Legal Costs

Happens, the Divorce Down Under podcast where we talk about everything and everything family law related. Two split happens. The Divorce Down Under podcast with me, Alex and my fellow family lawyer, Liza.

Liza, you mentioned to me that you would be interested in an episode dealing with legal costs. So let's talk about costs. So before you tune out, I thought that it might be something that people are actually wanting to know about, not so much in the the legal side of it all. Yeah. Not wanting but needing to know how much is Um you hear horror stories? Yeah. Of them, you know, c costing in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for legal costs.

millions in the Stran case, which is the big Western Australian case. So there's plenty of cases where they will cost um an arm and a leg and

Unfortunately, um court matters aren't cheap. So I wanted to go through today and just talk about A few of the different types of um things that come up in family law um matters, whether it be, you know, consent orders and binding financial agreements and that sort of stuff, like The idea is to help you as a listener try and work out how you can where you can save on your costs. lot of the time people balk at the idea of like, you know, you they get a cost disclosure notice and they say, Oh

Can we please have seventy thousand dollars into our trust account now? Because we need to potentially need to go to trial. And people most people don't have seventy thousand dollars to to give to a lawyer or to anyone. So there there becomes a you know, it it becomes a a real problem for many people because

they're not really able to have the benefit of that legal advice and that strategy because they just can't afford it. And um what I what I was hoping to do was just sort of cover a few a few little aspects about costs. and um and what you can do to try and minimize that impact to you. So um you know first of all we're talking about You know, the the ideal situation is that you've agreed with your partner. Or that you think you've you've got an okay relationship with your ex-part.

So you want to do things by consent. Yeah, and and what I always say to people is, you know, try and keep it nice from day dot. Just be you know, you you're gonna have a little bit of a flare up after separation, but keep it keep it nice.

You don't have to be best friends, but keep on civil terms is usually usually a good idea. Even if you've only got money to sort out between you and there are no children, because You p you'll soon fall into, you know, the dark hole of spatting over every little thing, and that gets to be expensive, doesn't it? Yeah. Well let's look at it this way. Most lawyers charge like family law solicitors. They'll charge anywhere between three hundred to six hundred dollars an hour on average, I I'd say.

um, particularly Queensland Queensland family law solicitors. I think if you go to, you know, Melbourne and Sydney some of those fees could be a little bit higher. could be even higher again. So if you think of that that per hour

it's going to very quickly add up. So let's think about ways that we can try and reduce those fees for you. And so um the very first thing is do w do a lot of the negotiation. If you're in a position where you can where there's You know, as y as Alex said, you're you're fairly amicable, you're o okay in okay terms, you're being civil to one another. You can try and have a discussion without it blowing out of proportion. You don't always need a lawyer.

to write a letter setting out your position unless you know, some people will need that assistance, but you won't necessarily need the lawyer to actually be engaged to do that for you. Sometimes that can be really off putting for the other party. You know, it might be something that they can um Well you can have a you know a kitchen table discussion, can't you? And you can kind of work things out, you know, on the back of an envelope between you as to who's gonna keep what.

And then you think, Oh, I really would like this to be formalised. Yep. You've got a couple of options then. Yeah. You can go online and go to the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia's website. There is a pack there, an application, you know, a DIY kit if you like for making an application for consent orders. You can follow that process through. Um I still find that's a very legalistic document and progressive. I do too.

And I think I still recommend that even if you've got to that point when you get to that point where you're filling that in and you've or even if you've filled it in and you've prepared It's still an idea to talk to a lawyer about I'd get it looked over at the very least. I mean your best option is your best option given that it's gonna be slightly more expensive.

is to have a family lawyer complete the application and to draft the orders for you so that it you have a very, very good chance of that being approved by the court and being something that considers things that you maybe hadn't taken into account.

Alternatively, if you feel very confident that you've captured everything, it's still going to be a great idea to get a family lawyer to look it over for you before it's lodged. They might be able to point things out that you've overlooked or that the court would need to know. Um or that there are parts The Cody is a bit fussy when it comes to their order.

Yeah, and and rightly so I suppose. The the registrars have a an uh it's a duty to exercise a discretion but only in accordance with the terms of the Family Law Act. So you need to make sure that your arrangements are fair if you're going to be submitting them to the court. So a very one sided deal, mm, you may have to explain that one. Yeah, so that sort of thing, that can that could probably that usually costs at at least a few thousand dollars even even if you've already

Yeah. Because there is a lot of time and effort that goes into it because the lawyer that's involved has to um they have to understand your case. They have to make sure that you understand your own case as well. Actually understand. Bye. Because we can't sort of just sign off and say, Okay, yep, cool, I just saw them sign, that was all fine. Yeah, that's not our role at all. We have to help you to make sure that you understand your legal rights. side. Could be cutting your nose off.

So, you know, consent orders, if you've done all the a lot of the hard work yourself, they could be as cheap as And the court charges a fee for filing consent orders, but it's not very much. It's currently, I think,$180. That's your lodgement fee with the court. You're better off to invest a little bit of money in your family loss list to make sure the orders themselves are drafted very carefully.

Right. And if you are amicable you can always have a little agreement on the side that both of you are gonna contribute to that cost anyway. Absolutely. Yeah, so it sort of splits it a bit. Um, you know, y i that sort of you're looking in most cases though, I would have thought that your application for consent orders should be under ten thousand dollars. Oh, by a long choke. Half half of that would be still more than it would normally be. I mean

But there are some people out there that will will have a go. But I I would think that if you're if you've already agreed and you're just just drafting a fairly simple, straightforward parenting and or property order Then really it should be somewhere between the two or six two to six thousand I would have thought.

Yeah, I think and th that gives you some you know variance according to how complex the property issues are, how n if there are any detailed arrangements for the children that need to be worked through a little bit, third party involvements, things like that. But yeah, okay. So that's if if you can agree things by consent, that's your first area would be consent orders.

Yep. Your alternative when you're talking about children, we've mentioned this a few times before, is the parenting plan. Yep. Now that's recognized by the Family Law Act, but it's not an enforceable document. So you and the you and the the other parent, you can write down all the arrangements that you want for little Jenny, little Johnny.

And you both sign it, you date it, you call it a parenting plan, that's great. If you get on well, that's fabulous. Sometimes you might be able to get some help with the formatting or the templating of those with people like Relationships Australia.

your family law solicitor will be able to write one for you as well straight away. Um a lot of people will reach those kinds of agreements by going through a mediation process and I know quite a number of mediators will have their own preferred sort of template for a parenting plan. That's part of the bonus of getting that that service, isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. Have a family lawyer who is also a mediator and then they'll be able to sort of be adroitly picking their way through a parenting plan. But you know, always with that sprinkling of a little bit of cautionary dust over the top of a plan, it's not enforceable. So if the other parent just ignores it, doesn't follow the instructions on that or or the arrangements on the plan.

not much you can do apart from later on in a court c case point to it so in front of a judge and saying, Hey, we had this parenting plan, they ignored it. The judge is compelled, they must look at that plan, have that in mind when they're making orders. But as I was experienced just the other week, um a a judge who saw a fairly recent parenting plan in a case that I was in said, Oh yeah, I can see that and w we think it's going one way up.

Yep, they saw that, they signed it, pretty recent, both parties had legal advice. Okay, I'm gonna ignore it, I'm gonna make these orders instead. So that's the power of of the courts to not follow parenting plans.

So watch out for those. Yep. But you could do parenting orders by consent in much the same way as you can with with property, with money. It's the same price as far as the court's concerned, a hundred and eighty bucks is the filing fee, but again We as family lawyers often whip out our crystal balls and think about, you know, the kids might be very young, they might be preschool at the time that these orders are being drafted.

But uh and I speak from experience, it doesn't take very long before your your babe in arms is suddenly towering above you and sort of reaching out with a car keys. Um an inevitability that you have to forward focus

Y you need to be thinking about not just what's happening right now, but what about when they go to school? What school will they go to? Who who's who are they gonna live with? What houses? What about holidays when they get a bit older? Should it only be a week block? Should it always be every other weekend? Should we ch change that when they turn certain ages?

Are you ever gonna say who's gonna who's gonna pay for the passports? Who's gonna look after the passports? Do I trust the other person? How are we gonna fix disputes? All of those things that your yeah, your local family lawyer lawyer will Imagine someone listening to this at the moment going, Well, hang on, pause, let me just write that down.

Yeah, I know that was a little bit you know, it was a little bit M M in its delivery. But um the point is get some advice to help make sure that if you're gonna draft something that's going to last uh and and it could be for many, many years, it could be, you know, eighteen years that's gonna be around in your life telling you what you can and can't do with your children. Then spend a decent amount of time preparing that document and thinking it through. Don't do it on the hoof. Do it

Carefully, methodically and get some good advice around as you go. Um I'm you know, as a family lawyer I'm bound to say go and see a family lawyer because they do this all the time. It's what we Leaving it to chance, leaving it very vague, is where your problems will come in. So spending a little bit more now on those sort of concentrals, again, you know, that as you said before, maybe in the two to six thousand plus GST type region.

Would give you the comfort of knowing that you've done it properly. And whilst you can't plan for every eventuality, you can certainly plan for a lot of them. You can get most of it down. Look, life will always find a way, won't it?

And so we we just mentioned before with the property side though the alternative to the consent order is a binding financial agreement. Now this is where sometimes parties have to be a little bit more careful because it is quite an extensive document and there are quite e extensive obligations. on lawyers to give um proper and a and adequate and accurate advice.

Yeah. Uh and you know, it's an area where we as solicitors, we our insurers, you know, the indemnity insurers for solicitors are very keen that we jump through every hoop and and quite rightly so, and make sure that we are giving as detailed advice as we can. Because where there has been litigation in the past about these kinds of agreements, it's about the timing of the advice.

extent of the advice, whether the advice was properly understood. So if you are going to go through a binding financial agreement and and absolutely they can work in in some circumstances, a lot of circumstances, But be patient with the lawyer when they're saying, Hang on, we need to go through this carefully. We need to go through this as a methodical process and you need to understand all of this before you sign it. If you don't, then your agreement's weaker.

And one where you get time to consider the advice you're given and make sure that it's drafted properly. And those those um you know a lot of the time people say, Oh no, I just need you to sign it. I understand it, it's fine, I don't I don't care, I don't care what it says. Yeah. I don't mind if it's set aside. I have one the other day. No, I don't mind if this agreement's set aside later on. Oh I do.'Cause that's my insurer. So my insurance so no, thank you.

Not happening, not going to be giving you that advice. But I mean the legal costs associated with a financial agreement, you're going to pay more if you're the person who wants the solicitor your solicitor to draft the agreement. The other person also needs to pay a solicitor to advise them on the agreement, otherwise they are not binding. So

The costs of a let's let's assume it's a a relatively straightforward case. There's maybe there's a house, there's a couple of cars, there's some superannuation, there's the stuff in the house, a little bit of savings. But that that sort of The typical kind of, you know, nuclear family kind of financial setup. So it's not overly complex. Well, what are you sort of thinking would be? I would have thought between two and four, two thousand to four four thousand plus GST for a very simple BFA.

The person drafting it. Probably between fifteen hundred to two thousand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think I think that's reasonable. Given the usual hourly rate which you mentioned, you know, it could be anywhere from three to six hundred dollars. It's a process that takes quite a few hours to draft it properly. And it takes

If you are receiving an agreement to give somebody advice over, the first thing I've got to know if I'm that solicitor is to say, well I need to know a little bit about you. I need to know what your circumstances actually are. Then I need to compare that and contrast that to what's written down in the agreement to make sure it's accurate. And that there hasn't been anything material missed out.

then I need to r go through that agreement very carefully and make sure that I've explained to my client the pros and the cons of the deal that's proposed in it and whether there's anything that needs amending or fixing or something that's been overlooked.

So it it is a process of a few hours. It's not you know, uh y you had that person, didn't you, that I think you were just talking about, who just rolled into the office and said, Oh, I don't I don't care, just sign I'll I'll sign it and you sign it and we'll just walk away into into the distance. That's not happening. Not you by all means go away and see if you can find a family law solicitor that wants to do that and yeah, more full you I would think.

better off to do it once, do it well. And it if it pay if you have to pay a few dollars now to make sure that you're not litigating over something for the next five or ten years, or in the case of that Western Australia case, twelve years fighting in the court, spending thirty five million dollars. Oh jeez, I thought it was only twelve million. I think it's thirty five million. Oh, it's okay. You're selling twelve million dollars, that's fine. Yeah.

No, it was thirty five million dollars in legal fees spent over But at what? Multitudes of family lawyers and barristers. It was just ridiculous. I haven't looked into the nitty-gritty of the cost. At what point because we all have to file cost notices. We do now. You know, this this is a case that settled a couple of years ago, so Still I would have thought though that At what point did someone say hey?

You know, was it after the first million or first hundred thousand or I I don't know where at what point do they not go, Hey guys, um, I think you're spending a bit of money here. Breathtaking, isn't it, that it took such a long time? And you know, i it ran to the point where I think the the couple had a son who was only about nine when they started.

So throughout from the time that he was nine, for a further twelve years, all of the rest of his childhood and the early years of his adulthood, his parents were fighting in court. Do you know I had I only had one I've only ever had one case where um just the the length of the case it has actually worked in my client's favour. Now it wasn't a family law case, it was a it was actually a earth moving um partnership dispute type case and it went for years. I can't remember they started.

two thousand and three and it finally finished about two thousand and ten. It was a seven year case. And I was involved in it basically the whole way through. And anyway, and the legal fees over the seven years, which I thought were pretty high, were about two hundred and fifty thousand for my client. Sponsor split happens. You'll be in safe hands with Alban Legal. For all your family law needs, call us on 074. Or visit our website at arbanlegal.com.edu.

Yeah. And so when you think about it, when you put in perspective all these other people it's like holy crap, that's like so much less than what you know other people they but some people We'll spend two hundred fifty thousand in a year or two, let alone Yeah, absolutely. I mean but it all has to be proportionate, I suppose. So the levels of complexity in the Strong case would have been extreme. Yeah. Multiple businesses, international things happening. And tens of millions of dollars.

a young and solicitor charging out, not much at that point in time, but um and so in terms of this particular partnership dispute Um, the property started off as being only worth about three hundred thousand. So had I gone through, you know, seven years that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, what would I be? an absolute waste of time and money. But what had happened was there was a mining boom Oh okay. And that property then went from worth being worth three hundred thousand to

multiple millions of dollars whereby he ended up with multiple millions of dollars at at the end of it. So it's the only it's it is the only case I've ever had where that passing of time has actually worked out In favour of a client, it's always been other way around. Every other client. It's worked out for like, you know, if you go, Oh, the longer it goes on for, oh, I'll be able to get more money or

I can think of another case that you had where it probably works for your clients that the case went on a little bit longer. Because the other party died. And that was that relatively recent and we had another case like that um a year or so ago where a very sad case, but the the other party died in sad circumstances. And that brought to an end a a a difficult financial and parenting matter as as it happened. It was very really tragic. But that happens. But mostly you're right. Getting a case

And getting it over with fairly quickly is the best outcome from you for you for a costs perspective. If you're going through that, don't don't have your lawyer write poison pen letters every time somebody says something that you feel a slightly aggrieved about. where possible, suck it up, move on. Pick your battles. Pick your battles, make sure that you're only fighting over things that need to be fought over.

You know, don't pay your solicitors and if your solicitors are saying, Absolutely, I'm going to write a letter every time, then you probably want to have a conversation with them as to whether they've got your best interests at heart.

If somebody says, Hang on, we don't need to write that, let's save that for the judge or save it for the court if we need it. Let's focus upon what does need to be fixed and not worry about, you know, that old book that that was written, you know, don't spoil the small stuff. No. Tell your solicitor the small stuff so that we have that ammunition to use as and when it's relevant and necessary.

And again, I mean how else can somebody manage their legal costs? Because in family law, the usual rule it's it's in the legislation there at one hundred and seventeen, if you can't sleep at night and want to look at the Family Law Act. The usual rule is that each party pays their own cost. Hãy subscribe cho kênh La La School Để không bỏ lỡ những video hấp dẫn

Well, it it's where the court's coming from is is about the you know, the the early settlement, isn't it? You should be sorting these things out yourselves and the court is a last resort. Yeah, but I I actually take the different view. I'm I think that maybe my civil litigation

I think it is. I I think it's I think it's the right pr right approach generally. If you're having a dispute over parenting issues to do with kids, for example, and there might be nuanced differences between you for very understandable perspectives. For then one of the parents then to have to pick up the costs of the other person from the get go. Stop the trivial stuff from coming through, wouldn't it? Well maybe would it though? What if they were both reasonably tribal issues?

No, I'm talking about so say for example, let's just put it into like we've got mum who um has her view on things, dad has his view. ordinarily going to make an application for parenting, but then there's that risk of that she might have to pay the costs if the judge doesn't agree. she might hold back or not. She might not want to litigate because she'll go, Oh Maybe not. It's the usual. It never gets followed up.

Normally so many things get settled along the way before you get to have that argument in front of you. judge. I don't know, I I'm against the each party pay their own. I think it should be a you you win, you get well you lose, you pay. Like in civil matters. But I find it hilarious it's civil matters are called civil, but they're far from civil. But anyway. That so speaks the former barrister.

Which ironically cost them thousands of dollars to argue over in in the first place. So far better again. Move down the pathway of settlement much better, much cheaper for you in the long run to do that. You don't want to have to rely upon sending out yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw somebody making an offer that you probably should have accepted

You didn't and you did slightly worse at court at the end of it, meaning that the judge can lift up that section one hundred and seventeen provision and say, Yeah, you should have really taken that. I'm gonna make you pay some or all of their costs. And the thing that the thing that I don't I just in the family courts, um I rarely see anyone making you know, getting up on those offers and

I don't know. I just think it's a they they might as well just get rid of the whole section and not even worry about it then if that's Oh look I I don't know. I I think it's there for a purpose and I think my takeaway would be if you get a an offer

something you need to think very carefully about. It's quite close to what you might get or that your lawyers are saying, You might get this, this could be the outcome for you. But in a year or so's time Think about how much money you're likely to spend on a court case that goes all the way to a trial, several days in court.

Hundreds of hundreds of documents being prepared, you know, erudite barristers spending lots of time burning the midnight oil, preparing detailed and lengthy submissions, preparing cross exam. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to run that. So if you've got an offer And it might not be everything that you're looking for.

But it something that you risk getting, then you need to take that very carefully. You need to think very carefully. I mean maybe you make a counter proposal that's not far from that, but get your get advice from your solicitor at the time. How far is this from the range should be your question. Definitely. Am I likely to get Don't if you're not sure, then then always get a second opinion if you're uncertain as to that advice.

Yeah, look, I I agree with you in terms of um actually considering decent offers and things like that. There's there's no issue there. I just find that a lot of the time The co people just don't succeed on their applications for cost.

Definitely not in parenting matters. It's very, very rare to get a cost order in a parenting matter. Yeah. And I I think that's quite unfortunate because there are so many cases these days where parties are using um the courts to continue abuse and continue these sorts of applications uh s sorry continue the Just that control over the other party, just for the I'm not talking about the natural imbalance you mean and using that as something to hit somebody

That's right. And they're dragging them through the system. I've seen it from the other way, you know. There was um a a matter that um I've been involved in recently. Our client is the person who's paying his own way and the other person in the case has been receiving the benefit of legal aid throughout And they they're they are they don't somewhat they don't have any great sort of income or source. No incentive there.

Aside from like wealthy parents, which is just in the background, you know, sniggering as they're funding that their life, but all the legal fees is being are being absorbed by the legal agency. Meanwhile our fella is having to pay everything himself. So that creates a reverse pressure of what you would think. Oh, you know, the the the person with with the income with the person who's having to run three jobs. Definitely. I I get that. I get that.

That's a pressure. And again, you you feel a little bit hamstrung as a solicitor sometimes or as a lawyer. saying, look, this might not be the best outcome, but it might be the best in the circumstances. Yeah. Because otherwise y you know, you might spend another year or eighteen months litigating to get something a little bit close to this. Maybe a bit better. It could be the same, it could be worse. And you could spend and lose you know a you know a further tens of thousands of dollars at it.

And'cause what we're talking about here um is all about when we've filed an app Yeah, sorry, yeah. This is all the litigation process. Yeah, we Can't agree. Yeah. And so, you know, you're looking at as we said, tens of thousands of dollars and sometimes it can get into the hundreds of thousands. Now you wanna hope though that your lawyer hasn't charged you, you know, hundreds of thousand dollars of for a case that you know, that's only worth three or four hundred thousand dollars.

Get some proportionality about it. Because lawyers as lawyers we we must charge.

is reasonable and is necessary. So we can't just go and charge it just because and that's why sometimes you might get a bit of pushback from us. You know, you might get a p pushback from your lawyer. It's it's not because we want to, because we want to be difficult or anything like that. It's because We have to keep pro put my teeth in, proportionality in mind when we're doing the work and making sure that, you know, so that you're not going down like doing this unnecessary work.

Um and you know, y you h find judges um quite scaling of um practitioners who You don't produce pages and pages of irrelevant affidavit material, like hundreds of pages of affidavit. Yeah. That's right. One recently where there was like multiple hundreds of pages um of an affidavit and it Yeah, a lot of it is just completely irrelevant and it's time wasting and it would have cost an absolute fortune for that that Yeah. Not to have prepared.

Uh I was in a matter, as you know recently, where somebody filed um very close out to the trial. on the other side an affidavit that ran to more than eight hundred pages that effectively caused the f the trial to fall over. Yeah. Because the judge said, I haven't got time to read this. I I can't we we've got allocated time.

And that could a could well have been a tactic on the on the other person's part. I don't know. It seemed I think likely that that was the case, but I don't know that it caused the trial to fall over. We we fortunately we were able to negotiate a settlement. But I wonder if that material hadn't been filed whether we might have Progress.

And got a better outcome. But then somebody would have to come back in six or nine or twelve months time for the trial part two and another, you know, tens of thousands of dollars to bring everybody up to date. Well, even even just a side like on the specifically on the cost issue of that. Because the the court does have the power to or make orders. It does. Um chose not to in relation to I think it's in relation to the um you know, you you've got these interest

the ones that you do along the way. Not your final trials, just the ones that you might get along the way. And you've got a page limit of ten pages. Now, sometimes people will ignore that and they just file multiple pages. Yeah, a hundred pages even that. Oh, that's so frustrating when you say that. So and so what will happen, what the court can do, the court can actually say no, actually, you're gonna pick your f your best ten pages.

Like they have the power to do it. I haven't really seen it happen all that often. But and they can actually make COSSOR. Um again. you and also your solicitor for for putting in and for having so much extra time taken up and irrelevant material. Yeah. Um, because it it's scandalous material, things like that. Make sure it's relevant, make sure that it doesn't contain things that can't be substantiated.

And it goes beyond that when you're talking about anything to do with intentional um acts and things like um fraud and any sort of bad behaviour. If you have if you're going to assert something like that in an affidavit, you wanna hope that you've got some um pretty good evidence to back that up. So you can't say that, you know, um Uncle Bill is a child molester.

You need to make sure that you've got something to back that up because you could be on the on the other end of the stick if you're not careful. Right. Uh and and obviously one of the issues that you highlighted already is the difficulty in finding a court that will entertain a cost order when something gets settled along the way. Most cases get settled. Nine out of ten or more cases get settled before they end up in a final hearing. So

Whatever lies the other side may have told, whatever lies your client sometimes has told, who knows. But if there's an untruths in the material that have caused a great deal of upset and harm along the way. There may never be any kind of retribution or dealing with that in a costs way. And it just hangs out there because the costs are only going to be considered really at the end of it.

where there is something wildly different that could have been accepted. Or if somebody's conduct is so or they've never filed anything. They've never provided any disclosure or But okay, so that's all the th the the gloomy world of litigation. Let's just roll it back and let's assume that the separation is relatively

respectful and you you you just moved on with your lives and you just need to get things sorted out. So we've talked about the cost of consent orders, we've talked about parenting plans. We didn't really touch on the price of those but Again. They're not very expensive. If you were to get your solicitors to draft them, then again they need to listen to you and understand what you want and express.

Yeah. You are so you might be somewhere between one and two thousand dollars for something like that? You you may find a template somewhere. If you use a relationships Australia type mediation, they'll have a little scrap of paper that they'll fill in your names on the dotted lines and go through that, but be careful what you sign. Um

But let's think about a mediation process. How much would that cost typically? In a f just an ordinary sort of, you know So So you've got Assume you've got two lawyers to the mediation with you. Yep. So you're paying for your lawyer? Yeah, it's a good cost. You don't have to take a lawyer, but it's usually a good idea. Yep. And then they'll pay for their lawyer. If they've got one. And the mediator will charge anywhere usually between say two thousand to six or eight thousand.

I would say that's a good thing. And those are the shared costs. And some sometimes you'll have to pay for the room higher on top of that because you know you'll you'll need a venue to take place the mediation. But uh sometimes not. I mean we do a lot of these mediations these days by uh Zoom or by Microsoft Teams or some other video software.

The benefit of those of course is you you really don't have to see um even at all the other person even in passing in the corridor. Yeah. Uh in a in a shared building. They've got their solicitor. I mean they mu th those fees might be anywhere from Again, depending upon how senior or junior they are, anywhere from say two and a half to four thousand dollars a day perhaps. And then you've got mediation costs which again could be anywhere from fifteen hundred through to

Three or four thousand dollars each. So you could have that whole day wrapped up between you, the pair of you. Yeah, maybe sort of in that ten thousand sort of mark. That's what I'm saying. And then if there is a deal done, if you're

It depends upon how much in how many instructions you cl you've given to your solicitor before, but they could well have prepared in advance the documents for you to sign. Not so much for a financial agreement, because as I I've said, you've got to be careful about not rushing into those. But if you had already exchanged some ideas with the other side beforehand, you could have like a skeleton

set of consent orders worked out. You could have the application form kind of ready and just mostly filled in and you negotiate, you hammer out the details as to who's going to keep what particular pieces of property and just

You've saved yourself a fortune doing it that way. It's a very again, preparation is the key to that. Make sure that if you're going to go through that path and you wanna get things signed on the day, wherever possible, you know, make sure your solicitor has the information before and

You know, I usually say with those mediations, you know, have laptop will travel, you know. Yeah. And if we're working it through methodically with a good mediator who's an experienced family law media, then we'll be able to hone pretty quickly the points of difference so everything else can kind of be agree.

And then we can be exchanging drafts of what's going to be settled and what's not going to be settled on the day and then have it finally signed off before everybody goes home. What you don't want is to go through all of that expense and mediation process and have nothing agreed, nothing signed. Um even if you end up with a partial agreement that's better than nothing. It gives you a pathway as to okay, we've just got to decide what happens to, for example, the business or the house.

But again, your lawyers need to be doing that. Use the mediation process rather than the litigation. If you can't simply agree to that sort of sitting on the table and working it out, then get some help from your solicitors. If there is still a bit of a you know a a barrier to climb over, then break it down with a mediator quickly.

And if you obviously can't'cause you'll if if no one turns up to the mediator, to the mediation, um well sorry, if one of the parties don't turn up, then you can get the sixty I certificate but you'll often have Yeah, a sixty eye certificate um is is in relation purely to parenting. That just means that you can show to the courts, hey, I didn't want to have to come to court, I tried to medi mediate negotiate.

the other person didn't come or they wouldn't participate or there was another very good reason why But it's the it's like your it's your Willy Wonka sort of ticket, isn't it? You have to have that in order to go through to the next stage. And I hope you don't have to get there. But look, legal costs can be kept down, so the more information you give to your solicitor early, the better armed that they will be to be able to put your front foot forward.

Um, you can negotiate directly with your ex if there's no issues around domestic violence and you can get on with one another okay. bring to your lawyer a fate accompli, say, here is the deal that we have agreed and cast your eyes over it as a practitioner and say, Yep, that seems reasonable to me. We can yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw

You know, it's like keeping up to date with the services in your car, isn't it? If you do that then y you st span spend a little bit of money on getting the e the engine serviced rather than replacing it for for want of care. Yeah. Okay, well look, I think that probably wraps up what we wanted to talk about with legal costs today. It's a massive subject, um not as massive as the Straan legal bill of course, but

Thank you for listening. This has been Split Happens, the Divorce Down Under Podcast with Liza and Alex.