News/Blogs  

  Conscious Coupling: Age And The Continued Rise In Cohabitation  

Seven years ago, a new term entered into the vocabulary for those considering the language of relationships. The actress Gwyneth Paltrow described how her divorce from the Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin amounted to a “conscious uncoupling” (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2014/mar/26/conscious-uncoupling-gwyneth-paltrow-chris-martin-separation). Although, Ms Paltrow didn’t coin the phrase, she used it to explain how the pair – who […]

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  Age, Marriage And Mortgage: The Priorities Of Modern Couples  

Being in your twenties is, for many people, a time of excitement and adventure. It marks the decade in which a considerable number of men and women will perhaps have left university, found their first home away from fellow students or parents and started a career. However, it has also historically been a time of […]

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  Walking Through The Door: Coming To Terms With Divorce  

It is a myth that family lawyers like myself derive some pleasure from dealing with divorce. The idea that we might revel in often lengthy marriages falling apart is utterly incorrect. I would suggest that the reality is, in fact, the opposite. Given how stressful divorce can be, those who make it as simple as […]

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  The Mother Of The Bride Finally Makes Her Mark  

Politicians and the public rarely seem to agree on anything. There is one thing, however, which both will readily accept as fact; namely, that society moves quicker than the legislation which is applied to it. That’s been particularly true in recent decades. As my colleague Laura Guillon observed only last week in a ‘blog on […]

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  The Generation Game: Priorities, Peer Pressure and Mid-Life Marriage  

Married life, it is said, can be far from straightforward for some people. There are many factors, of course, why men and women sometimes find it difficult to adjust to their new status: – living together, sharing finances and having children, to name just a few. It’s something which becomes only too apparent if you’ve […]

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  TAKEN ON TRUST  

I’d imagine that most people would imagine that trust is a fundamental element of any successful relationship. Nevertheless, there are many marriages in which trust takes on both an abstract, emotional and a very real, financial dimension. This time last week I was at a fascinating event in Helsinki which examined the various circumstances in […]

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  A Good Time for Divorce?  

It’s perhaps hard to believe but, not too many decades ago, there was something of a stigma attached to divorce. Even in marriages which were experiencing difficulties, spouses often spoke of “staying together for the children”, as though they were conscious of the potential which their splitting up would have for sons and daughters. Now, […]

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