Hylton-Potts – Free Legal Advice, Divorce Lawyer, Beneft Fraud & Motoring Offences

New EU procedure will give choice to international couples over which country’s law will govern their divorce. Selena Masson speaks to Rodney Hylton-Potts, a leading expert on international divorce, practice and procedure of Hylton-Potts Legal Consultants, about the use of this procedure.

EU member states are using a new enhanced co-operation procedure to introduce new rules allowing international divorcing couples to select which country’s law will apply to their divorce.

Rodney Hylton-Potts says: “For the first time in EU history, member states are using the enhanced co-operation procedure, to push forward with rules allowing international divorcing couples to choose which nation’s laws to apply to their divorce case. Under the EU Treaties, enhanced cooperation allows nine or more countries to move forward on a measure that is important, but is blocked by a small minority of Member States. Other EU countries keep the right to join later when they want.”

In this case it will allow 14 EU countries (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Spain) to move forward with a regulation to help couples of different nationalities, those living apart in different countries or those living together in a country other than their home country.

Hylton-Potts adds this is a big step forward. “People fall in love across borders, whatever their nationality. As a result, many international couples need to be certain of the rules that apply in their situation. There were more than 1 million divorces in the 27 Member States in 2007, of which 140,000 (13 per cent) had an ‘international’ element.”

According to Hylton-Potts, some commentators have expressed fears that the use of enhanced cooperation, could spell the end of European integration. “I doubt this will be the case–all the signs are that this precedent will deepen European integration. Hundreds of thousands of international couples will benefit from the new rules. Given that the previous proposal had been stuck in an institutional traffic jam for half a decade, it is safe to say the EU now has the means to put important legislation into the fast lane.”

Hylton-Potts explains the proposal aims to protect weaker partners during divorce disputes. “International couples will be able to agree which law would apply to their divorce or legal separation. In cases where the couple cannot agree, judges would have a common formula for deciding which country’s law applies. Couples would have more legal certainty, predictability and flexibility. This would help protect spouses and their children from complicated, lengthy and painful procedures.”

He adds this will have considerable impact on divorce lawyers. “Where there is an ‘international’ element, it will undoubtedly mean far less divorce work for lawyers in England and Wales. Some husbands may welcome this because London has become the divorce capital of the world and certainly Europe, when it comes to awarding financial settlements to wives, especially in the larger money cases.”

However, Hylton-Potts says there will be some drawbacks. “Although judges will have a common formula for deciding which country’s law applies, that is not necessarily the same as jurisdiction. What has to be avoided is where one country’s law applies but proceedings take place in another country. That involves bringing in expert lawyers as to the law of the other jurisdiction, which considerably adds to the costs and delay.”

A schoolboy who was ordered by the High Court to live with his “wholly deserving” father has been allowed to stay with his mother at the end of an 11-year legal battle.

The father left the hearing in tears, after a judge ruled that to protect the mental health of the 12-year-old boy, who has said that he hates his father, it would not enforce its original decision to remove him from his mother.

The ruling brings to an end one of the longest contact disputes ever seen in an English court. Judge Clifford Bellamy, sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court in London, said it raised serious questions about children who had become alienated from a parent and did not know their true feelings.

The Government is conducting a review of family law, one part of which is whether fathers are being treated fairly in the courts when relationships break down.

The parents in the case married in 1996 and separated some months later before the son was born. The father issued his first application for contact with his son in June 1999 and succeeded, beginning an arrangement that progressed over the years to foreign holidays. The arrangement broke down in February 2006 and over the next four years “immense energy and resources were invested in trying to reinstate a meaningful relationship between father and son”, the judge said. He was particularly critical of the mother for arranging so many out-of-school activities every day of the week so that the boy had no opportunity to see his father. She had opposed and undermined all efforts at contact, the judge said.

In the end, the failure of the parents to agree on regular meetings between the boy and his father, including one broken contact order, resulted in the court taking the extreme step of transferring residency from the mother to the father in January this year. In the extraordinary ruling, Judge Bellamy had said that, although it might be “traumatic in the short term”, the boy should live with his father, although he had not seen him for four years.

The decision was also extraordinary given that the father lives in London with his new wife and family and the mother in the Midlands. The boy was placed in foster care and the family began a programme of therapy. But at a series of introductory meetings in the build-up to the move between father and son, the boy put his head in his lap, put his fingers in his ears and refused to eat and drink or engage in any way with his father.

Social workers at Warwickshire County Council were so fearful of his mental health that they advised the father to give up his efforts to be reunited with his son, to which he “reluctantly agreed”.

When he heard of the decision, the boy volunteered that he would see his father on his terms when he was ready.

This heartbreaking story need not happen to you. At Hylton-Potts we passionately believe in the rights of children to have meaningful relationship with both parents.

Rodney Hylton-Potts has 25 years experience of dealing with difficult mothers.

For more information or a free legal opinion telephone 020-7381-8111 (24 hour service) or email law@rhplaw.co.uk.

If you are worried that you have broken the rules, and want to stop a criminal prosecution or record consult the experts.

For more information or a free legal opinion telephone 020-7381-8111 (24 hour service) or email law@rhplaw.co.uk.

It is not if but when. They are coming to get you.

Credit agencies are used by banks, credit card firms and others to identify whether individuals have a bad credit history. Under the Government plans, the agencies will effectively be carrying out the process in reverse.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has been told to draw up detailed plans for a benefits crackdown.

WHO’S WATCHING YOU?

Credit check: Agencies hold details

Credit reference agencies have a powerful role in determining who is granted mortgages, loans and credit cards.

The three agencies, Experian, Equifax and Call-Credit, hold a host of personal and financial information about every adult in the UK.

Shops, banks and building societies refer to their records every time a customer applies for credit.

This can include mortgages, personal loans, current account overdrafts, credit cards, store cards or when customers try to buy something on higher purchase such as a car or sofa.

Each person’s credit file contains information from the electoral roll, including name, address and previous addresses, as well as any court judgments, bankruptcies, or home repossessions.

Crucially, a person’s credit files also contain: details of all credit accounts held over the past six years and applications for credit in the past 12 months; how much credit the person has available; their record of paying off debt; and the size of their debts.

The benefit fraud investigators will have access to all this data, coupled with their wide-ranging powers to access bank accounts without the account holder’s knowledge, get information from the taxman, and instigate surveillance.

The crucial step is to approach the investigators, with expert legal help, before they come to you.

If you are worried that you have broken the rules, and want to stop a criminal prosecution or record consult the experts.

For more information or a free legal opinion telephone 020-7381-8111 (24 hour service) or email law@rhplaw.co.uk.

We have all been angry and frustrated when a utility, or energy company, like British Gas is incompetent and you lose out, but now you can bring a claim.

If your time is wasted e.g. you are self employed, and you have lost time and money, due to problems take them to court.

Log every phone call, letter and time off work. We at Hylton-Potts can send you a spreadsheet free of charge if you e-mail us. Companies should realise that their customers’ time is just as valuable as their own.

If you want compensation contact the experts –
For more information or a free legal opinion telephone 020-7381-8111 (24 hour service) or email law@rhplaw.co.uk.

DIY detective work by divorcing couples to expose a spouse’s hidden assets was declared unlawful in a landmark ruling, ending decades of traditional tactics in marriage disputes.

Litigants will no longer be able secretly to seize papers or documents that they find lying around or access e-mails after the Court of Appeal held that this could breach a person’s rights of confidence and might also be a crime.

Divorce lawyers immediately condemned the ruling, saying it would turn back the clock decades, reversing the principle that wives are entitled to an equal share when a marriage breaks up.

It would also fuel the costs and acrimony of divorce proceedings because spouses would be obliged to resort to expensive legal proceedings to obtain orders that would force partners to disclose their assets.

The ruling came in a divorce battle between Vivian Imerman, 53, the former owner of Del Monte Foods, and his wife Lisa Tchenguiz, 43.

The wife had won the right to use 20,000 documents removed from Mr Imerman’s computer

But the Court of Appeal disagreed and ordered the return of the material.

If the wife was allowed to keep the documents, it “would give her access to material which was confidential to Mr Imerman and had been unlawfully taken from him’.

The judges said that there was “no real doubt” that Mr Imerman’s rights of confidence had been breached and ordered that seven files of documents and all copies being held by Ms Tchenguiz’s solicitors be handed over to Mr Imerman’s solicitors.

Mr Imerman was also entitled to an order restraining Ms Tchenguiz or her lawyers, for the time being, “from using any of the information they have obtained through reading the seven files”, the appeal judges said.

Leading London divorce lawyer Rodney Hylton-Potts said: “How can there be protection of confidentiality, over those very documents that the duty of disclosure requires to be revealed on divorce? ‘

The wife is prohibited from saying what her husband claims he is worth, compared with what is in the public domain.

Rodney Hylton-Potts said it was a “ground-breaking” decision that would revolutionise the disclosure of documents in family cases.’

If you want advice on a matrimonial money battle, or disclosure of documents, contact the experts – For more information or a free legal opinion telephone 020-7381-8111 (24 hour service) or email law@rhplaw.co.uk.