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Author Archives: Louise Barretto

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Parental alienation and disputes about children

August 27, 2021 Speech Box

Our colleague Louise Barretto, Head of our Family team was interviewed on Thursday this week on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, discussing parental alienation, a term growing in use and increasing in frequency in cases involving disputes about children. Parental Read more …

Healing from a divorce

August 3, 2021 Speech Box

An interesting article in Psychology Today suggests it takes 12 – 24 months for most people to heal from a divorce. Whilst I won’t disagree with that what I think is equally important is the quality of professional advice you Read more …

The Akhmedov v Akhmedova saga ends

July 27, 2021 Speech Box

Regular visitors to my blog Love, Life and the Law may recall the case in March 2018 of Akhmedov  v Akhmedova, understood to involve the couple at the centre of the highest divorce award ever made in an English court. Read more …

Over 65 and over your partner, fear not

July 27, 2021 Speech Box

Many of us are aware of retired couples who have decided to divorce from their long term spouses. It’s hardly surprising, as we are all living longer, as a rule, and whilst the state pension age is increasing so are Read more …

No fault divorces will not be introduced until 2022

July 8, 2021 Speech Box

The implementation of the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act will now come into force on April 6, 2022, not in October as the government had originally planned. I’ve written many times on this blog that the new no-fault law will Read more …

Should you time your divorce to make the most of your financial assets?

June 25, 2021 Speech Box

As I wrote here in January – contrary to many forecasts – the consequences of couples living together throughout lockdown period is that that the divorce rate is actually below the usual level compared with previous years. Ministry of Justice Read more …

Our out of date surrogacy laws are due an overhaul

June 18, 2021 Speech Box

Anyone watching the recent BBC 3 series ‘The Surrogates’ might be forgiven for thinking that surrogacy is a common way to form a family. In fact as the BBC reported in this article in 2019 in the UK the number of parental orders made Read more …

Is the Family Court failing to scrutinise the risk of harm to children in child arrangement cases?

June 8, 2021 Speech Box

I remain concerned, despite the spotlight that has been shone on issues of domestic abuse recently, that our Family Courts are still not properly airing the issues between the parents, which impact on child arrangements cases.  About 40% of cases Read more …

Mediation is a better alternative than ending up in court

June 1, 2021 Speech Box

“When I won the Golf Challenge in South Africa, I asked my wife if she’d like a designer dress or diamonds as a present?” But she said, ‘No, I want a divorce.’  “I said, ‘I wasn’t planning on spending that Read more …

Chinese government tries to lower divorce rates using a 30 day cooling off period

May 28, 2021 Speech Box

It was really interesting to read here about the introduction of a ‘cooling off’ period for couples wishing to divorce, in China. According to a new law the Communist Party of China introduced in January, Chinese couples looking to divorce Read more …

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