Family Lawyers: directory of firms

Before most family applications in England and Wales you have to attend a Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting. A mediator explains how mediation works, looks at your situation and helps you decide whether it suits your case. It is an assessment, not a commitment to mediate.

There are exemptions, and they are practical rather than technical. GOV.UK lists them: evidence that you are a victim of domestic abuse, a child at risk of harm with social services involved, an application for a consent order, urgency where you or the child would be in danger, an application made without notice to the other person, and cases where you have already attended a MIAM or tried another form of dispute resolution in the past four months. The court decides whether an exemption applies.

Scottish family law is not a variant of English family law. Orders about children are sought in the sheriff court or the Court of Session, the vocabulary is different, and Scotland has its own rules on parental responsibilities and rights, on cohabitants' claims and on financial provision on divorce.

Northern Ireland runs its own family courts under its own orders, with its own legal aid arrangements and its own solicitor profession regulated by the Law Society of Northern Ireland. If the child lives there, or one parent has moved there, take advice locally rather than assuming a ruling from another part of the UK transfers automatically.

Where there is abuse, the usual sequence changes. Mediation is not appropriate, and evidence of abuse is an express exemption from the MIAM requirement so that an application can be made without sitting in a room with the other person. In an emergency an application can be made without telling the other side first.

A family solicitor will look at protective orders alongside the child and money questions, not after them, and will normally work with the police, a refuge or a specialist support service at the same time. If you are in immediate danger, that is a 999 call, not a solicitor's appointment.

The most common failure is an informal agreement never converted into anything enforceable. A shared spreadsheet is not an order. If money or property changes hands on the strength of it, the person who paid may find the claim is still open years later.

The second is incomplete disclosure. Financial settlements rest on both sides showing what they have; a settlement built on a hidden account or an undisclosed pension is vulnerable to being set aside. Pensions in particular get overlooked because they feel abstract, and they are often the second largest asset after the house.