How a powerful partnership helps separating couples manage vital challenges
By Jones Myers Partner, Nicki Mitchell, and Gary O’Brien, Ardent Financial Planning
Following a relationship breakdown, separating couples face multiple challenges which can seem extremely daunting.
When walking into a solicitor’s office, or appearing for the first time on a screen, heads are full of anxiety about numerous issues, often jumbled together.
It is the role of highly experienced family lawyers like Jones Myers to disentangle those anxieties, work out what we can do anything about – and give clients a plan to get through it.
There are three key challenges facing separating couples:
- Managing the emotional aspects around the changes in their key relationships;
- Disentangling their finances;
- Understanding and working within the legalities of divorce and financial arrangements.
Our role as trusted family lawyers and financial planning professionals is to help clients understand and manage the potential long-term financial and emotional consequences of any decisions they make.
Jones Myers’ locations include York where we launched a vibrant collaborative community of professionals in 2005.
Over the last two decades this long-standing collaboration has enabled us to support families to achieve long term resolution of financial and emotional issues arising from separation more effectively than litigation (going to court) or endless solicitors’ correspondence.
We collaborate by drawing on the skillsets of professionals including lawyers, Independent Financial Advisors (IFAs), mediators and coaches who are best suited to provide support for the three key challenges.
In developing our ‘best practice’ to provide the best possible support for our clients we have taken inspiration and learning from professionals elsewhere in England and Melbourne in Australia.
This collaborative process is effective and straightforward. When we receive an enquiry, we ask the prospective client if they would be prepared to work with their soon to be ex as part of a team to reach an agreed settlement that provides the right bespoke support and works for them both going forward.
We explore with our clients the potential impact of short-term decisions on the long-term future of themselves, their children and their wider family, help to identify what matters most to them and help them to focus on future stability and peace and avoid positions and “quick wins”.
We find that the interaction between a family lawyer and an IFA is particularly advantageous for our clients.
Working impartially in the couple’s joint interests, an IFA focuses on the financial realities such as how cashflow plans enable clients to understand the long-term outcomes of different settlement options and the impact of their decisions on their future long-term peace and security.
The neutral, transparent, and co-operative nature of the collaborative process promotes a spirit of cooperation, reduces suspicion – and brings long lasting benefits.
We have seen time and again how, after attending an initial meeting feeling bewildered, our clients leave with a sense of confidence that they can start to look to the future.
A consultant surgeon, who took part in our first collaborative team case said: “It has been a pleasure working with a group of people who all take their professions as seriously as I take mine.”
Since 2005, these words have been echoed by dozens of separating couples who, thanks to this process, have seen their way through the fog of anxiety and embraced the next chapter of their lives.
The full version of this article, commissioned by family law group, Resolution, can be found in this link
For queries on any aspect of family law, call Jones Myers at Leeds 0113 246 0055, Harrogate 01423 276104, or York 01904 202550. Visit www.jonesmyers.co.uk, email info@jonesmyers.co.uk or tweet @helpwithdivorce
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About Nicki Mitchell
With over three decades of experience in family law, Nicki specialises in the financial aspects of relationship breakdown – and particularly complex cases involving family businesses, multiple properties, and complicated pension arrangements.
A skilled Mediator, Child Inclusive Mediator and Collaborative Family Lawyer, Nicki champions Alternative Dispute Resolution processes which avoid a lengthy court process and can lead much more quickly and cost effectively to a successful resolution.
Her exceptional track record also includes advising clients on the more traditional methods of resolving issues surrounding family breakdowns. Nicki.mitchell@jonesmyers.co.uk
About Gary Ardent
Gary is one of the founding directors of Ardent Financial Planning, helping to set the firm up in 2006. He is a Chartered Financial Planner with over 35 years of experience in financial services. His professional passion is to help people to organise their finances and their future. His time at work is split between guiding clients towards their chosen future lifestyle, whilst helping to run the business. For more information, visit https://ardentuk.com/