Hull lawyers urge separating families to consider alternatives to court

Pictured third from left is Sally-Anne Neal, chair of Hull & East Yorkshire Collaborative Law Group, along with other Group members from Pepperells, Rollits, Sandersons and Williamsons.

A GROUP of Hull-based family lawyers is urging separating families to consider alternatives to the court system when making decisions about their future.

Family Dispute Resolution (DR) Week launched in November and is an initiative led by national family law association Resolution, which aims to raise awareness of non-confrontational methods of resolving family breakdown, such as collaborative law, mediation and arbitration.

Local collaborative lawyer Sally-Anne Neal, who is chair of Hull & East Yorkshire Collaborative Law Group, said: "Resolution's polling for DR Week has shown that around eight out of ten children and young people with experience of parental separation or divorce would prefer their parents to split up if they are unhappy, rather than stay together. A huge majority - 82% - said that, despite their feelings at the time, they felt it was ultimately better that their parents divorced rather than stay together unhappily.

"Divorce is an incredibly stressful thing for families and couples to go through and sadly there are around 1400 divorces happening in the Hull region each year. Collaborative lawyers are able to offer people a completely different approach to the highly confrontational court system. Instead, you sit down with your respective lawyers and work things out, together, in a constructive way.

"The collaborative approach involves you and your spouse/partner working together as a team with your lawyers in a series of round the table meetings to talk about finances and/or children arrangements. You both stay in control knowing that you have your lawyers by your side to make sure that everything is considered. You and the lawyers all sign up to an agreement that nobody will go to court – yet you have peace of mind that the agreement is formalised by a court order." 

Many of the Group’s members offer a free, no-obligation discussion, where they will talk you through the options available for resolving the issues you face. The group can be contacted via the website - http://www.collabfamilylaw-hull.co.uk/contact.php