may find it hard to even be around your ex but making the needs of your children your main priority will help establish the kind of relationship that benefits them. And parents who manage to put their children first will minimise the effect of separation and divorce on their children.

Therefore, resolve not to argue in front of children, use them as a sounding board, bad-mouth to them about the other parent, or make them in any way part of the divorce. Resolve to do what it takes to improve the quality of your parenting relationship by communicating and interacting as best as you can with your ex.

And if there is ongoing conflict, be sure to notice your own role in it. Effort on your part to build a new and productive relationship with your ex will help all involved in the healing process and to move forward with their lives.

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Walking away from an argument can be a warning sign of divorce.

This is the finding of researchers at the University of Michigan after evaluating how 373 couples resolved conflicts.After 16 years, 48% of the couples had split – and a strong predictor of divorce was the tendency of one partner to withdraw during an argument while the other tried to discuss the situation even calmly. Study author Kira Birditt Ph.D. is stated in Men’s Health to have said that leaving the scene can be viewed by the other person as a lack of investment in the relationship, not as a way to cool down.

Unless checked, the communication gap that led to a failed marriage can also lead to a litigious divorce.

Rarely as a specialist family law solicitor in Bath and Bristol have I seen a litigation process help parties communicate better. Nor have I seen it encourage settlement discussions between them until late in the day and often only at the door of the court. Even then communication and negotiation are invariably undertaken out of fear of the pending courtroom showdown or the uncertain judgment outcome.

There is virtually nothing about most litigation processes that help parties feel remotely relaxed and safe, nor wanting to get together to create a problem solving environment. Instead the adversarial attitude and mentality polarizes parties making settlement more difficult to achieve.

A goal of the Collaborative Divorce process is to create an environment in which couples can feel comfortable remaining together within it, able to communicate all issues between them, and reach solutions that work for them. It does this by:

• Encouraging participants to commit to civil, respectful and constructive communications. Just having them stated in the process helps defuse past and present emotions.
• Focusing solely on settlement from the outset. The collaborative divorce process helps parties increase the chances that they will reach that settlement
• Involving communication facilitators, including divorce coaches and family consultants. The support provided by them can often help avoid or overcome impasses and help redirect conflict away from the individual and at the problem to be resolved

The Collaborative Divorce process is not appropriate for all divorcing couples and certainly will not guarantee better communication between them thereafter. However, for couples who have had difficulty communicating during the marriage and want to avoid prolonged conflict thereafter the Collaborative Divorce can provide a less destructive process.

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Screens will be filled once again this Christmas with stories of love in all its various guises and on a multitude of levels. The 2003 Christmas film “Love Actually” followed eight very different couples as they dealt with their love lives in various loosely and interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London.

The film argued quite rightly that there is a great deal of love in our world including Bath, London and Wisconsin. But the film also reminded us that not everyone gets a Merry Christmas. A single present plucked from under the tree changes a life forever. A wedding video that shows only close-ups of the bride’s face reveals a hopeless passion.

A few years ago RELATE the relationship people, commissioned a NOP survey that revealed that Britons value their relationships above all else at Christmas. Yet, the experience of many family lawyers is an increase in calls for advice and assistance in connection with broken relationships during January and beyond – after the season of goodwill, when many hopes of togetherness and fulfillment have been dashed.

The same NOP survey claimed that 73% of us rate “spending time with family and loved ones” as the most important aspect of the Christmas holiday. But, the closeness we hope for does not just appear under the tree on Christmas Day. Our good intentions of talking more and spending time together often get pushed aside by the stresses and strains that is the modern Christmas.

The NOP survey found that Britons nationwide find “buying the right present” the most difficult Christmas task, with 59% saying they found it stressful. Other Christmas time stress induces were “spending too much money” – 54% with 39% of the population getting stressed about “not being able to spend enough time with family”. Worrying about buying the right present seems to be more of a problem for women, then men and spending too much money is again a female and young person’s thing. Other issues cited as causes of stress during Christmas were “people drinking too much”, “too much cooking and cleaning”, “children’s demands for expensive presents” and “having the in-laws to dinner or stay”.

Therefore, now is perhaps the time to prepare for Christmas by considering for a moment what we want our relationships to be. Talking it over with the people we love, exploring hopes and expectations, looking at what works and what doesn’t. In addition to buying the turkey, decorating the Christmas tree and wrapping the presents, think about 

• What your family might want to get out of Christmas this year,
• Recognise how each member of your family is changing and discuss and plan how you all want to spend Christmas together.
• Talk about how the time will be spent, make an effort to understand the position of others.
• Talk realistically and well in advance of Christmas about spending.
• If someone has planned a surprise for you, appreciate the effort and thought behind it.

The aging rock star in Love Actually recognised in time for Christmas the value of the relationship that he had and the importance of expressing Love. All personal relationships need to be worked at especially at Christmas. 

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Pop singer, Cheryl Cole’s divorce from her England football husband Ashley was finalised last week. Earlier this summer, National Newspapers reported that it would be “clean, swift, amicable and smooth”. And yet the divorce papers filed on her behalf were said to cite the reason for the breakup of the marriage as being Ashley Cole's "unreasonable behaviour".

If Cheryl truly wanted an amicable and smooth divorce, Ashley may have wondered why irreconcilable differences or the like wasn’t cited as the reason for the divorce. Few like to be accused of behaving so badly that their partner cannot ‘reasonably’ be expected to live with them.

Divorce in England & Wales is based on a marriage having "broken down irretrievably”

Every so often, at my family law practice in Bath & Bristol, I am approached by clients who say they want a divorce based on "irreconcilable differences". They are in an unhappy marriage and just want to bring it to an end. I explain that it is not possible to obtain a divorce based on "irreconcilable differences" in the divorce courts of England and Wales.

Divorce in England & Wales is based on a marriage having "broken down irretrievably ". But there is a complication. This breakdown must be proved by evidencing only one of five "facts" laid down by the law. They are Adultery, Unreasonable Behaviour, Desertion, Two years’ separation with consent and Five years’ separation without consent.

Three of these methods of proof - Desertion, Two (with consent) and Five years’ separation - involve a considerable period of delay (at least two years) before a divorce is possible at all. Similarly, adultery can only be relied upon if it too has taken place. As the latest published figures (2008) from the Office of National Statistics on divorce rates in England & Wales show, this means unreasonable behaviour is the method of choice for most couples in cases where no adultery can be proved and a divorce is wanted sooner rather than later. Not a new revelation but one that has again encouraged family law practitioners to call for reform to the current divorce law

I recently worked with a husband from Bath who was separating from his wife. They had decided their marriage had irretrievably broken down. To help them work through the legal, financial and practical issues arising from their decision, they adopted the dispute resolution process known as Collaborative Law Practice. At a face to face meeting between them, her collaborative family solicitor and I, we discussed how to prove that the marriage had irretrievably broken down for the purposes of a divorce. The lawyers helped the husband and the wife together draft allegations of the unreasonable behaviour that were not unnecessarily confrontational and yet fulfilled the requirements of a District Judge sitting in the Bath Divorce Court. A task not so easily done at a distance

Despite the apparent fault based divorce process, the approach of collaborative law enabled this divorcing couple to meet their goal and achieve an amicable divorce.

My practice, at Sharp Family Law in Bath and Bristol, is devoted to helping separating and divorcing couples to find creative solutions to their issues, which with the help and support of the required professional at an affordable cost, are crafted by them - and not the divorce courts. For a free copy of “A Client’s Guide to Collaborative Divorce” contact me, Richard Sharp on +44 (0)1225 870336 or email me at richard@sharpfamilylaw.com

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Pop singer, Cheryl Cole’s divorce from her England football husband Ashley would be “clean, swift, amicable and smooth” reported The Sun Newspaper at the end of May. And yet the divorce papers filed on her behalf were said to cite the reason for the breakup of the marriage as being Ashley Cole's "unreasonable behaviour".

if Cheryl truly wanted an amicable and smooth divorce, Ashley may have wondered why irreconcilable differences or the like wasn’t cited as the reason for the divorce. Few like to be accused of behaving so badly that their partner cannot ‘reasonably’ be expected to live with them. 

Every so often, at my family law practice in Bath & Bristol, I am approached by clients who say they want a divorce based on "irreconcilable differences". They are in an unhappy marriage and just want to bring it to an end. I explain that it is not possible to obtain a divorce based on "irreconcilable differences" in the divorce courts of England and Wales.

Divorce in England & Wales is based on a marriage having "broken down irretrievably ". But there is a complication. This breakdown must be proved by evidencing only one of five "facts" laid down by the law - Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. They are Adultery, Unreasonable Behaviour, Desertion, Two years’ separation with consent and Five years’ separation without consent.

Three of these methods of proof - Desertion, Two (with consent) and Five years’ separation - involve a considerable period of delay (at least two years) before a divorce is possible at all. Similarly, adultery can only be relied upon if it to has taken place. This means unreasonable behaviour is the method of choice for most couples in cases where no adultery can be proved and a divorce is wanted sooner rather than later.

I recently worked with a husband from Bath who was separating from his wife. They had decided their marriage had irretrievably broken down. To help them work through the legal, financial and  practical issues arising from their decision, they adopted the dispute resolution process known as Collaborative Law Practice. At a face to face meeting between them, her collaborative family solicitor and I, we discussed how to prove that the marriage had irretrievably broken down for the purposes of a divorce 

The lawyers helped the husband and the wife together draft allegations of the unreasonable behaviour that were not unnecessarily confrontational and yet fulfilled the requirements of a District Judge sitting in the Bath Divorce Court. A task not so easily done at a distance

Despite the apparent fault based process, the collaborative law process enabled this divorcing couple to meet their goal and achieve an amicable divorce. I am interested in hearing how others have dealt with meeting the criteria for "Unreasonable Behaviour" AND achieve an amicable divorce

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In the U.S. State of Maryland, the court may currently grant an absolute divorce on the ground of adultery, desertion, insanity, cruelty of treatment, excessively vicious conduct, 2 year separation and voluntary separation for one year. Now Montgomery County Delegate Luiz Simmons wants to add to this list, couples who go a year without having sex. The argument being that forcing couples to live apart for a period places a challenging financial burden upon them “especially if both parties must live in places large enough to accommodate children”

If enacted, the change in the law would enable couples to remain under the same roof during the one year wait for a divorce provided throughout they abstained from sex with each other.

The argument that divorcing couples should not have to live apart beyond any short “cooling off” period before being granted a divorce is not restricted to those across the pond. Last week the Office of National Statistics published the latest figures (2008) on divorce rates in England & Wales. Amongst the findings was that behaviour yet again was relied on the most to prove that a marriage had broken down irretrievably (the single ground for a divorce in England & Wales).

With adultery being the next common factor relied on, the majority of those wanting a divorce decided in 2008 to place the blame for the breakup of their marriage on their spouse. This they did by filing a petition or application for divorce based on allegations of unreasonable behaviour or adultery to prove the irretrievable break down of the marriage rather than wait at least two years to secure a divorce.

Not a new revelation but one that has again encouraged family law practitioners to call for reform to the current divorce law. Resolution is backing a system that would enable couples to divorce within a matter of months, without the need to attribute blame.

It has been argued that a two year cooling off period (in the absence of fault) protects the institution of marriage from quickie divorces or the easy divorce from couples who have merely drifted apart. But as divorcees will know, there is nothing easy about divorce. It is hard work and frequently an extremely demanding and painful experience riddled with complications way beyond the reason for the marriage break down.

As I work with separating and divorcing clients who frequently just want to maintain their self respect and dignity, secure a fair financial settlement, do what is best for their children in the circumstances, amicably resolve differences with their partner and move on with their lives, a divorce process that is fault based can be unnecessarily confrontational and out of step with the direction clients are moving towards. The time for a change has come.

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Daily Mail Newspaper began January 2010 with “Divorce Day heralds rising toll of marital strife in 2010” as a headline on the 4^th January 2010, quoting the website divorce-online.co.uk as saying that the general divorce rate would rise by 2% in 2010 with the recession taking most of the blame. It has ended the month with the headline “Divorce rate falls to 35 year low” on 29^th January 2010.

Confused? More couples do traditionally decide to divorce in the UK during the month of January than during any other month in the year, but the latest figures, published by the Office for National Statistics during the past week, show that fewer couples ended their marriages in 2008 than in any year since the divorce boom of the 1970’s.

Will 2010 be the year that bucks the falling divorce rate trend of recent years as divorce-online.co.uk predicts?. Will divorce levels rise in 2010 as a result of the strains and stresses added to marriages by the recession?. Much may depend on the relationship support that is available and offered to help couples work through their issues and decide whether staying together is an option to be explored.

In their recent article Divorce rate lowest for 29 years, the BBC quote Claire Tyler, chief executive of Relate as saying "Relationship support works, with 80% of respondents to a Relate survey, who wanted to keep their relationship together, stating they felt counselling helped to strengthen their relationship. Independent research also showed we know that 50% of separated people said they felt there were things they could have done to prevent their break-up, and they wished they'd done more."

Recently, I was approached by a Bath couple who wanted my help with the issues surrounding what they thought was their pending separation. They were anxious to find a non-contentious process as they feared a fall out between them would adversely affect their 3 year old son. That fear of how best to co- parent after parting opened an opportunity to refer my client, the husband, to Chris Mills a family consultant based in Bath. Specializing in supporting divorcing and separating couples to understand and manage the complex emotional dynamics of their separation, Chris was able to help the husband look at his situation and relationship with his wife. A few days later I received the following email

“My wife and I are going to remortgage and stay in our home. It is thanks to your caring and knowledgeable service. I cannot thank you enough”

The wand that encourages marital reconciliation may not always be available nor work its magic but as the BBC reported in their article more marriages might be saved with with the involvement of th right professional. In the About Section of this blog are listed two mental health professionals who have been accredited by Resolution to work in the specialized field of divorce and separation.  

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