Month: April 2019

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Husband’s mother fails in claim that she was the real owner of the business

In a financial remedy claim following divorce the court can obviously only deal with property that belongs to one or both of the parties. Property that actually belongs to someone else is not part of the claim. As might be imagined, it is a common scenario that someone other than the husband and wife, often another family member, claims to own property that would otherwise be subject to the claim. In such a case, the court must decide as a preliminary issue who actually owns the property, before it decides the financial remedy claim itself.

That was the task facing Mr Justice Mostyn in the recent case Rothschild v Charmaine De Souza.

Now, before I describe the case I should explain that its facts are a little complex, as they often are when family businesses are involved. I will therefore be simplifying the facts of the case for the purpose of this post, to make it easier to follow. In particular, I will assume that there was only one business throughout the history of the case, whereas in reality there were several businesses.

The case revolved around who owned the family business. Was it owned by the husband and the wife equally, as the relevant paperwork suggested, or was it actually owned by the husband’s mother, as she claimed?

The business, a company, was incorporated in 1999. Its two issued one-penny shares were transferred from the formation agents to the husband and the wife. Thereafter all of the documentation relating to the company, including documentation signed by the husband, indicated that it was held 50:50 by the husband and the wife. Certainly, the husband did not, in any of that documentation, indicate that the true owner of the business was his mother.

The marriage broke down and the parties separated in September 2016. Divorce proceedings then ensued, along with financial remedy proceedings.

Within the financial remedy proceedings the husband was required to prepare a financial statement (‘Form E’), setting out details of his finances, including all of his assets. A draft of the Form E was delivered in April 2017, and this was the first time that the husband asserted that the business was owned by his mother. His mother was made a party to the proceedings and, as explained, the issue of the true ownership of the business fell to Mr Justice Mostyn to decide.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Mr Justice Mostyn’s judgment is the initial section (paragraphs 1 to 7), in which he explains his task, and how the court goes about deciding what he called (using a term that a lay person would understand) who ‘really owned’ the company. If you would like a plain-English introduction to what can be a horrendously complex area of law then I would recommend that you read those paragraphs. It all boils down to the difference between being a ‘formal owner’ (i.e. the owner according to the documentation, for example the deeds, in the case of land) and the real owner – it is quite often the case that, for various reasons, the two people are quite different.

In fact, Mr Justice Mostyn’s task in this case was not that difficult (or at least that’s how his judgment reads to someone who has never sat in judgment of anyone or anything!). The evidence clearly pointed to the business being owned equally by the husband and the wife. Mr Justice Mostyn listed examples of facts indicating that the business had been treated and represented as being in the ownership of the husband and wife (at paragraph 23 of his judgment). He called the list a ‘formidable catalogue’. In other words, they very strongly pointed in the direction of the business being owned by the husband and the wife.

Faced with this unpleasant truth, the husband’s mother turned against her son, alleging that he had ‘gone rogue’, by holding himself out as the owner of, and dealing with, her property, when he had no authority to do so. Mr Justice Mostyn was having none of it: the husband had not gone rogue, in asserting to the world, including to tax authorities, and moneylenders, that he was, with the wife, the real owner of the business – he was speaking the truth. In any event, if they did not have any interest in the business, why would the husband and the wife have devoted their working lives to it?

Accordingly Mr Justice Mostyn concluded as follows:

“My very clear and strong finding on the evidence is that, at least from the time of the creation of the [company], it was the common intention of [the husband] and [the wife] that the business … would be owned 50:50 by them. [The husband’s mother] knew of this and went along with it.”

He therefore made an order declaring that the business belonged to the husband and the wife in equal shares.

His full judgment can be read here.

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Author: John Bolch

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Freecycling

FREE sign on fence

Finding your stuff a new home, painlessly

As I write this, it has been over six years since my wife and I last moved, making this the longest we’ve ever lived together in the same place. I’ve enjoyed not having to deal with the hassles of moving, but painful though it may be, moving always forces me to get rid of stuff I don’t need and eliminate vast amounts of clutter. Having lived here for so long (and with two kids, no less), we haven’t had that safety valve, and our supply of unwanted stuff has grown to an unmanageable size. The usual answer to too much stuff is fill up the garage or basement or whatever, and when all your storage space is gone, you rent a storage space. Of course, you can sell or give away your unneeded stuff, but finding a good home for it, and transporting the stuff to the new home, is often more trouble than it’s worth.

The excess stuff we have is, for the most part, perfectly good—just no longer needed. Random small appliances and electronic gadgets. Lots of books we’ve read and won’t read again. Clothes the kids have outgrown. Extra dishes from when we had time to throw dinner parties. The list goes on. These kinds of things would be too much bother to sell on eBay, and they’d make little or no money at a garage sale. But we don’t want to simply throw them away, either, because they could be useful to someone. But who needs these things? Freecycling, or free recycling, has the answer.

Yours for the Asking

The idea of freecycling is simplicity itself. You sign up online to join one or more groups in your local region. When you have something to give away, you post a message to the group, which appears on the group’s webpage and may also be delivered by email, according to each member’s preferences. Anyone else in that local group who wants it sends you a reply—and arranges transportation, if necessary. There are no trades or barters, and no strings attached. Everything is completely free, period. And, of course, if you need something that hasn’t already been posted on the list, you can ask for it. Maybe you’ve moved into a new apartment that doesn’t have an ice cube bin, and someone else happens to have one, but didn’t think to list it. Or maybe it’s something larger or stranger, like a wheelbarrow, a rocking chair, or a 50-foot Ethernet cable. You never know: someone just might have what you need. As long as you can pick it up yourself, it’s yours.

Freecycling began in Tucson, Arizona in May 2003 as a way to help reduce the quantity of waste sent to landfills. Since then, it has spread to many thousands of local groups in more than 110 countries. From what I’ve read, though, it sounds like most participants aren’t doing it for the environment. They’re doing it because it’s a convenient and free way to get rid of things you don’t need or acquire things you do. If it happens to keep landfills from overflowing too, hey, that’s a lovely bonus.

Free As in Beer, Not As in Speech

But all is not peace and goodwill in the world of freecycling. For starters, there’s the term Freecycle itself, which was at the center of a trademark dispute a number of years ago, as the organizers of The Freecycle Network tried to prevent other organizations from using the term, and also fought against the use of freecycling as a verb. The organization lost that trademark battle in the United States in 2010, although the name freecycle.org is now trademarked.

Be that as it may, one result of the earlier, heavy-handed efforts to protect the trademark was the creation of several other free recycling networks that perform virtually the same function but were separate simply to avoid having to conform to rules they perceived as excessively strict and unreasonable. All of this makes the process more confusing for the people who want to use it. It’s a pity—and a great irony—that a notion built on the free exchange of stuff for the benefit of the environment was hampered by needlessly self-imposed legal restrictions.

Growing Freely

But whether under the auspices of The Freecycle Network, as part of another organization, or informally among members of a school, church, or other group, the freecycling concept is a great idea—sort of like Craigslist, but only for free stuff. In some urban areas, I’m sure you could furnish an entire apartment in a week or two by freecycling, not only saving money but doing a great favor to the people who need to get rid of their stuff.

Increasingly, too, there’s been quite a backlash against consumerism and its associated clutter, as people begin to realize that they’re actually happier with less stuff than with more. Even though I don’t buy a lot of merchandise, as I look around my home, I realize that I’ve only used, or even thought about, maybe 10% of its contents in the last year. Do I really need the other 90%? When I find possessions that no longer enrich my life in any way, at least I can let them enrich someone else’s life.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on May 7, 2007.

Image credit: Pxhere


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Author: Joe Kissell

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Tricky business: How do you work out what the family business is worth?

Divorce, whatever the circumstances, can be a tricky business but when a family or one of the partners runs their own business, things can be even more complicated.

One of the first stumbling blocks is working out an accurate valuation of the business. You cannot look at the division of a business without an understanding of its value.    

So, we asked Mark Heppinstall from the Stowe Family Law office in Ilkley, who is regularly instructed by business owners, or the spouses of business owners, to join us to explain the best way to get an accurate valuation.

“I am often asked by my clients whether there is a need to have any sole or shared business valued in the event of a divorce or separation.

To answer this, people need to understand that a business is something that can be considered by the Court as one of the financial resources that are available in a case, irrespective of whether the business is considered a matrimonial or non-matrimonial resource.

How to value a business

If a valuation is needed, in matrimonial cases it will usually be undertaken by a single joint expert acting on behalf of both parties. However, before instructing an expert, there are certain steps that should be taken first.

There should be consideration of full business accounts for the last two financial years, which applies to sole traders as much as it does to partnerships, LLP’s or shareholders in limited companies.

If a business is incorporated, abbreviated accounts can often be accessed online from Companies House. This contains easily accessible information that either party can review digitally at the touch of a button.

Whilst a useful overview, these are no replacement for full company accounts, which are usually much more informative and should include the full profit and loss account, balance sheet, detailed notes to the accounts and reports on behalf of the accountants and directors.

This information gives more context to the performance of a business than publicly accessible abbreviated accounts. Unsurprisingly, abbreviated accounts tend to be more concise and therefore might only tell part of the story.

A word of caution, it is worth bearing in mind that by the time business accounts or financial statements are available the data may be historic and could be out of date. Therefore, it is worth cross-checking this information against more current management accounts. This can help give both parties more confidence in a valuation and enable them to make more informed decisions without the need to instruct an expert.  

Additionally, if I am acting for a client who has an interest in a business, I often advise them to obtain a letter from their accountant to comment upon its value, which can assist in narrowing the issues in dispute. This can really help, although the flip side is that the spouse may be wary about relying on a company accountant’s valuation unless there is corroborating evidence from a single joint expert. Nevertheless it can help to explain how the valuation of the client’s interest in the business has been assessed.

I commonly see this if there is disagreement about how the business has been valued, or in cases where a spouse is less familiar with the business, which sometimes means they have less confidence in the accountant’s interpretation of its value.

If you cannot agree, how can the court help?

In most cases, after taking the above steps it is possible for an agreement on valuation to be reached. However, where this is not possible, the Court’s expectation is that expert evidence should be considered from a single joint expert instructed by both parties.

The question for the Court is whether it is necessary to instruct an expert.  If the Court is satisfied that an expert should be instructed, common practice is to instruct an independent accountant with no prior knowledge of the company in question. Although it would be expected that they should have sufficient knowledge of the market or sector in which the business operates.

Strictly speaking, there is no mandatory requirement for the Court’s permission to be obtained before an expert is instructed. However, permission is needed before expert evidence can be put before the Court.

If there is a dispute about whether to instruct an expert, this should be addressed at an early stage in a Court timetable and ideally no later than the first hearing. The Court will weigh up the cost and delay of instructing an expert against the potential value of a party’s interest in the business and the relevance of this in the context of the other matrimonial assets available.

The scope of an expert’s instruction should be carefully considered and could include the value of a spouse’s interest in a business, the extent to which this value is realisable (i.e. liquidity), the future maintainable income of the business and any tax consequences associated with a sale or disposition.

I often remind my client’s that the value of a business should be treated with caution and it is not realistic to compare a business valuation to property or other matrimonial assets.

Property is generally easier to value, easier to sell and convert to liquid capital and therefore more readily realisable. Business valuations are generally more uncertain, there is greater potential for change, they are typically regarded as more risk-laden and the sale of a business might affect a party’s earning capacity or future income; unlike the sale of a property.

The bigger financial picture

In view of this, clients should bear in mind that it can be misleading to treat a spouse’s interest in a business as a capital asset in isolation. Sometimes, it makes more sense to consider the income a spouse can draw from a business, which can be relevant when considering maintenance. Maintenance that could well be guillotined if a client was forced to sell their interest in a business to realise it’s capital value.

What is clear is that there is no one size fits all approach and each case will be based on its own facts. Sometimes a valuation from a single joint expert can really help, but all too often parties can jump to this starting point without first taking sensible and proportionate steps to consider whether this is necessary.”

Get in touch 

If you are separating from your partner and either you or your spouse hold an interest in a business, it is important to take early advice tailored to your specific circumstances.

At Stowe Family Law we work closely with our in-house forensic accountants to ensure that all bases are covered in this respect.

If you would like to get in touch with Mark you can email him at  [email protected] or please do contact our Client Care Team at the details below.

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Author: Mark Heppinstall

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Measures offered by father adequate to protect mother and child on return to Latvia

We all know that the popular media can get things wrong when it reports on legal cases, misunderstanding why the court has made the decision it has. But sometimes it is not so much that the media gets it wrong, more that the media misses the real point of the case.

So it was with the recent child abduction case A (A Child) (Hague Abduction; Art 13(B): Protective Measures). The case was referred to by a certain national newspaper, under the headline: “Mum who thought daughter would have better life in UK is ordered to go back to Latvia”. As that headline indicates, the report suggested that the mother brought her daughter to England simply because she thought her daughter would have a better life here, and told us that Mr Justice Williams, hearing the case, decided that decisions relating to the child’s future should be made by the Latvian courts. Accordingly, he ordered the mother to return the child to Latvia.

In fact, the crucial issue in the case related to a point only touched upon by the newspaper report: the mother’s allegation that she had been subjected to domestic abuse by the father.

The relevant facts of the case were as follows. The mother, father and child (who was born in December 2014) are all of Latvian origin. The mother brought the child to the United Kingdom in the summer/early autumn of 2018, without the agreement of the father, and had been living here ever since with her mother.

The father made an application for the child’s summary return to Latvia, pursuant to the Hague Convention on Child Abduction. The mother raised a defence under Article 13(b) of the Convention: that there was a grave risk that her return would expose the child to physical or psychological harm, or otherwise place the child in an intolerable situation. The mother alleged that the father had subjected her to domestic abuse, both of a physical and coercive/controlling nature.

The father denied the mother’s allegations, and offered the court certain ‘protective measures’, to ensure that the mother and child would be safe upon their return to Latvia. These included the following undertakings (or promises to the court):

  1. Not to remove the child from the mother’s care, pending a hearing in the Latvian courts.
  2. To initiate proceedings in the Latvian courts so that if the mother and child returned, there would be a hearing before a judge who would be able to discern what the arrangements should be for the child,
  3. Not assault, harass, threaten, interfere or molest the mother, whether by himself or any third party.
  4. To vacate the property where he and the mother had lived, and allow the mother and child to reside there until there was a hearing in the Latvian courts.

Mr Justice Williams considered the evidence of the mother and father. He did not make a determination as to whether the mother’s allegations were true, but found that if they were they would amount to domestic abuse at a relatively high level. Accordingly, taking the mother’s allegations at their highest, as he had to do, the Article 13(b) ‘threshold’ was certainly met.

The question, then, was whether the protective measures offered by the father were sufficient to address the identified risk. Mr Justice Williams found that they were: the measures would provide the mother with the necessary protection, and could be registered in the Latvian courts, so that they were enforceable there. In practice, that meant that the mother could not establish her Article 13(b) defence, and accordingly Mr Justice Williams ordered the return of the child to Latvia.

Going back to that newspaper headline, it was true that the mother had said that she thought that the child would have a better life in this country. However, as we have seen, the real issue in the case was not where it would be best for the child to live (that will be a decision for the Latvian court, if the mother makes an application there to remove the child to this country), but whether it would be safe for the child to return to Latvia.

You can read the full judgment here.

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Author: John Bolch

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Plate Clouds

Plate clouds

Alien spacecraft hidden in plain sight?

One summer, I was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles along California’s Interstate 5. I’d left the Bay Area mid-morning, and after five and a half hours of driving on the long, straight highway through the great central valley, I was approaching the modest range of mountains that separates that valley from southern California. I was happy to be within an hour’s drive of my destination so early in the afternoon, and had already started to plan the hours of evening I had gained by leaving early and not stopping to eat. It wasn’t going to go the way I was planning, though.

I got stopped by a cloud.

Within an hour’s drive of the mountains, I started noticing that something was—well, it looked like something was balanced on top of the nearest mountain. As I got closer it started becoming obvious that a giant spacecraft was poised over the mountain, maybe even tethered to it like an airship to a mooring post. It was colored as you’d expect a cloud formation to be, but had sharp, clean edges, and a precise layered structure. More ominously, I could see that as time passed, and my view of the mountain stayed more or less the same, the nearby clouds were moving but the “thing” wasn’t.

They Want You to Think It’s a Cloud

Of course, I always knew it was a cloud, of some kind. But the closer I got to it, the harder it became to accept that it was a natural phenomenon. It was elegant, delicate. There was an architecture to it. And it wasn’t moving. Because of this I was compelled to buy a disposable camera and wait at the little “last chance” gas station at the foot of the mountain until sunset rolled around and started throwing wild colors of light onto the…the…

“They’re called ‘plate clouds,’” said a waitress who stepped out of the diner to smoke. She’d seen it once before, in the same spot, about the same shape, “but not as big a deal as this time.” She didn’t know how they were formed, or why they stayed frozen like that for so long, making the illusion of solidity so eerily real.

Giant Lentils in the Sky

Lenticularis (from the same root word that gives us “lentil”), or “lenticular clouds,” are a cloud species occasionally found over mountain peaks, or on the leeward side of a mountain. As wind forces air up one side of a mountain, the air cools, and the moisture within that air condenses into visible drops. As soon as the air begins to descend down the other side of the mountain the moisture in the air warms, and is no longer visible. What appears to be a stationary cloud is actually the condensation point of a constantly moving stream of air, and the layers within the apparent cloud represent “waves” within the stream. It doesn’t happen all the time, or even often.

It happens, for example, when the upper air is stable, meaning lenticular clouds are a good indication that it’s not about to rain. But the event can grow. Altocumulus lenticularis (the formation that I saw), an already unusual occurrence, can grow into the legitimately rare Stratocumulus lenticularis, whose elements are larger yet, and must either be so spectacular as to stop hearts within a hundred-mile radius, or actually be so large that they cover the sky and thus go unnoticed.

Other rare cousins in the sky lentil family are those lenticular clouds that form absent any orographic features (mountains). Large bodies of ice surrounded by warmer ground can cause the same mysterious, unmoving “stack of pancakes” formations, though they will not have the intriguing concave underside, caused by the updraft from the mountain, that made mine so artificial-looking. Lenticularis is also the species of cloud known for “irisation,” an effect of iridescence at the sharp edges of the “plates.” I don’t recall having noticed this quality in the formation I saw.

Of course, I might just be inadvertently continuing the grand cover-up, by describing these as meteorological events with plausible causes. Maybe they really are alien spacecraft. Either way, I’m keeping a camera in my car from now on.

Editor’s note: Here are some full-size photos of plate clouds provided by the author: Photo 1 | Photo 2 | Photo 3 | Photo 4.

Guest author Bill Bain is a painter and commercial illustrator who, having toured the world, has correctly chosen San Francisco as the place to live.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on March 28, 2005.

Image credit: Bill Bain


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Author: Bill Bain

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12 of the best books to help children cope with divorce

As recent statistics from the Ministry of Justice revealed that divorce rates have gone up by 8% 2017 v 2018 and it is regularly quoted that close to 50% of marriages end, divorce is not unusual.

However, for the families behind the statistics, it is incredibly unusual. There is no set pattern, no rule book on how to deal with it and no guide on the best things to say. And whilst children will have friends whose parents have divorced and people in the wider family, depending on their age they may have no personal insight into what the term actually means.

Through my experience of working with families going through a divorce, I have seen a positive impact reading has had on children dealing with the process. There is comfort in reading for children and books can help them to understand they are not alone, it’s not that fault and that change can be for the better.

Here are my top 12 books, that I have used when working with clients and their children.  I have organised by age range.

Older children (recommended 9+)

The Suitcase Kid by Jacqueline Wilson

When my parents split up they didn’t know what to do with me . . . My family always lived at Mulberry Cottage. Mum, Dad, me – and Radish, my Sylvanian rabbit. But now Mum lives with Bill the Baboon and his three kids. Dad lives with Carrie and her twins. And where do I live? I live out of a suitcase. One week with Mum’s new family, one week with Dad’s.

Deals with: having two homes, blended families

Clean Break by Jacqueline Wilson

Em adores her funny, glamorous dad – who cares if he’s not her real father? He’s wonderful to her, and to her little brother Maxie and sister Vita. True to form at Christmas, Dad gives them fantastic presents, including a real emerald ring for his little Princess Em.

Unfortunately, he’s got another surprise in store – he’s leaving them. Will Dad’s well-meaning but chaotic attempts to keep seeing Em and the other children help the family come to terms with this new crisis? Or would they be better off with a clean break – just like Em’s arm?

Deals with: rejection, absence, step-parents

Goggle Eyes by Anne Fine

Kitty Killin is not only a good storyteller but also the World’s Greatest Expert when it comes to mothers having new and unwanted boyfriends. Particularly when there’s a danger they might turn into new and unwanted stepfathers…

Deals with: new partners, step-parents

It’s not the end of the world by Judy Blume

Karen’s parents have always argued, and lately, they’ve been getting worse. But when her father announces that they’re going to get divorced, it seems as if Karen’s whole world will fall apart. Her brother, Jeff, blames their mum. Her kid sister, Amy, asks impossible questions and is scared that everyone she loves is going to leave. Karen just wants her parents to get back together. Gradually, she learns that this isn’t going to happen – and realizes that divorce is not the end of the world.

Deals with: family conflict and separation

Younger children (recommended 3-8 yrs)

Mum and Dad Glue by Kes Gray

A little boy tries to find a pot of parent glue to stick his mum and dad back together. His parents have come undone and he wants to mend their marriage, stick their smiles back on and make them better. This rhyming story is brilliantly told with a powerful message that even though his parents may be broken, their love for him is not.

Deals with: coming to terms with parents’ separation

The Family Fairies by Rosemary Lucas

Rosemary’s primary aim was to provide the foundations for other adoptive families to help explain their own remarkable journeys… storytelling to help children understand that families come together in different ways.

Deals with: the adoption process

Two Homes by Claire Masurel

In this award-winning picture book classic about divorce, Alex has two homes – a home where Daddy lives and a home where Mummy lives. Alex has two front doors, two bedrooms and two very different favourite chairs. He has a toothbrush at Mummy’s and a toothbrush at Daddy’s. But whether Alex is with Mummy or Daddy, one thing stays the same: Alex is loved by them both – always. This gently reassuring story focuses on what is gained rather than what is lost when parents divorce, while the sensitive illustrations, depicting two unique homes in all their small details, firmly establish Alex’s place in both of them. Two Homes will help children – and parents – embrace even the most difficult of changes with an open and optimistic heart.

Deals with: parents’ separation, moving between two homes

The Great Big Book of Families by Mary Hoffman

What is a family? Once, it was said to be a father, mother, boy, girl, cat and dog living in a house with a garden. But as times have changed, families have changed too, and now there are almost as many kinds of families as colours of the rainbow – from a mum and dad or single parent to two mums or two dads, from a mixed-race family to children with different mums and dads, to families with a disabled member. This is a fresh, optimistic look through children’s eyes at today’s wide variety of family life: from homes, food, ways of celebrating, schools and holidays to getting around, jobs and housework, from extended families, languages and hobbies to pets and family trees.

Deals with: change in family dynamics, non-traditional families

Very young children (2+)

I’ll never let you go by Smriti Prasadam-Halls

When you aren’t sure, you’ll feel me near,
When you are scared, I will be here.
When you are high, when you are low,
I’ll be holding your hand and I’ll never let go.

A tender and heartfelt picture book. With reassuring words offering a message of unconditional love, and illustrations bursting with exuberance, warmth and humour.

Deals with: reassurance

Living with mum and living with dad: my two homes

Mum and Dad don’t live together any more, so sometimes this little girl lives with her mum and her cat, and sometimes she lives with her dad. She has two bedrooms and two sets of toys, but she takes her favourite toys with her wherever she goes. This simple, warm, lift-the-flap book with bold and colourful illustrations is a reassuring representation of separation for the youngest children. Melanie Walsh is sympathetically alive to the changes in routine that are familiar to many children who live with separate parents and are loved by both.

Deals with: moving between homes, changes to routine

The Family Book by Todd Parr

Some families have two moms or two dads. Some families have one parent instead of two. Some families live in a house by themselves. Some families share a house with other families. All families can help each other be strong!

The Family Book celebrates families and all the different varieties they come in. Whether they’re big or small, look alike or different, have a single parent or two, Todd Parr assures readers that every family is special in its own unique way.

Deals with: looking at different kinds of families

Guess how much I love you by Sam McBratney

Sometimes, when you love someone very, very much, you want to find a way of describing how much you treasure them. But, as Little Nutbrown Hare and Big Nutbrown Hare discover, love is not always an easy thing to measure. The story of Little and Big Nutbrown Hares’ efforts to express their love for each other.

Deals with: comfort

Get in touch

If you need support and advice on getting a divorce, please do get in touch with our Client Care Team at the details below or make an online enquiry

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Author: Helen Miller

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The sins of social media

In any type of litigation the parties may obviously be aggrieved by a decision of the court that goes against them. However, in family litigation the sense of injustice can go much deeper, especially where children are involved. It can reach such a point that the aggrieved party may seek redress outside of the court, which they see as biased against them.

This is nothing new. Aggrieved litigants have always gone to the media to try to gain support for their case. However, more often than not of course the media are not interested, or not prepared to get involved. What has changed in recent times is that other avenues of redress have opened up for the aggrieved litigant.

I am talking, of course, about social media, whether Twitter, Facebook, blogging, YouTube or some other form. Social media has given the aggrieved litigant a potential audience beyond anything that could previously have been imagined. And there are few limitations upon what can be said on social media. Better still, you can reach that audience with great ease, by writing a few words, or by just posting a video, all from the comfort of your own home. But that ease of use can be a problem: without the ‘filter’ of having to go to the media, litigants can often get themselves into trouble before they have had a chance to consider the implications.

Obviously, the actual audience may often initially be quite small, limited to those friends and family who follow your social media account. But it doesn’t take much knowledge to widen the audience significantly, by reaching out to others with a similar grievance. And then those others only need to click a button to spread the word to their own followers. Soon your story might be known by thousands of like-minded people.

It all seems such a wonderful idea. With a few words and a few clicks of a mouse you can gather an army of supporters, ready to tackle the injustices of the biased family courts.

But this road is fraught with dangers, and it will almost certainly not provide you with the result you seek. Instead, it is only likely to damage your case, possibly fatally.

The first and obvious point to make is that the court is likely to take an extremely dim view of a party who uses social media in an attempt to undermine the authority of the court. This could well influence future decisions made by the court.

The second point to make is that children involved in family court proceedings should usually not be identified. And that also means that it should not be possible to do a ‘jigsaw’ identification, by giving sufficient details to enable them to be identified even if they are not actually named. Courts are likely to penalise anyone identifying a child involved in family proceedings.

Note that even if you use social media anonymously and do not identify any of the parties involved, there is still a very high chance that your reader/watchers/listeners (or some of them) will be able to work out who you are. It isn’t worth the risk.

And the final point I wish to make is a non-legal one. Think of the effect upon your child of what you are doing. Do they want to be at the centre of a social media storm? Do they want the intimate details of their family life exposed to public scrutiny? And remember what you are doing may deepen the rifts within their family, leaving them with scars that may remain for the rest of their lives.

Let me be clear: unless the court has expressly forbidden you from discussing your case with anyone at all, you are not expected to keep entirely silent. It is quite normal to discuss a family case with other members of your family, or close friends. In fact, such discussions can be very useful, acting both as a relief valve and a support at an extremely stressful time in one’s life (best though to ignore any ‘legal’ advice from friends and family). But you should only of course discuss your case with people that you can trust not to discuss it with others. Being impersonal, social media doesn’t usually have that protection.

The moral of the story is very simple: the only safe course is not to mention or discuss your case on social media. Don’t be tempted to rush to your computer as soon as you get back from court: think about the implications of what you are about to do.

I realise that all of the above will have been said before, including by me. But it clearly needs to be repeated. Increasing numbers of parents are continuing to fall into the trap of taking their case to the court of social media, rather than concentrating on the only court that matters: the Family Court.

The post The sins of social media appeared first on Stowe Family Law.


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Author: John Bolch

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Binaural Beats

Binaural Beats and Interaural Time Differences

The magical music of the brain

Regular readers may recall an article here about brain machines—electronic devices that use flashing lights to promote relaxation. The idea behind these machines is that brainwaves have a tendency to fall in step with stimuli of certain frequencies—a phenomenon known as entrainment. So by flashing lights at the same frequency as one’s brainwaves would have during, say, deep meditation, a machine should be able to induce a meditative state artificially. It’s a fascinating concept, and there are numerous gadgets that use light alone, or sound and light together, to induce sleep, improve learning and creativity, and perform any number of other feats.

In the course of my research for that article, I noticed that there were also products that claimed to produce exactly the same effect using sound alone. Somewhat skeptical, I put on some headphones and listened to one of the sample recordings. The next thing I knew, I was waking up, wiping the drool from my keyboard. A half hour had gone by and I never knew what hit me. Whatever happened, the effect was as surprising as it was impressive.

Beat It

I decided to investigate further. There are, it turns out, quite a few different companies selling downloadable audio files, CDs, and electronic gadgets based on the basic notion of binaural beats. Although they come in many different forms and have different claims, they all exploit an interesting quality of the brain.

If you were to listen to two musical instruments playing the same note, but slightly out of tune with each other, you may perceive a sort of warbling or vibrato effect. These cyclic pulsations are called beats, and within a small range of tunings, they get faster the farther apart the two notes are. (If the instruments are perfectly in tune, the effect is absent, and if they’re really far out of tune, then you simply hear two different notes.) It turns out that you can get exactly the same effect if you play a tone in one ear and a very slightly lower- or higher-pitched tone in the other ear. Listen to either sound individually, and it sounds normal—but listen to both together and you perceive the beats. In other words, this effect is not an acoustic one, but is produced by the brain.

The human auditory apparatus can hear sounds with a pitch as low as about 20Hz (Hertz = cycles per second), give or take a few Hertz. However, the frequency of brainwaves—particularly those associated with states of relaxation and sleep—can go much lower, even below 1Hz. So a recording of a sound at, say, 4Hz would be inaudible and would have no effect. However, if you pitch two sounds exactly 4Hz apart (say, one at 100Hz and the other at 104Hz) and play one in each ear, the brain “manufactures” a 4Hz beat. And, all things being equal, the brain will then strongly tend to fall into sync with that frequency, producing the same sort of subjective sensation as sleep. Conveniently, the range of frequency differences that can produce an audible beat corresponds roughly to the range of frequencies dominant in the brain during the sorts of relaxed states most of us enjoy.

Mixed Notes

Of course, plain out-of-tune tones aren’t especially interesting to listen to, so most publishers of binaural beat recordings mix in other sounds such as rain, waterfalls, bells, gongs, and so on. In some cases, these extra sounds completely hide the beats so that the listener is unaware of them consciously, but they still register in the brain and have the same effect.

It’s not at all difficult to record these sounds in an MP3 file or on a CD—perhaps in a progression from faster to slower beats—and numerous companies do. There are also mobile and web apps that do the same thing. These recordings and apps are billed as aids for meditation, relaxation, or self-hypnosis—and even as a legal “digital drug.” The prices range from almost nothing to thousands of dollars for a multi-year program of customized recordings. Although each company puts a unique spin on its particular method or formula, it’s virtually impossible to make fair comparisons because what you have to judge is ultimately a subjective experience. That US$15 recording might produce an effect that, for you, is just as good as what you’d get by spending several hundred dollars—then again, it might not. It’s reasonable to expect better and more reliable results from larger companies that employ neuroscientists and psychologists and do actual testing of their products’ effects on human brainwave patterns.

I have invested only a little time—and no money—into a few limited experiments on myself with binaural beats. My results have been modest at best—perhaps I get what I pay for. Still, my experience suggests that this technology has a lot of potential. And it’s certainly a lot less goofy-looking than sunglasses with blinking LEDs mounted on the inside. So the next time you see someone on the train wearing headphones and apparently zoned out, remember: you might be looking at a great spiritual master in training.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on October 13, 2004.

Image credit: Skyhead E [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


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Author: Joe Kissell