We’re a practical, compassionate team of lawyers with a strong focus on the holistic practice of law. We don’t want you to just survive family breakdown. We want you to move forward in your life with confidence, and thrive.
Your initial conference is free of charge.
Our values are simple:
Everything we do for you is guided by our values, and our shared goal – you, thriving!
We help you navigate separation with confidence and understanding. A successful outcome might mean avoiding disruption to your business, or maintaining an amicable co-parenting relationship with your ex. We don’t want to charge you a fortune by dragging you through Court for months, we will always try to resolve disputes through negotiation and mediation where it is appropriate to do so. .
If negotiating isn’t an option, we have the skills and experience to navigate you through the family Court process efficiently and respectfully, without incurring unnecessary costs or delays.
It’s a common misconception that the starting point to dividing up property is 50/50. The starting point is actually “contributions”. The legal process to assess financial settlements are determined using a four-step process.
If you’ve already reached agreement, that’s fantastic!
When we’re talking about kids, a written parenting plan, signed both parents, might be all you need. However, parenting plans are not enforceable. If you need the confidence of knowing your agreement is enforceable, you can have your agreement made into Court Orders by filing an application and paying the filing fee.
For financial matters though, it can be a bit more tricky. For a financial agreement to be binding, you need to observe a lot of formalities, and both of you need independent legal advice. Each of you will spend upwards of $5,000 on legal fees for a private agreement.
The alternative is an application for Consent Orders, meaning, your agreement is lodged with the court as if you had skipped all the “objection!, overruled!” part, and gone straight to getting Court Orders. Only one of you needs a lawyer (although both getting some legal advice is better), and costs will be more like $3,000 – $4,000 depending on complexity.
In short, yes. Hiding assets (or debts) will only drive up your legal fees (see below), and damage your credibility and reliability with the Court. It will also further damage trust with your ex – which could make co-parenting more difficult.
However, if your financial disclosure might reveal personal information that makes you feel unsafe, we can redact or block out those details. If you’re worried your ex is going to become upset about something in your bank statement, or you have another reason you don’t want them to know, tell us about it anyway.
We can make sure that the financial information is sent with context to explain the background. If there’s money put away for tax – we’ll explain that. If it’s a loan from your family to help you through separation – we’ll make sure they understand.
You are in the right place… Welcome!
Here’s the truth. What costs you money is a lawyer’s time. The longer the negotiations are, the longer you take to produce financial disclosure, the more you put things off, the more it will cost. Here are our top three tips to save money on legal fees and wrap it up fast (and this should work with EVERY law firm).
