At Armstrong Family Law, I often receive enquiries from people who are looking for a solicitor who can do their will for them or deal with the conveyancing to buy or sell their home. Unfortunately, I have to turn this potential new business away.
Armstrong Family Law is a specialist family solicitor’s law firm. Unlike larger firms that have family lawyers, but also have other lawyers handling property work, civil litigation, criminal cases, wills and probate and so on, Armstrong Family Law just does family law.
Many people who hear that I am a family lawyer assume that this means that I must do all sorts of things that relate to a family, such as preparing wills or obtaining probate to deal with a late relative’s estate, or to get Powers of Attorney for their parents. They also often think that I can handle conveyancing work.
This is an understandable confusion. To a lay person, I am sure that these things must sound like family law. The confusion is not helped by the weird and wonderful names that other solicitors give to their areas of practice. For example, wills and probate solicitors now tend to describe themselves as Private Client lawyers; I have also thought that so vague as description as to be meaningless to a non-lawyer. A private client after all is anyone who is not a public body or a corporation or business of some type; it does not seem to have anything specifically to do with wills and probate work.
Another example is civil litigation. This work covers disputes between individuals, businesses, charities and government department, often resolved through court proceedings in the County Court or High Court (i.e. the civil courts), unlike criminal work which is handled in the Magistrates Court and Crown Court. However, describing this type of work as civil litigation is increasingly old-fashioned; more and more civil litigation departments call themselves Dispute Resolution departments. This is at least a more accurate description of what they do than private client solicitors use, albeit that (at the risk of sounding cynical and perhaps being unfair to my civil colleagues), it often seems to me as family lawyer that civil litigators are very aggressive and more interested in the fight than the resolution of the dispute. Civil litigation is essentially retrospective in nature; it is usually about obtaining redress for a past wrong, such as a personal injury, an unpaid debt, a breach of contract etc. Family litigation is more about the future. We try not to get bogged down in worrying about whose fault it all is and instead concentrate on sorting out a couple’s future. Good family lawyers will try to help clients put their children’s needs first wherever possible and will be conscious of the importance of using non-confrontational approaches and alternatives to court such as negotiation, mediation, collaborative law and arbitration, which are more likely to result in a couple being able to exit their relationship with dignity and on good terms.
Solicitors who specialise in family law used to be known as matrimonial lawyers; the focus of our work was divorce and the resulting disputes about finances and children. However, this is now regarded as very old-fashioned; it ignores the reality that with every passing year, more and more of our clientele have never married. In 1996, when I began practising family law and was admitted as a solicitor, 1.5 million couples cohabited, rather than being married. This rose by 144% to 3.6 million in 2021. 22% of couples who live together nowadays are cohabiting, rather than being married or in a civil partnership. We therefore now prefer to call what we do family law.
Unmarried couples are more likely to split up than married ones. Their disputes still need to be resolved; not being married doesn’t avoid the potential for arguments about children, money and property. Regrettably, successive governments have failed to reform cohabitation law in in relation to financial and property issues, often for fear that providing a better and fairer way to resolve these disputes that actually meets unmarried people’s needs might somehow weaken the institution of marriage. There has been no change to the legislation dealing with these issues since the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996 (TOLATA), which is a woefully inadequate piece of law. Yet, in that time the number of cohabiting couples has more than doubled. Clearly the current law is not encouraging people to marry, so arguing that reform will damage marriage is illogical.
One of the problems with the current law is that TOLATA is not family law; it’s actually civil law and claims for orders for the sale of a property must therefore be brought in the County Court or High Court, not in the Family Court. However, it is simultaneously possible to also apply for financial provision for a couple’s children by making an application to the Family Court under the Children Act 1989, Schedule 1. Such applications have to be dealt with at the same time, which makes sense, but is also a legal absurdity. It means that the two applications are proceeding in two different courts, (albeit that the same judge will deal with both issues at the same time). Why family TOLATA cases have not been redesignated as family law so that they can be dealt with in the Family Court, using the much more sensible family procedures, is beyond me. It should only require secondary legislation to do so, (usually passed without difficulty in parliament) and would only change the procedure used to resolve these disputes. It wouldn’t involve the more contentious problem of actually changing the law about what unmarried couples can be expect to receive.
Other work has to often be turned away as the potential new client has assumed that because I am a solicitor, then I must do all types of law. I get enquiries about criminal cases, immigration issues, boundary disputes, debt claims and all manner of other legal problems that I cannot help people with. These potential new clients have presumably not checked my website to see what areas of work I cover.
Again, I can understand that confusion. If you feel ill and go to see a doctor who is a GP, you expect that doctor to be able to tell you what is wrong and to treat you, or failing that, to refer you to a specialist if it is more serious. Solicitors tend to be much more specialised. Larger law firms probably have someone who covers the area of work that relates to your problem, but a boutique law firm like Armstrong Family Law just specialises in family. I therefore give those people the name of another law firm that might be able to help them.
People who have little understanding or experience of the law (which is probably most people) often fail to appreciate what a vast subject it is. It is as if they think that there is a big book called “The Law”, containing all of the law and which we solicitors know like the back of our hands. However, the law is gigantic, far larger than any person could ever entirely know. It covers every aspect of human life, from before birth until death and afterwards.
I recall the law firm where I trained and qualified had a bookcase in the boardroom, on which sat Halsbury’s Laws of England, a vast multi-volume work covering every area of the law of England and Wales. Each volume was at least two inches thick. I suspect that not many law firms purchase the print edition these days as it must be eye-wateringly expensive; most subscribers probably only use the online version now. A quick check online tells me that the current print edition of Halsbury’s Laws of England contains 98 volumes. And of course, even that whole set doesn’t contain all of the law; it merely contains a summary of it. After 27 years of specialising in family law, I am able to tell you that I am an expert on two thirds of just one of those volumes.
So, what does Armstrong Family Law do?
- Divorces
- Dissolutions of civil partnerships
- Separation (married and unmarried)
- Judicial separation proceedings
- Financial disputes in divorce and dissolution cases
- Advising and negotiating in financial and property disputes between unmarried couples (strictly spelling this is civil law, albeit in a family context)
- Representation in family arbitrations
- Application for financial provision for children under Children Act 1989, Schedule 1
- Disputes between private individuals about their arrangements for children
- Legal advice in family mediation
- Collaborative law
- Domestic violence and abuse cases
- Change of name deeds
There are areas of family work that I do not cover. The most obvious type would be public law children cases. These are cases whether social services are so concerned about the risk to a child that the local authority commences an application for a care order, so that the child may be removed from his or her parents’ care. This is a very specialist area of work and most family lawyers do not handle it.
I also do not handle legal aid work. Like most solicitors, I gave up the work as it paid so poorly, I could not break even, let alone make a reasonable profit. In any event, nowadays most people do not qualify no matter how low their income., unless they are victims of domestic violence or abuse.
If you are look for a solicitor, the first step should be to check out that solicitor’s website. This will help you to not just find a good solicitor, but also to check that he or she actually does the type of work that you need.
18 February 2023
If you would like to arrange a consultation, please telephone Armstrong Family Law on 01206 848426 or click here