Divorce Lawyers

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#1588192 8-Jul-2016 13:29

andrew027:
I guess your ex has three choices:

she buys you out

you (both) sell and split the proceeds

you (singular) turn up with a chainsaw and take your half.

Ask her which she prefers.

Seriously though, I'm sorry to hear you find yourself in that situation. My suggestion is that you sit down and talk calmly and rationally and explain that you want to resolve this amicably and #1 and #2 are the only options. If she doesn't agree with either let her know all future conversations will be through your lawyer.

Yeah I've already stated several times what I'd like to happen but I just get excuses and delays in return, like wanting to find a rental place first before even listing the house, whereas it takes several weeks to even sell a house which to me is more than enough time to find a place in the meantime, hence why I'm at the lawyer stage.

dejadeadnz

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#1588282 8-Jul-2016 14:43

I recommend Simon Jefferson QC (his rates for opinion/letter work - coming from personal experience of recommending him to friends/family) is highly comparable to Jeremy Sutton's. And Simon is absolutely at the top of the family law business. He may not be in Auckland at the moment, however. In the alternative I recommend Lisa Soljan.

P.S. Real life lawyer and I'm someone who on a professional level have had the opportunity to assess the work on Simon and Lisa. And I would recommend them far more highly than Jeremy Sutton.

corksta

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#1588317 8-Jul-2016 15:25

dejadeadnz:
I recommend Simon Jefferson QC (his rates for opinion/letter work - coming from personal experience of recommending him to friends/family) is highly comparable to Jeremy Sutton's. And Simon is absolutely at the top of the family law business. He may not be in Auckland at the moment, however. In the alternative I recommend Lisa Soljan.

P.S. Real life lawyer and I'm someone who on a professional level have had the opportunity to assess the work on Simon and Lisa. And I would recommend them far more highly than Jeremy Sutton.

Awesome thank you very much!

Linuxluver

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#1588320 8-Jul-2016 15:27

KrazyKid:

$830K mortgage.

Good luck - hope it goes well an the long run. But....

Holy cow - That sort of mortgage scares me. Glad I don't live in Auckland. Here I am debating if to increase my mortgage up to $180K to do up a kitchen. Something is seriously wrong with house prices.

Agreed. My house is mortgage free. I couldn't go back to the 'bad old days'. I spend enough years there.

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I've been on Geekzone over 16 years..... Time flies....

frankv

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#1588511 8-Jul-2016 21:17

Whilst I can understand that you want to get on with your life and get your money back out of the house, I strongly recommend that you be patient as possible and avoid lawyers as much as possible. As others have pointed out, you're not going to lose any money by waiting. If you have to go through lawyers and the Courts, any money you get back will get eaten up by lawyers. It may be worth being a bit generous with your ex rather than fighting over every stick of furniture. Look at it like this... you've made a mistake in getting mixed up with this woman and buying a house together. This is a big mistake, and it's going to cost a lot to fix.

FWIW, if you want to play hard-ball, which I do not recommend...Assuming you're a joint owner, I believe that you can list the property for sale without her agreement. You can also enter the property if you do so without breaking and entering (has she changed the locks?) and there are no Protection Orders. If you can gain entry and change the locks, then you can effectively take possession and evict her. And I know that you can (if the circumstances are right) get the Court to sign on your ex's behalf to get the house sold (assuming you have a buyer). But nothing will happen very fast... think months rather than weeks. And this will cost thousands, cause you a lot of stress, and do lots of damage to your friendships and reputation.

Document everything you do. Be organised and have everything written down, including her objections to what you want to do, before you go and visit your lawyer. Be very clear about what you want from your lawyer... your ex evicted from the house (probably ain't gonna happen), the house sold, threatening letters, Court action, or whatever.

OTOH, my understanding of the Auckland market is that houses are selling *very* fast, and rentals are hard to come by. So your ex's objections seem plausible to me. So listing it before she finds alternative accommodation may be seen as putting unreasonable pressure on her.

IANAL

corksta

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#1588514 8-Jul-2016 21:26

No playing hard ball here just want to move on as quickly as I can as I can't afford to continue paying half a mortgage, rent, bills and expenses while she lives there. I don't want to blow money on a lawyer but my options are dwindling.

frankv

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#1588531 8-Jul-2016 22:02

Figure out a fair rental value for your house and ask her to pay half of that to you.

Wise

Send money globally for less with Wise - one free transfer up to NZ$900 (affiliate link).

corksta

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#1588534 8-Jul-2016 22:12

Thank you DaveB, interesting.

corksta

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#1588535 8-Jul-2016 22:15

I guess all I'm looking for at this stage is some advice and available options, hopefully without it costing several hundred dollars.

I imagine a QC (from dejadeadnz's suggestion) would be ridiculously expensive.

Geese

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#1588698 9-Jul-2016 11:18

I'm going through a similar situation currently. However while I'm married the entire relationship is 6 months, so covered by "relationships of short duration (under 3 years)", which means we leave with what we came in with and contributions made since. I owned the house before she came along. She asked for a divorce after us being together only 2 months, and said she was only staying long enough to find a rental, but another 2 months later she's still here - and her dog has done $1500 damage to the house in the mean time, which she's making excuses not to pay for. I'm going to give her a deadline of just over 2 weeks so she has 2 pays to save bond up, but if she is still here then, not sure how to go about "evicting" her?

dejadeadnz

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#1588744 9-Jul-2016 12:00

corksta: I guess all I'm looking for at this stage is some advice and available options, hopefully without it costing several hundred dollars.

This is for both you and Geese to some extent, although I am only going to focus on your situation (Corksta) as you described them.

There is ultimately no significantly good advice (i.e. advice that if simply acted upon is more likely than not to achieve what you want with limited further hassle) that can be made available to you at no cost or via an internet forum, beyond suggestions as to which lawyers to go to and getting counselling/mediation (more on that below). In your case, the house is likely in both your and her name or it is held in a trust to which you both have some beneficial interest. If she refuses to move, the tenancy tribunal (quick and cheap etc) has no jurisdiction because this isn't a residential tenancy. The police of course will not assist as there is no crime and this is a civil dispute. The absolute end game if she just refuses to see sense is that you will need to seek Family Court orders under the Property (Relationships) Act.

And you don't want to go there, for all kinds of obvious reasons. It used to be that you can get free counselling via the Family Court but now this option is only available to people of very low income and/or cases involving care of children. One route you can consider going down is offering to pay for counselling and/or mediation and invite your ex to come along and talk things through with a professional. A counsellor can probably be had for around $100 an hour; a trained mediator who isn't a lawyer will probably cost more but less than the hourly rate of any family law specialist. But this kind of route can only work if both parties consent to go to the professional. Your general options are pretty clear -- what you need to do in your specific case and how much the steps will cost will be advised by whatever professionals that you ultimate choose. But the point is that you need to look beyond trying to save immediate $$ and/or trying to do everything yourself.

eracode

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#1588852 9-Jul-2016 14:55

dejadeadnz:

I recommend Simon Jefferson QC (his rates for opinion/letter work - coming from personal experience of recommending him to friends/family) is highly comparable to Jeremy Sutton's. And Simon is absolutely at the top of the family law business. He may not be in Auckland at the moment, however. In the alternative I recommend Lisa Soljan.

P.S. Real life lawyer and I'm someone who on a professional level have had the opportunity to assess the work on Simon and Lisa. And I would recommend them far more highly than Jeremy Sutton.

IIRC in a thread earlier this year, you described yourself as an 'ex-lawyer'?

Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.

dejadeadnz

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#1588892 9-Jul-2016 16:17

I took a practicing certificate again due to work deciding to pay for it, even though I do not technically require one. Do I have to justify my life to you? I have a law degree and the right to practice law subject to the law society's annual approval process. Is this enough?

Edit: Apologies for derailing the thread but to prevent further tiresome discussions of yours truly and my credentials to offer what is essentially extremely generalised advice on who might be worthwhile lawyers for people to approach, instead of the topic at hand, for people like Eracode and DaveB: people admitted to the bar and eligible to hold a practising certificate as a lawyer do sometimes choose not to, either because the scope of work that they do -- which may or may not require legal skills -- no longer require it or they do not wish to practice in the restricted scopes of practice under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act. The Act also makes it clear that someone eligible to practice as a lawyer but not holding a practising certificate is not strictly entitled to address him or herself as a lawyer. So when I work as a corporate manager but choose not to hold a certificate, it is perfectly right that I call myself an "ex-lawyer" but I do not somehow forget everything that I have learnt and experienced in practice.

driller2000

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#1588903 9-Jul-2016 16:33

To the OP if I was in your shoes - given the importance and potential complexities of your current situation - I would NOT be looking at lowest cost options in this case.

You have several recommendations where people have, as best they can (and with limited info) tried to provide you advice re recommendations of lawyers etc - I would suggest you take this advice and take this request away from this forum

PS: I also reckon enough of the slagging/smearing by some it is petty and childish - and is kinda verging on nasty....

freitasm

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#1588906 9-Jul-2016 16:41

I have removed a post and warned someone. Stop bickering and do not bring other discussions into the thread.

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