With a forensic accountant as an advisor, a client can be given a swift measured opinion. 

Here at Stowe Family Law we have our own in-house forensic accountancy department. It happened more by accident than design.

About four years ago, I had lunch with a partner at a well-known accountancy firm. I had encountered him professionally on a number of occasions, when he had acted for our clients and against them. I was impressed, as I knew local barristers were, by his sensible, moderate and economic approach. He didn’t waste time and money asking questions that made no difference to the outcome. He was good at giving evidence and his concise opinions were respected by the court. 

As we had lunch it dawned on both of us that we could work together, to offer a novel service to our family law clients that other firms did not. We shook hands there and then. This was how the accountant in question, Nick White, came to join us. It was as simple as that. I liked him, I trusted him and I trusted him to advise our clients. The arrangement has worked very well, and Nick White now heads our flourishing forensic accountancy team.

It means that when clients come to see us, there is no frustrating wait for financial information before we can advise on tactics. Instead, we can begin work immediately. This is particularly pertinent when we have to consider a freezing order (known as a Worldwide Mareva) against a client’s spouse. In such a case, time is of the essence.

With access to Companies House and global databases, Nick can download information, analyse it immediately and advise us where to concentrate our efforts. He can tell us if the client is likely to be chasing rainbows, or if there really is something worth looking at. He can provide immediate advice about the likely scale and nature of a case.

On occasions, a client’s understanding of a spouse’s financial situation does not match the reality. With a forensic accountant as an advisor, the client can be given a swift measured opinion at the first or second interview.

Similarly, our forensic accountants can provide advice about the likely value of a client’s business for the purpose of a divorce.  Continue reading »

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?

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