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Avoiding Delays and Unnecessary Complications

Family law can be a relatively easy experience or a relatively difficult and expensive one (see Family Law Basics). One of the things that can have an important influence on this is delay and the resulting unnecessary complications that can be associated with that delay.

The reference above to delay includes anything that delays resolving a family law matter in a reliable way (see Reliable Agreements under Avoiding Common Misunderstandings).

At first interview, we provide all clients with a list of (smaller) problems that can be associated with delay. The list includes things associated with confusion or unnecessary argument or the need to re-assess or re-calculate following changes in financial circumstances, the potential pitfalls of advice from well-meaning friends and a number of other practical and legal problems. Each of those problems tends to make a solicitor’s job more difficult. Anything that makes a family law solicitor’s job more difficult can make a client’s life more stressful and more expensive.

Delay in family law can also lead to larger and more obvious problems. Examples include:

  1. people who have informally resolved their matter only to find those arrangements unreliable after winning the lottery or inheriting substantial assets or working hard to accumulate further assets; and
     
  2. instances where matters not resolved in a reliable way re-emerge in the courtroom after (up to) thirty-five or thirty-six years.

As a general rule, aiming to reliably resolve a family law matter as quickly as possible will also provide a more efficient and cost-effective overall result.