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BUSINESS AS USUAL FOR LIVERPOOL LAW FIRM
Despite unique challenges during the pandemic, it’s business as usual for
JMW’s Head of Family Law Liverpool, Beverley Jones
Coronavirus is worrying, politically controversial, and relevant to
almost every aspect of our national life. Divorce is no exception.
Beverley Jones, partner at JMW’s Liverpool office, reflects on the
implications of the pandemic for family law and takes a look back
at almost half a year of “the new normal”.
How did lockdown affect divorcing couples at first?
It was pretty dramatic to be honest. When the lockdown was first
announced, many separated parents’ first thought was how on
earth they were going to manage children moving between their
households. We had lots of enquiries about this in the first few weeks.
Sadly, many affairs were also discovered during the initial few weeks
resulting in an increased number of enquiries regarding separation
and how to go about this during the pandemic.
Have couples who were part way through getting divorced been
able to make any progress?
You can still get divorced but we are finding that the paperwork
issued at the beginning of lockdown was taking a long time to
process. A new online divorce system has now helped with this and
bizarrely in some cases more recent paperwork submitted to the
Court is being returned quicker than those submitted during the
start of lockdown.
Negotiations are continuing in respect of financial settlements
and the Courts have adapted quite successfully to zoom/video and
telephone hearings, which have all worked well.
In some cases, parties’ financial situations are really uncertain right
now, particularly where businesses have been affected and this can
make it very difficult to make long-term financial decisions. It is
important in those cases that specialist advice is sought and at the
very least the interim (current position) is resolved until a long term
settlement can be reached.
What about couples who have already finalised their divorces?
It’s complicated. The whole point of getting a court order dealing
with finances – whether by agreement or after a court case – is to
achieve finality. Even then, a certain amount of flexibility is baked
into law. Maintenance orders can be varied upwards or downwards
in order to reflect changes of circumstance. For certain business
owners or employees in sectors heavily exposed to losses caused
by the crisis, incomes have reduced and this has a real impact on
people’s ability to pay.
Sadly, a minority will use the situation as an excuse to default on
payments and in those cases it is important to act quickly to restore
payments. However, there are situations where someone entitled to
a certain level of maintenance has had to face reality when the other
party are quite clearly on a reduced income.
There is also the possibility of individuals seeking to overturn
recent court orders that are not ordinarily variable: asset transfers,
scheduled lump sums and other capital provision. Precedents exist
for a minority of cases in which an unforeseen, unforeseeable event
after an order is made undermines it so fundamentally that the court
can alter it. This is known as a Barder-event, named after a 1980s
case where this happened. Previous recessions have been insufficient
to get the courts to budge but we think there will be a handful of
cases where the court may allow challenges like this.
If we were advising someone whose business had either failed or was
in trouble, seeking to vary an Order, our advice would be to tell the
truth and produce the relevant support. Similarly, if we were sitting
on the other side of the table and advising the payee, we would
be asking for full disclosure and would expect to see crystal clear
evidence before entering into any kind of dialogue.
How have you found it?
It’s been a baptism of fire getting used to a new way of working,
juggling parenthood and working from home. The remote court
hearings we have found to be extremely effective (save for Final
Hearings), in many cases avoiding a lot of unnecessary waiting time
and hence costs for the client. Zoom has also been a godsend and
it is business as usual as far as our clients are concerned, in saying
that we do really miss the face to face collaboration with clients and
colleagues that makes this job so rewarding.
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