Lucy undertakes complex financial and children disputes. She has worked on a number of cases involving high net worth issues often involving an international element. This has included a number of high profile individuals. She has experience in financial cases involving foreign trusts. Lucy also advises clients considering entering into pre-nuptial agreements and co-habitation agreements and those seeking emergency injunctions. Lucy is Cypriot and fluent Greek speaker. She has had articles published in legal journals. She has also had experience dealing with the national media.
Lucy has been founder and Past chair Surrey Young Resolution and Co-ordinator of establishing Young Resolution groups across the country. She is a Member of Resolution’s National Membership Development Committee
Hannah Budd is an assistant solicitor at iFLG, working primarily with David Hodson and Punam Denley. She graduated in Law and Business Studies at Warwick University and worked at a large firm in Surrey before joining iFLG in January 2010. Hannah has experience of a wide range of family matters with a particular emphasis on resolving financial disputes.
Katie Harris specialises in law and psychology and is preparing for a doctorate in clinical psychology. She is a paralegal at iFLG.
More details can be found at http://iflg.uk.com/en/who-we-are/
Ann Thomas, managing partner of iFLG said: “We are so pleased that Lucy, Hannah and Katie have joined us. This will mean we will be able to provide even better work for our clients and we have lawyers at a wide range of charging rates and therefore provide more cost efficiency in our services”
]]>The conference is being arranged by the London Metropolitan University. Speakers and delegates are coming from across the world. They include leading academics, practitioners and judges. The conference is vitally important: with the dramatic increase in the number of international families travelling for work and other reasons across national borders, there are now many children for whom the laws of more than one country may apply, and often applied very unsatisfactory. Child abduction is on the increase. There are still very many countries who are not signatories to the Hague convention. Child relocation, when one parent wants to move abroad with the child, is always traumatic for the child and the so-called left behind parent. Laws about allowing child relocation differ dramatically across the world. England has led the way globally in tackling the appalling hardships and distress of forced marriages involving young adults and sometimes teenage children. Many of these problems can only be resolved by global consensus and co-working.
David Hodson is chairing one of the sessions and Ann Thomas and Carolynn Usher are speakers.
Further details of the conference can be found at http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/depts/lgir/centre-for-family-law-and-practice/inaugural-conference
Carolynn Usher commented “At iFLG, we undertake a significant amount of work looking after the interests of children of international families. There is much which can be accomplished for their best interests. Nevertheless there needs to be more co-operation worldwide and a better understanding of looking after the best interests of these international children. We are very pleased to be able to sponsor this conference and look forward hugely to the benefits it will provide for the future in this important area of family law.”
]]>On 1 September 2009, the entire family law team of Reynolds Porter Chamberlain LLP, led by Carolynn Usher, will be joining iFLG. Carolynn brings with her a team of specialist lawyers experienced in international work, both finance and children. Helen Blackburn and Lucy Greenwood join as partners along with paralegal, Stuart Clark, and their support team. Carolynn is one of the world’s leading international children lawyers, having been practising in this area for over 30 years. Chambers UK describes her: “A star in her own right, the hugely respected Carolynn Usher is “right at the pinnacle” of child abduction work”.
iFLG will then consist of 6 partners and consultants with 4 assistant lawyers (including 4 mediators, 3 collaborative lawyers and an arbitrator), undertaking specialist and complex family law work for national and international families and children.
Also on 1 September 2009, iFLG and leading Australian family law firm, Watts McCray, of Sydney, Canberra and Parramatta are delighted to announce their association.
Each firm has a worldwide acknowledged specialisation in family law work with an international element. The (non-exclusive) association will enable each firm to work more closely, quickly and efficiently for their clients in cross border cases. The two firms will be able to provide improved, combined specialist services to assist international families and their many clients with close connections between England and Australia. Each firm already receives many instructions from law firms in the other country and this association will allow them each to provide an even better service. They will share information on international and national family laws, collaborate on cross-border ADR, pool resources as required, and enable Anglo Australian exchanges of lawyers and support staff.
This is believed to be the first such arrangement between leading international family law practices in different continents.
Further details are in the attached media release
]]>The Review comprises leading lawyers, academics, policymakers and experts working with children. It saw over 150 consultees including senior judiciary and many interested parties and lobbying organisations, considered the law and procedure in other countries, took written evidence and two members travelled to Australia to investigate their Family Relationship Centres. David Hodson was chair of the Review.
Downloadable from this site (via our home page) are its final report, the executive summary and a separate document containing its full recommendations. Also downloadable is the speech by David Hodson at the launch and a Key Family Law Factsheet
More details of the Centre for Social Justice can be found at http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk
Some of the recommendations include:
The CSJ Family Law Review had produced an interim report in April 2009, European Family Law: Faster Divorce and Foreign Law This 24 page report looks to challenge the divorce trend that has been reinforced by the European Union. The paper looks at four major themes:
Whilst like most Court of Appeal ancillary relief decisions it relates to big money and relatively narrow facts, unlikely often to be repeated, in this instance the Court of Appeal has handed down a judgement to provide wider guidance. Moreover whilst the case itself concerned a pre-marriage agreement in the international dimension, the remarks by the judges were equally directed to purely national couples and agreements entered into in this country.
At paragraph 53 of the judgment Lord Justice Thorpe made the following statement: “in future cases broadly in line with the present case on the facts, the judge should give due weight to the marital property regime into which the parties freely entered. This is not to apply foreign law, nor is it to give effect to a contract foreign to English tradition. It is, in my judgment, a legitimate exercise of the very wide discretion that is conferred on the judges to achieve fairness between the parties to the ancillary relief proceedings.”
By reference to marital property regime in the international context there should also be construed the marital agreement regime in the national context i.e. what the parties agreed before and during the marriage in substitution for what might be the outcome of an adjudicated settlement at court on divorce.
This takes the law further towards support for marital agreements than even the observations in Crossley (2007) EWCA Civ 1491 in which the agreement was referred to as of “magnetic” and “paramount importance”.
David Hodson has written a published article explaining the background to the case, the present position in law and good practice guidance for practitioners
]]>Further details are given on the information pages
]]>Copies of the book can be obtained from Jordans or from iFLG.
]]>Jack Straw explained the reasons for announcing these changes:
“It is critical that family courts make the right decisions and the public have confidence they are doing so. A key part of building trust in the system is that people understand how it works.
At the same time, we must protect the privacy of children and families involved in family court cases so they are not identified or stigmatised by their community or friends.
These plans strike the right balance in providing a more open, transparent and accountable system while protecting children and families during a difficult and traumatic time in their lives.”
]]>Rome III is a draft legislation proposed by the European Union in mid 2006 intended to come into force across the European Union in March 2008 and requiring all European Union countries to adopt in divorce and ancillary financial matters not necessarily the law of the land, English law in England, but the law of the country with which the couple concerned in the family law proceedings had the closest connection. So a French couple living long-term in England would have their divorce and financial proceedings in England decided by an English judge and English lawyers applying French law. It would not be limited to the European Union families. An Australian couple or a Nigerian couple getting divorced in England where they have presently jurisdiction would have Australian or Nigerian law applied. This presents colossal problems in practice with knowing what is the relevant foreign law and how it would be applied in the particular circumstances of the case and differentiating between the law itself and the procedure.
News has been reaching us over the past couple of weeks that the draft legislation has been shelved by the European Union. This was first posted by the Law Society Brussels office which is invariably very reliable and follows closely the European Union developments. However there was no official confirmation. From our own inquiries, it has now been confirmed to us by a senior judicial source and a senior government source. Accordingly we decided that the time was right to post this information.
It is thoroughly to be welcomed. The proposed change would have had probably the greatest transformation on English family law for a century. It would greatly have added to the costs of resolving a case, added greatly to the delays of resolution and made it much more difficult to settle cases because of the uncertainty of what was the foreign law. We are very pleased. We have been campaigning against the introduction of applicable law for several years.
However other legislation coming from Europe also features applicable law yet this is legislation which is desperately needed, such as improved reciprocal enforcement of family law financial orders across Europe. We hope very much that a way can now be found to introduce this legislation without the necessity of also imposing applicable law.
We continue to urge the European Union law reformers to amend the jurisdictional provisions in Brussels II by creating a hierarchy of jurisdiction for divorce. This would show the country with the closest connection to the family and this country would then deal with the divorce and other family law proceedings. In such a way, the race to issue in Brussels II which is so hated and so contrary to the whole ethos of settlement orientated resolution and reconciliation opportunities, would no longer be required. Also applicable law would no longer be an issue as the country with the closest connection to the family would apply its own local law.
If you require any further information on this, please contact David Hodson at iFLG
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