By Paul Taylor
IT is one of the perils of Marilyn Stowe’s job that she has awkward encounters with people she has, in the strictly legal sense, taken to the cleaners.

For instance, there was the day she was about to undergo an operation, met the anaesthetist and realised to her horror that she had just represented his wife in their divorce.

“I said `Hello, am I going to recover from this operation?’,” she recalls. Luckily, the two went on to become firm friends.

And there were the uncomfortable moments in a Leeds gym when she was recognised by prospective clients or by the bitter ex-spouses against whom she had acted.

“People were either coming up to me and saying `Can I just ask you a question?’ or saying (grimly) `It’s her’. It was awful so I left,” she says.

It was a public relations man, the disgruntled husband of a former client, who first referred to Stowe as `The Barracuda’.

“I was quite impressed really,” she says, happily embracing this free bit of PR. “I’ve been called a lot worse.”

In truth, the Barracuda tag does not fit.

Down-to-earth

Softly-spoken, down-to-earth and, as other journalists have observed, with a look of Celine Dion about her, Marilyn Stowe is a long way from the power-suited harridan that nickname suggests.

To read the rest of the interview, click here.

The examination of a solicitor’s file may be required if a fraud has come to light.

When financial cases are bitterly contested, there can be allegations of non disclosure and even fraud against spouses who disclose incomes and assets that are less than expected.

If the husband has supervised the family finances, his wife may know little about the couple’s overall financial standing. So if he is creative and anticipates a divorce, he may try and divest himself of assets in order to produce a relatively modest balance sheet. In such a situation, what can a wife do?

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 Using a “friend” as a spy is the height of sneakiness…

In case you missed it: click here for my earlier countdown of the Top Ten Dirty Divorce Tricks, numbers 10 to 6.

Here are numbers 5 to 1:

• 5. Spending money wildly, as a form of “payback”. Some spurned wives choose to take revenge by spending as much as they can on their husbands’ credit cards before the husbands realise what is going on. One client of mine with an Amex Centurion card received a credit card bill for £30,000 for jewellery purchased by his wife from Cartier. A further £20,000 had been taken off his card and to pay her lawyer’s bills. In such cases, the household bills may well be left unpaid. The court does have power to add back wasted monies, so all is not lost.

• 4. Assaulting the spouse and the new partner. This tends to prove much more satisfying if it takes place in public, thus causing the maximum possible embarrassment. I was involved with one case in which the wife was found to have hired a hitman against her husband. In another case, the wife threw a brick through the front window of her dentist husband’s surgery. This was a whammy in more ways than one as the glass shattered all over the practice nurse - also the husband’s new lover - who had been sitting at her desk by the window! Continue reading »

Covert operations to uncover your partner’s secrets

For certain people, divorce - or even the thought of divorce - brings their very worst qualities to the fore.

Divorce is an emotional rollercoaster. When people are really hurting, particularly if they have been “swapped” for somebody else, self-preservation becomes all-important. But for some, such a state of mind leads to all-consuming hatred, malice and a desire for vengeance.

After 25 years as a divorce solicitor, nothing surprises me anymore. Drawing upon my own experiences - some of them eye-opening - I have compiled a countdown of the top ten dirty divorce tricks. 

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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 »

A trust is an investment - so is sound advice.

Trusts are, without a doubt, bêtes noires for many family lawyers . A client attending a first meeting will expect clear answers, not waffle, particularly if he or she is the beneficiary of a trust.

Here at Stowe Family Law, we were recently visited by the barrister Simon Sugar. One of the specialist family law set at One Garden Court, London, he is the co-author of Unlocking Matrimonial Assets on Divorce, which I thoroughly recommend. We invited him to come here to speak about the content of his book, and to ensure that our lawyers’ specialist knowledge of various forms of trusts and offshore assets was sufficiently refreshed and updated.

Simon Sugar’s visit was arranged as part of Stowe Family Law’s in-house programme for Continuing Professional Development (CPD). This is prepared by one of our partners, Rachel Roberts, and is greatly valued by us all.

Every year we select a thorny subject and immerse ourselves within it. Last year, we chose cohabitation and the law. Professor Rebecca Bailey Harris, of 1 Hare Court, came to our Harrogate offices and gave a talk that was so clear and so straightforward, it’s a pity she didn’t publish it for the entire profession. It was brilliant.

This year, we have chosen trusts. Continue reading »

Cut the red tape: why won’t politicians help cohabiting couples?

I saw Baroness Thatcher on TV three times this weekend. I saw her twice on the Spitting Image reruns and laughed at the satirical takes on the absolute power she wielded over her fellow politicians. Then I saw her on the news, aged 82, leaving hospital. She was clearly very frail, but determined to walk unaided, despite her age and infirmity. Agree with her politics or not - and sometimes I did not - her spirit and fearlessness remain admirable.

Following last week’s debacle over cohabitation, I wish that our present leaders had such backbone! More than ever, I am convinced that in its dying years, our Government has become bogged down in red tape and paper-shuffling.

We have learned that the Government won’t be changing the law for cohabitants. Plans to do so are being held “in abeyance” while we wait and see how the Scots fare. This is because the Scots, who certainly don’t defer to opinions expressed in English media, have already changed their own law.

The message from Whitehall is, as usual, wrapped up in bureaucratic jargon and more red tape. Now taxpayers’ money is to be wasted on a futile “comparison” exercise; after that, I suppose, the subject will be quietly put to bed.

For goodness sake! Continue reading »

 We had a dilemma on our hands. Had the client’s former solicitor participated in a deliberate, criminal deception?

In my last post I mentioned the Solicitors Regulation Authority known as the SRA, which governs conduct amongst lawyers. The SRA requires lawyers to report any possible breaches of professional standards. Those who do not heed the reporting requirement can in certain circumstances also risk criminal proceedings.

I must confess, the SRA’s stipulations and its determination to ensure that my profession’s standards are upheld have been playing upon my mind. I have recently encountered a professional ethics problem that puzzles me profoundly.

My firm was instructed by a new female client to take over her divorce case. The divorce itself, including financial considerations, was being conducted abroad. The English solicitor previously appointed by the client, and with whom she had become “dissatisfied”, is a partner in a major firm. This lawyer had been coordinating the proceedings abroad and this is not uncommon in jurisdictional cases.

The husband was represented by solicitors in England who were also coordinating the overseas proceedings. Furthermore, both parties retained lawyers in the country in which the divorce was taking place.

When we took instructions from the wife, she instructed us that she was not wealthy at all. She enjoyed a modest income, and modest capital. It was a mystery why she had chosen to issue proceedings abroad, especially as she was having to pay two sets of expensive lawyers. However, the client was very determined. We began work.

However, shortly afterwards a couple of my colleagues were reading the files, which had arrived in pristine condition and very promptly from the previous solicitors. They informed me that we had a dilemma on our hands. This struck me as an understatement, once I had seen the files for myself.

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Legal aid lawyers deserve recognition for their high standards of practice.

In 1998 I became the first Chief Assessor and Examiner of the Law Society’s newly created Family Law Panel. It was not an appointment I had expected: I was female, living in the north of England and definitely not part of what I understood to be the small “Establishment” of mostly London-based solicitors, working for well-known firms.

I was thrilled to accept the role, and was given the task of heading up a new accreditation system for family lawyers, so that standards could be improved nationwide.

However, it was a far from easy start. Opposition to my appointment came from within “Establishment” ranks, which was an unpleasant introduction to life outside my cosy Yorkshire environs! But to their credit, the Law Society backed me. I met a group of very decent and dedicated people working behind the scenes, in the Law Society’s administrative offices in Redditch and London. My “Northern grit” came to the fore and I got stuck into the job with a vengeance! Continue reading »

In pursuit of his true identity, the farmer rejected his family and sex

I long ago concluded that divorce arises out of uncontrollable human instincts including self preservation, protection and survival. A person going through divorce, whether they admit it or not, is forced to think almost exclusively of what is in his or her best interests. Irrespective of all else - and by force of human nature - they are powerless to act otherwise.

Behaviour which occurs because we are innately flawed human beings makes decent people who wouldn’t otherwise dream of behaving badly to others, react inwardly and selfishly, in order to protect themselves. Some philosophers say we are born flawed. Others say we become flawed. Others still say our reactions are pre-destined and beyond our control as are the circumstances in which we find ourselves. They say we have no choice, no “free will”.

Personally I think we do make our own decisions, and we do have choices, but not as much as we might wish if we were all perfect - and we aren’t. Human instinct in a survival situation isn’t about continuing to hunt with the rest of the pack, meekly obeying custom and laws of society. It is about making private decisions to tackle the challenges we face alone, in order to best survive. In those circumstances our instincts say “to hell with the rest of the world”. That is why, not knowing how I would behave in their situation, I can never ‘blame’ a client for his or her choices, no matter the consequences to others caught in the cross fire.

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