We charge any consultation with you or any other party connected with your matter either in person or on the phone on a time basis. Our hourly rates including GST are as follows:

* Accredited Family Law Specialist

Other work we do for you such as preparing, perusing and/or drafting documents, letters, faxes etc is charged in accordance with a scale and not necessarily in accordance with time spent. Full details of how we charge is set out in full in our client agreement.

We will require you to sign a client agreement after your first appointment and before we begin work for you after the first appointment.

We act for you on this basis:

1. Fees for consultations must be paid after the appointment on the day of your appointment. You will put money into our trust account to be held and used for fees and outlays when we request it
2. Outlays (i.e. filing fees, conduct money, title searches and agents' fees) will be paid by you before we incur the outlays.

Methods of Payment: cheque, cash, credit card, EFTPOS, direct debit into our account. The details of our bank account are:

We expect our accounts to be paid within seven days. If you fail to pay within seven days, we will stop work. Interest is charged on overdue accounts.

If you want to, you can do as much as you can for yourself eg. filling out Court forms and preparing statements. This helps to keep your costs down. Talk to us about what you can do to help yourself.

We require payment of at least $2,000.00 into our trust account at all times to cover future legal fees. We may ask you to pay more than $2,000.00 into trust at any one time depending on the complexity or urgency of your matter, eg if you want us to bring an application to the Court as a matter of urgency we will probably ask you for at least $10,000.00.

We know it is easier to pay a lot of smaller accounts rather than one big account at the end of the action. We will invoice you regularly to keep your costs manageable. We will ask you to pay for each appointment when you come into the office.

Each time we send you an account we will ask for additional monies to be paid into our trust account to cover future fees. Any monies held in our trust account will be deducted from your invoice. We will send you a trust account statement of account with every invoice so that you can keep track.

You may be eligible to make an application for finance through a litigation lender. Some of our clients have used Quantum or other litigation lenders to assist them with payment of their fees. We will be happy to send you a brochure about Quantum.

If you do not have a Will or if your Will does not say what you want it to, then please tell us when you make your first appointment. We will send you out a form in which you can give us your instructions to make your Will. Talk to us about this at your first appointment.