Solicitor’s plea to use collaborative family law

A DUNDEE solicitor has advised couples heading for post-Christmas relationship difficulties to use collaborative family law to resolve their problems.

Jennifer Gallagher of Blackadders, a specialist in family law, was commenting as solicitors prepare for the anticipated surge in calls from people seeking to separate or even divorce.

Counselling services report they are most busy with requests for help from couples early in January.

The strife is often triggered by unrealistically high expectations of a happy Christmas.

“The principal aim is to reach a settlement without the involvement of the court, for two reasons,” she said.

“That can be prohibitively expensive; and the Scottish courts have a huge amount of discretion in deciding what amounts to a fair settlement, meaning it is possible to present the same facts to three different judges and get three different answers as to what is fair,” she said.

“Some family lawyers are specially trained in collaborative family law which follows an alternative to court through collaboration.

“One of several advantages is that rather than the lawyers writing back and forth and each client’s wishes becoming lost in translation, all discussions take place at four-way meetings.”