Family law expert Karen Atkins talks about financial settlements following a separation. Karen explains what a financial settlement is and how agreements can be reached.
Karen also considers the different types of orders available and what they include, the benefits of having a financial settlement worked on by a professional and how the specialists from Stephensons can assist.
For more information about how the family law solicitors at Stephensons can assist please click the link below alternatively call us on 0333 373 3760 and our team will be happy to help:
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*Karen Atkins is no longer part of the team at Stephensons but we are still able to assist with enquiries of this nature.
Video transcript
A financial settlement, effectively, is the way in which you share your assets once you've decided that you're going to separate. There's a number of ways of getting there. You can either reach an agreement yourselves at home or you can be assisted, for example, by mediation and you can go along and get some help from a mediator, or you can seek legal advice from solicitors.
We like to give advice on any settlements that come our way, just to make sure that the parties know what they're dealing with, that they've got all the correct information, and then we can help them draught the documents.
What sort of information needs to be given and how can I prepare for a financial settlement?
First of all, before someone starts trying to reach a financial settlement, they need to know what's in the pot, because a financial settlement, effectively, is how you're going to divide the pot. You can't do that unless you know what's in it. If you're doing it at home, you may already know what the other person has. If you go to mediation, the mediator will help you explore and perhaps produce documents to see that everything's been put on the table, and if you go and see a solicitor, solicitors will obviously need to know what there is so they can advise you properly about your entitlement to the assets.
What are the different types of orders and what do they include?
If you're looking for an order then you need to be in court, either by agreement or because you haven't been able to reach that agreement and you need the assistance of the judge. There's a range of orders that the court can make. Obviously there's statute and certain things that the court can do. They can make orders relating to property. They can sell it or they can transfer it to one of the parties. They can make orders for lump sums, so you can get some money. One person might get the money, one person might get the house, depending on what you want to do. Then there's orders about income, spousal maintenance, and lastly there's orders about pensions, about sharing your pensions. There's lots of different things that the court can order, and there's certainly lots of different things that you can agree as well.
What are the benefits of having a financial settlement worked on by a professional?
If you have an agreement, that's great, because obviously it's something that you've chosen to do. If you have someone look over the agreement, it may be that in actual fact you can't do what you want to do. You might not know how the pot should be divided or how it can be divided. Solicitors will just make sure that you have all the information and all the documents that you need to enable you to reach a settlement.
Drafting an order is quite technical. The court do provide precedence to assist you if you want to do it yourself, but drafting a document is quite difficult, and solicitors obviously have a lot of practise and a lot of experience in relation to that, and they can tell you the best way in which to put into place what you've actually agreed.
How can Stephensons help?
Here at Stephensons, we've been dealing with this kind of thing for many, many years. The length and breadth of our experience is considerable in relation to preparing these kinds of documents. I've been practising for 20 plus years and we have experience of the local courts. More importantly now, we also have experience of courts who aren't in our area. When we're in court, that tends to be when a settlement hasn't been reached by agreement between the parties and we can see what the courts have taken into consideration, if there's any recent law, we're obviously up to date with all of that.
In addition to our experience, what we also want is the best for our clients. We want to make sure that they walk away happy with what they have managed to achieve.
