The family home, businesses, pensions, trusts, international issues...divorce finances can be daunting. By looking beyond the legal and taking a commercial, practical and creative approach, we make the complex understandable.
When you're facing a divorce, you need to know where you stand financially. You may be concerned about your immediate financial security or responsibilities, unclear on how to approach dividing up the family's assets or worried about what kind of financial settlement you might end up with.
Our nationally and internationally respected family team comes into its own when dealing with more complex and challenging financial issues. It's not just about understanding the law. We listen carefully to what you're telling us about your situation and how it's affecting you, so that we're clear on what matters most.
It's about keeping the bigger picture in mind. It's about doing everything we can to help you achieve your objectives while at the same time being honest and pragmatic. It's about not letting you down and keeping our promises. It's about protecting your interests, reducing conflict wherever possible and helping you find the right process and approach to getting the divorce finances settled.
A wide range of different financial issues come up when a family relationship breaks down. Some are obviously complex, such as offshore trusts or multinational business structures. Others can appear relatively straightforward at first glance but are in fact more complicated – public sector or final salary pensions for example. There can be serious implications if these aren't recognised and dealt with properly.
Whether we're negotiating on your behalf, representing you in court, facilitating discussions with your partner in mediation or collaborative meetings, or preparing a pre-nuptial agreement, we are adept at answering the most challenging legal questions.
We know that every family's situation is different but there are common themes in even complex cases. The fact that we'll probably have come across them before means you can be confident about our ability to find the best approach to take in your individual circumstances.
Some examples of our recent experience include:
- Negotiating a financial divorce settlement involving a buy to let property portfolio. Everything was agreed without court proceedings and transactions were timed to minimise tax, legal and accountancy fees.
- Preparing a pre-nup at short notice for a household name international sportsman. We worked closely with foreign family lawyers in our network to cover the position here and in his home country in Europe.
- Taking urgent action to prevent a family's wealth being moved offshore. The freezing order we obtained meant that the court was able to make and enforce a fair division of the matrimonial assets.
- Identifying complex issues with a high value NHS pension scheme. We worked in innovative ways with actuaries to maximise the benefits of the resulting pension sharing order for both of the divorcing couple.