On Friday I enjoyed the company of family lawyers from around Europe. We had gathered in Paris for the opening of the law firm Cabinet CBBC (formerly the Cabinet Veronique Chauveau). With so many of us gathered in one place, the talk turned to family law – and how we are separated by our respective countries’ laws, customs and conventions.

Within the European Union, transnational family law does not operate as smoothly as one might reasonably expect, despite the determination to create a genuine area of freedom, security and justice whereby decisions taken in one member state are recognised and enforced throughout the EU.  Member states operate different divorce laws for its citizens, which may vary dramatically in other member countries. When litigants in member states look – understandably – for the smoothest way out of their domestic tangles, they can come a cropper.

It was a stylish and memorable evening (pictured above: with CBBC partner Alexandre Boiche and others). When I arrived at CBBC there were more than 100 people drinking champagne and attacking the buffet. The firm is located in the heart of Paris on Boulevard de Sébastapol, across three floors in a beautiful building just across from the courts on the Île de la Cité, next to Notre Dame Cathedral. I plunged straight in with my terrible French, which fortunately didn’t last too long, because most people took pity on me and spoke English!

I chatted to German lawyers from Stuttgart and Saarbrucken. I had a conversation with a French professor of law about French divorce law; there were diplomats present with an interest in child abduction cases.

Talking, it became clear that we continue to be divided and exercised by the laws that appear, vanish or change whenever a border is crossed. For example, Paris isn’t London. We don’t have a Civil Code; we have statute law and conventions of judge-made law.  La Manche divides us geographically (even if there is a tunnel underneath) but there is an economic, cultural and social divide that is reflected in our different law, practice and procedure. Continue reading »

Stowe Family Law’s head of international family law, Frank Arndt, features in today’s Times Law ‘Water Cooler.’ His comments on proposals to reform EU divorce law highlight a pertinent issue for many of our clients – what to do when you divorce across borders.

From The Times:

Forum-shopping for the best European country for a divorce may become even more complex – with proposals just announced by the UK to harmonise the law affecting the 170,000 couples involved in cross-border EU divorces each year. New draft regulations would allow couples to choose the member state where they want to divorce, if they have other defined links with it, such as place of marriage, usual domicile, nationality or they were last resident there.

The proposal provides for both spouses to be informed of their rights to stop the choice of forum creating a disadvantage for the weaker member of a couple. The commission’s draft has run into opposition from Sweden; it needs unanimous approval to become EU law. At least nine countries (France, Italy, Spain, Romania, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Slovenia and Luxembourg) have agreed to use what is called “enhanced co-operation” on the issue, enabling them to go ahead on their own.

Frank Arndt, head of international family work at Stowe Family Law, said: “This is a split, not a harmonisation. Current EU law in this area is a dog’s dinner of contradictions, absurdities and injustices. The country in which divorce proceedings are filed is of huge significance . . . and can have a dramatic bearing on the eventual settlement.”

To read the full ‘Water Cooler’, click here.

Frank Arndt heads the International Law Department at Stowe Family Law

Our International Law Department receives a steady stream of enquiries from popular ex-pat destinations such as France, Spain, Switzerland and Australia. Some callers wish to know if they can issue divorce proceedings in England. As I have noted previously, many wives have good reason to file here if possible, because the financial settlements can be advantageous. Other clients seek qualified advice about the various legal avenues available to them, drawing upon our firm’s expertise in cross-border divorce, asset protection and our network of international legal contacts.

The department is headed by Frank Arndt, who speaks a number of languages fluently and has higher rights of audience in the Federal Court in Germany. He is a member of the International Society of Family Law and the International Bar Association.

Frank recently wrote an article for the online magazine Expatica, which is packed with useful information and has been well-received. In it, he details the “ten essential pieces of advice that should be followed by any ex-pat parent facing the challenge of family breakdown”.

I have copied the piece in full below. If any overseas readers have enquiries or comments, please use the comments section or the confidential contact form – I will forward all queries. Continue reading »

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwu1gKdAvmA[/youtube]

Could she have had a second bite of the cherry?

Clearly, Heather Mills was distraught when she stood on the steps of the Royal Courts of Justice and ranted about her award, the judgment and her treatment at the hands of the English court.

There are those in her camp who argue that the judgment was an extraordinarily cruel dissection of her crude attempts to present her case as a litigant in person, against the man who is arguably the best matrimonial finance barrister in the country. Quite why Heather Mills chose such a course of action is a mystery. But choose it she did, notwithstanding the fact that at present, a major criticism of English law in this area is that no-one can say with absolute certainty what the parameters are for settlements in short marriage, “big money” cases. There are so many possibilities. And so I wondered if, despite all the vitriol aimed at Heather, she has actually been an innocent victim of very unclear law?

When I read the judgment and noticed that the parties owned homes abroad, I wondered hypothetically what her position might have been if the facts had changed a little. What if Sir Paul McCartney, instead of being a homegrown superstar, had been a superstar in a foreign country?

If he had divorced her in that country in order to protect his financial position, knowing that the law of that country was much more favourable to him than elsewhere, and she had received only the tiniest fraction of his wealth, could she have come back to England and tried again? Could the courts – the same courts that made this week’s judgment – allowed her a second bite of the cherry and awarded her more?

Continue reading »

Happy New Year – I hope your holiday was relatively stress-free. For some it was not, people wrote to me from abroad for advice about issuing divorce proceedings in England given their respective links with England, such as British nationality, education, owning a property in England etc. It is a growing problem and highlights the increase in the trend of ‘forum shopping’ where globe trotting couples seek a divorce in the most financially advantageous country.

I think it is a problem that should be legally resolved between the parties before the marriage is permitted to take place. Leaving the decision until a divorce is about to happen with the parties living anywhere in the world can create enormous legal headaches for both of them – and enormous legal costs alongside.

In most cases wives have very good reason to file in England because financial settlements may be better for wives than elsewhere. Maintenance payments for example, may not be available elsewhere. It is also possible to search more extensively into the spouse’s finances in England compared to other countries.

Continue reading »