Frank Arndt, the Head of our International Family Law Unit at Stowe Family Law, recently attended an international family law conference in Malaga, Spain. While he was there, Frank was interviewed by the editor of Sur in English – one of that region’s most popular English language publications – about expat divorce and “forum shopping”. The feature appears in today’s print edition.

SPOUSES WHO GO FORUM SHOPPING FOR DIVORCE

By Liz Parry

If you think your marriage may be on the rocks, think twice about moving to another country, says Frank Arndt

It is well known that two of the most stressful things in life are getting divorced, and moving house.

When the move is to a different country to start a new life in the sun with your partner, though, it seems reasonable to think that at least it is only the stress of moving you are going to face, and divorce is unlikely to be on the cards in the near future. But is this so? According to Frank Arndt, who was in Malaga last week for a meeting of Spanish and British lawyers, all may not be as it seems.

Frank, who works for the Stowe Family Law firm in the UK, specialises in transnational family litigation. Because laws and procedures vary so much from one country to another, some of the more wily would-be litigants, including those who are intent on getting divorced, are going “forum shopping” – filing the case in the jurisdiction most likely to find in their favour and getting a head start on the unsuspecting party. By way of illustration he describes the case of a wealthy man who lured his wife and children to live in South Africa and then divorced her and returned to the UK leaving her stranded thousands of miles away, with children who could not be moved. Continue reading »

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 »

In my experience there can sometimes be “darker motives” behind a permanent move to sunny climes.

The Institute of Family Policy has announced that across Europe, divorce rates are rising. The think-tank’s latest study, which is out today, has concluded that marriages here are breaking down at the rate of one every 30 seconds.

With one million couples divorcing every year, the number of people choosing to marry has fallen sharply: between 1980 and 2006, the marriage rate fell by 24 per cent.

However, my attention has been caught by a couple of statistics buried deep within the report.

Just four countries – Spain, Germany, Britain and France – account for 60 per cent of divorces in Europe. The three countries with the highest rates of divorce are Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg; there, two out of every three marriages are breaking down.

These are rather alarming figures – and it is interesting that Spain pops up on both these lists. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that this country had one of the lowest divorce rates in Europe.

To my mind, there are a number of reasons why. Firstly, the divorce rate in Spain has risen sharply since the government there introduced an “express divorce” bill in 2005, which has made divorces quick and easy to obtain. Secondly, I find that the popular view of Spain as a deeply conservative, religious country is outdated. Like its European neighbours, Spain has moved with the times – and the social stigma that was once bestowed upon divorced women has been significantly reduced.

One final reason springs to mind. My practice, Stowe Family Law, specialises in international family law. We have noticed that over the past few years, our number of expat clients – many of whom are based in Spain – has soared. Continue reading »

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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 »