DATE: 26 MAY 2010

Hosted by: Selena James, Solicitor of Pippa Colman & Associates

Preparation of documents

There are many ways you can reduce your solicitors' fees by assisting us with document preparation.

Court forms

We find that the majority of our clients have the capacity to complete court forms. This can result in significant savings to you. The following forms are available either online at www.familylawcourts.gov.au or we can provide you with a Word version:

• Form 11 Application for Consent Orders;
• Application for Divorce;
• Financial Statement; and
• Affidavits.

If you are going to complete or partially complete these forms to save costs, please ensure you use a Word version of the document and email the completed document to us. If you are going to draft your Affidavit, please allow us to provide you with a structure/list of details required.

We recommend that you leave the drafting of the Terms of Settlement to us. Alternatively, it will be helpful if you provide us with the list of the assets and liabilities of both parties and then two lists, one of what you are to keep and the other of what the other party is to keep. That will help us draft the Terms of Settlement.

Chronology

It is very useful if, early in the piece, indeed before your first appointment, you can complete a chronology of major events, in particular financial events, that have happened during the relationship. Prepare this in a table with headings, eg:

You should include the following information:

• dates of birth of the parties and their children,
• date of cohabitation,
• date of marriage,
• date of separation,
• a list of the asset and liabilities at cohabitation
• dates of any significant financial transactions including windfalls during the relationship and post separation;
• dates of any change to employment;
• details of any health crisis/issues
• dates of any critical events that have occurred post separation eg sale of assets
• a list of the assets and liabilities at separation
• a list of the assets and liabilities now

Prepare this in a Word document and email to us.

This document is very useful to help us assess the contributions and Section 75(2) factors (eg age, health, income earning capacity, support of children etc). It is also required if your matter is taken to a trial and can be of great assistance to both us and other mediators, barristers or other professionals who will assist with your matter.

Documents index

You will be asked throughout your case to provide various documents.

It is extremely useful if you have sorted these documents prior to delivering them to us. Sort in date order from oldest to most recent. Sort in relation to categories, eg the home, the investment property, the car, the superannuation, bank accounts.

You can also prepare a documents index to go with the documents you have provided to us, as you add to this and provide us with further documents, provide us with an updated index.

The index should look as follows:

Photocopying

You are charged for any photocopying that we do for your file. If you are in a position to photocopy documents yourself you can save these costs. Before you bring in original documents arrange a photocopy for our file.

Court Matters

There are some court appearances that you may feel comfortable in attending on your own. These include:

Divorce

Mentions for Domestic Violence matters.

We can talk you through the process and explain what to expect and what to ask for. You then will save the time we would normally charge in attending court on your behalf.

If you are finding that your ex-partner's attitude/conduct is running up your legal costs because they are constantly contacting us, you can request that we go "off the record" so that all correspondence is directed to you. (This is most common when your ex decides to act for themselves). You can then sort through these documents and provide us with the relevant information that you would like us to deal with/advise you about.

Communication

You are charged on a time basis for phone calls and personal attendances. It can be useful to prepare an agenda or list of questions and send this through to us by email prior to your appointment or prior to our phone calls. This will keep the appointment on track, hence keeping costs to a minimum. It will also ensure that all of the matters that you want to discuss with us are dealt with in the one call.

Support staff

Your solicitor will always have a personal assistant and other support staff who are working with them on your file. In most instances the PA or other support staff will have a fairly good idea of what is happening in relation to your case. PAs have a much lower charge out rate than your solicitor so if your question can be answered by them you have saved costs because your solicitor has not had to deal with this enquiry. The PA will pass the information on to the solicitor.

Please bear in mind PAs cannot provide you with legal advice, but they are particularly useful if you have questions about:

Appointments – what to expect, what to bring with you, whether you can bring someone with you etc;

whether documents or responses have been received from other parties;

the progress of your file;

account enquiries.

Counselling and mediation

There are a number of counselling and mediation and other professional services available to assist separating couples in both property and parenting matters.

These include:

• Lifeline,
• Family Relationships Centre,
• Relationships Australia,
• Centacare,
• private counsellors,
• psychologists
• private mediators.

There are free services and services available at minimal cost. We can refer you to these various services. These services can assist you firstly, to deal the emotional side of your separation and secondly, to narrow the issues in dispute between yourself and your ex-partner. You may even resolve the whole matter at mediation/counselling and then only need our assistance in perfecting an order or agreement to document the outcome.

Counselling

We recommend that all separated parties attend some post separation counselling. This is not relationship counselling with the aim of getting you back together; but to assist you in working through your feelings of loss and grief and moving towards a constructive separation.

Counselling can be a valuable resource that you should utilise for the following reasons:

- Going through a separation is a highly emotional time, you need someone qualified to provide you with advice about how to deal with these emotions and to provide you with strategies to move forward.

- Counsellors are usually cheaper than solicitors. We are not qualified counsellors and therefore we cannot provide you with this type of advice. We will endeavour to ensure that while you are with us you focus on legal issues rather than emotional issues.

- You will generally reach settlement quicker (hence reducing your legal fees) if you are in a rational and stable frame of mind. We need you to make commercial decisions about your property settlement; it is often very difficult to do this whilst you are still consumed with the emotional aspects of your separation.

- If you are not emotionally ready to sever the financial ties with your ex it makes it very difficult from a negotiation perspective – eg usually alters the bargaining position and sometimes can drag out the negotiations.

Mediation

Mediation services early on in the separation process are beneficial to helping you reach a solution to your property settlement and parenting arrangements or to at least narrow the issues.

Anything you can do to narrow the issues in dispute, or resolve your matter without legal intervention, will reduce your legal costs.

If you have not tried any form of mediation then we will almost always recommend you do this before commencing any form of court action. We can coach you through this process eg so far as expectations are concerned and we can be available by phone if you need us, we will also help you finalise any agreement reached at mediation so that it is made legally binding.

Advice from third parties – friends, new partners, non-legal persons

If you want to reduce your legal fees please do not take legal advice from your friends or other people you know who are not lawyers.

Use these people for support only. If a person is not qualified in the area of family law they can do you more harm than good by creating unrealistic and uninformed perceptions of what the final outcome should be.

This will more often than not result in increased legal fees because these new ideas/perceptions may add "fuel to the fire" and increase rather than narrow the issues in dispute – which means MORE WORK and MORE LEGAL FEES. If we need to spend your time and money readjusting your perceptions this will increase, not decrease your legal fees.

Remember that each case is unique in its individual circumstances. For this reason there is not a set formula about who gets what. Any application to the court requires the court to exercise "judicial discretion". Therefore we will not give you a precise answer but will indicate the range of possible outcomes. We will modify our advice as we receive more information from you.

Irrational and emotive behaviour

It is inevitable that at some point during your separation your ex will do something which will really annoy you.

If this happens please call us or your counsellor, or a sensible friend. Don't retaliate. When these things happen you will feel angry or emotional and whilst it may feel good at the time to retaliate by doing things like writing highly emotive emails or texts, damaging his/her property, contacting his new partner, sending a large friend over to deal with your former partner etc... this conduct can be extremely damaging to your case. Find some way of "venting" that will not directly affect your case eg call a friend and cry and scream or both, or take up boxing, or take a walk on the beach......

It does not look good to have to explain such conduct in your Affidavits and it does not create a positive impression to the court. It will however create a flurry of correspondence and angry phone calls and probably be mentioned in a trial Affidavit and take up time at court.

Making concessions

Please remember that your property pool is what it is. We can't, nor can the courts, give you anymore than the total property pool.

The notion of separating that total pool and dividing it up between two people will naturally mean you will be in a worse financial position after separation than the two of you were jointly before separation. You need to accept this fact and you also need to be prepared to make concessions. You need to accept that you will have to lower your living standards to accommodate the change in financial circumstances.

Parenting Arrangements

Remember you will be parents forever. Parenting does not stop when your children turn 18. You need to try to work to accept the fact that whilst you and your former partner are separated, your and your former partners co-operation will go a long way to help both of you maintain a strong relationship with your children.

There are services available to help rebuild your relationship post separation with your ex for the sake of your children, which if you use could also reduce your legal fees because these services are helping you to resolve issues amicably. The Parenting Orders Program for separated parents is particularly useful.

If you participate in such programs, it will assist your case by demonstrating to the court your focus is the best interests of the children. By keeping this focus, it will also reduce your legal fees, because we are not having to spend time continually justifying to you why we are recommending or negotiating certain aspects of your parenting arrangements.

Listening/understanding

We will do our best to give our advice in a way that you can understand. It is important that you listen carefully to what we say and tell us if you have any questions.

Generally, we make a note of what is discussed when we meet with you and we will send that note to you or give you a copy of our notes at the interview.

Positivity

One or both parties after a separation may feel that the separation is the "end of the world as they know it". Try to stay positive about your future without your ex-partner.

Staying positive and focusing on the future is the key to resolving the issues more quickly and thereby lowering your legal fees.

Legal Fees as an Investment

Your payment of legal fees is an investment in your future. You should consider your options every step of the way. In legal proceedings, you should spend $1.00 (and no more) to obtain $3.00. Keep this in mind when considering what is in dispute, particularly when you get frustrated about the minor items in your property pool, such as furniture, the collection of swizzle sticks, the Tupperware, etc.

Try to think of your legal fees as an investment – you are paying for an insurance policy for your future eg:

• You are making sure that you are making a fully informed decision and are achieving the best possible outcome for yourself.
• Often you are making savings on things such as stamp duty on transfers by obtaining an order which exempts you from stamp duty.
• You have the knowledge that properly drafted orders/agreements can allow you to move on with your life with the piece of mind that your ex cannot come back for another bite of the cherry (another property settlement) in the future; or that your parenting arrangements are recorded in orders that you can enforce via the courts if necessary.

CONCLUSION

We are here to help you achieve the best possible outcome, as quickly as possible, at a reasonable price. We are happy to work with you to keep our fees as low as possible.