Family Law

Cohabitation is very much a live issue in that the Scottish Law Commission is undertaking a review of the Act.  The Scottish Law Commission issued, at the end of February 2020, a discussion paper in relation to which responses are invited to be made by the 31st May.  A new Bill will be presented to the Scottish Parliament to reform the present law which has been criticised  for being out of date, unclear and overly complicated.

In sharing matrimonial property on divorce, the default position is that of an equal sharing.  There are essentially six main principles why matrimonial property should be shared unequally in terms of sections 9 and 10 of the Family Law (Scotland) Act 1985.

The seminar will cover both topics and will cover the following issues:-

the current legal position on cohabitation and implementation of the case law by the courts;

how to pursue a claim under the present cohabitation law and if met with such a claim how to resist such a claim;

set out particular criticisms of the present legislation and the specific issues which have been considered for review/updating by the Scottish Law Commission;

the principles/reasons why there should be a departure from unequal sharing of matrimonial property on divorce;

current judicial thinking/case law and reasons for departing from the 50/50 split - what will work and what will not work;

how to construct an argument to persuade an opponent or the court to give your client a greater than 50% share of matrimonial property; and

if met with such claims and arguments how to resist such claims.

 The talk will be of interest to lawyers who specialise in family law but equally those lawyers for which family law is part of their general practice.