Counting the Cost of Court

 

Unless you are Rumpelstiltskin, and you can spin straw into gold, the chances are that after attempting (and failing at) mediation with the Evil Queen (see my previous post Mediating with the Maniacal Queen) your pockets will already look something like this:

However, things are about to get worse! The cost of making an application to the Family Court, just to have contact with your own children, now stands at an eye-watering £255. But there is no other option; everything else you have tried has failed miserably, and your children are probably beginning to forget what you look like right now.

Searching the web for legal advice, you will come across hundreds of different law firms promising free 30 minute advice sessions. 30 MINUTES?! What on earth can you do in 30 MINUTES? Well, according to Cosmopolitan magazine, I can get a completely flat stomach in 30 minutes...however, after giving birth to four children (including a set of twins), and having a small penchant for cheese and Prosecco, this is about as likely to happen as Cruella De Vil posing for a new "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" campaign!



By the time you have poured your heart out to yet another professional (who is rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of a lengthy and prolonged court battle!), and they have presented you with their price list, the 30 minutes is up. So you book another appointment, for two weeks time, to get the ball rolling.

However, before you are even allowed speak to your solicitor at this next appointment, you have to sign away more of your hard-earned cash (see my previous post on Spousal Maintenance!) in the form of a repayment schedule for the fees that you are going to incur.

All that done, you sit down in your solicitor's Ikea-furnished office (which for some reason nearly always seems to be a pokey room in the upstairs of an Estate Agents which is still in the process of renovation!) and she plonks her manila folder (containing the all-important C100 form which she expertly downloaded from the Internet and printed this morning - "That'll be £60 for that, please!") down on the table.

You go through the form together, and your solicitor fills it in verbatim - "That'll be £400 for that, please! Oh, and the £255 application fee too, please!") and you walk out of the office with your pockets feeling decidedly lighter, but a small sense of satisfaction at knowing the process has begun.

Hang on! Why is your other half looking at you like this?!:

Things are going well, aren't they?! NO, THEY ARE BLOODY WELL NOT!

The explosion that follows puts things into perspective...£400 TO FILL IN A FORM WITH EXACTLY WHAT YOU SAID TO HER! The other half is stamping her feet and is now about to do a Rumpelstilskin herself and explode in anger...she is an English teacher and could have filled in the bloody form on her own! Maybe, just maybe she has a point...a small point, but a point indeed!

So you agree that all contact with the Vulture (your solicitor) will be limited to telephone calls, emails and letters. That will reduce the costs.

LIKE HELL IT WILL! The first bill arrives - £800! You have completely forgotten that the hourly rate of £217 quoted in your 'free' session applies, not only to face to face contact, but to any sort of contact! That ten minute phone call in which the Vulture explained that she had posted your C100 form has cost you £43.40 (What is she running?! Some sort of Premium Sex Chat Line?!), whilst the email to you enquiring as to whether you have had the paperwork returned to you from the Court has cost a further £21.70! Time to find an alternative (and significantly cheaper!) option before you need to file another application to the Courts - this time to declare bankruptcy!

At this point, I would like to make a confession! I am not proud of it, I might add, but following this epiphany, I realised that if we were paying these extortionate fees...so was the Evil Queen! So I took it upon myself to make contact with her Evil Minion (a significant amount of contact, to be honest), knowing full well that she would be charged for every phone call, letter and email. I hoped that she would realise that her vendetta to deny contact was incurring financial costs and well as the emotional costs. Did the Evil Queen care? No! I actually gave up when the Evil Minion charged her £60 for simply reading a letter I had sent (It was a long letter! Remember I am an English teacher!) and she didn't even bat an eyelid!

So, how can you keep these costs from spiralling out of control (which is coincidentally what happened to Evil Queen who ended up facing a legal bill of £28,000...but, hey, in her mind it was still worth it...even though we got the contact we wanted!)?

Don't even bother trying to get Legal Aid (especially if you are in a relationship with a new partner, as the Means Test takes into account her income...yes, really, she is expected to pay towards your fight against the Evil Queen!)! Legal Aid is only available in the cases of domestic violence ("Oh yes, Evil Queen, we do understand how violent and abusive he was to you!") or if you can prove that you do not have the disposal income to afford legal help ("Oh yes, Evil Queen, we do understand that you absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent, must have your £2000 holiday this year!").

Mackenzie Friends have become increasingly more popular as the number of fathers taking their fights to the courtroom has increased. These are not legal professionals nor are they qualified (on the whole), but they can help you to prepare for the hearing, sit with you in the Court and offer advice and support as well as taking notes to help you. However, this is the limit of what they are actually able to do. They do charge a fee for their services, and this varies depending on their own rates.
It is worth bearing in mind that many Mackenzie Friends are people who have been through similar experiences for themselves. However, there is always the risk of employing the services of someone who is not qualified in the field.

You can go it alone.

Whilst the paperwork looks quite complicated, anyone with a reasonable grasp of English can fill in the necessary forms and produce their own Position Statements. Google is definitely your friend in this case! But what about Court Bundles? Don't worry about these. If the Evil Queen has her own solicitor, the Court will generally expect them to do this. That is, after all, what the Evil Minion is being paid for!

Most Family Courts now have a PSU (Personal Support Unit) that you can call on to help you with the different aspects of your fight, including filling in paperwork or even just holding your hand in the courtroom (or jabbing a pen rather forcefully into your leg when it appears to them that you are about to say or do something that you are likely to regret!).

PSU's are run by volunteers, who are generally new starters to the legal profession looking to gain experience, or retired legal professionals who are either trying to escape the boredom of gardening or who are trying to make amends for the various fathers that they have probably screwed over in their own legal careers (and to make their peace with God before they finally shuffle off this mortal coil!).

However, they have nothing to financially gain from supporting you and therefore do so without prejudice most of the time. If you are lucky like us, you will acquire the support of a 74 year old ex-magistrate with extensive knowledge of the Family Court system, and who is well-respected by the various Judges on the circuit who will allow him to speak on our behalf which is not the usual protocol.

This, on its own, does have its downsides. As well as supporting us in the courtroom, he is now a regular fixture in our own living room as he regularly invites himself round for Sunday lunch! This went a little too far a few weeks ago, though, when he decided to take an after-dinner nap! However, he is always on hand, should we need him.

There are no Fairy Godmother's to come to our rescues in these situations but,to sum up, you can fight the Evil Queen without resorting to giving someone the shirt off your back, or existing on a diet of Tesco's Everyday Value Chicken Noodles!

If you do decide to go it alone and self-represent, it is worth remembering that there are millions of fathers out there in the same situation. Web sites such as Separated Dads, Families Need Fathers and Dad Info provide a myriad of information, and host forums in which you can get a wealth of advice and support from people with similar (and often worse!) personal experiences.

And, of course, there is us! We (or I!) do not claim to be experts in this field but we are all fighting the good fight, and we are happy to try and help and support where we can.

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