Our expert Family Lawyers help our valued clients through relationship breakdown and divorce with clear legal advice and direct practical guidance.
If you have a tricky family law situation, or simply need advice about what to do next, our Family Law team can assist you and your family. Click here
We help clients make agreements
- We put agreement making at the forefront of what we do. Family lawyers, Judges and other professionals working in the family law system emphasise two things in many of their conversations, the importance of encouraging people to reach agreement about the issues between them and the need to ensure the safety of clients and children within the family.
- Talk about reaching agreement tends to be discussed as a goal or an outcome by most professionals. This is where we are different. We see reaching agreement as a set of behaviours that occur today and across time (that is, over the course of the family’s adjustment to the relationship breakdown and across the period of negotiating). So we use the term, agreement making as a verb, a “doing word” like running or swimming.
- Our starting point is “what is there agreement on?” rather than “what’s not agreed?” There will be differences when a relationship ends (different needs, different emotional reactions and different viewpoints).There may be inequality in the couple relationship, for example, in relation to bargaining power, negotiation skills, cash flow, property and resources. We look for agreement at the same time that we assess the various aspects of a matter, to obtain a detailed picture and explore an agreed end to the conflict, and a new future, as soon as practicable.
- We talk about “stepping stones on the way to agreement” to reinforce the vision of the time, focus and energy that is put in to cultivate an agreement between people.
Contact our family law partner, Paul Lewis if you would like to talk about the power and benefits of agreement making in your family law matter, and how to arrive at agreement.
