WAR Episode 6: A day in court and a few legal liberties

To quote Abraham Lincoln, “There is nothing good in war. Except its ending”, an apposite comment as Sky’s headline grabbing divorce drama “WAR” trundles towards its conclusion.

For those of you who have been following my musings on the yawning gap between this TV drama and divorce court reality read on! Episode 6 has now aired and it is hotting up nicely as our warring spouses finally get their day in court.

I’m not sure that we are quite in Brad and Angelina territory here despite the divorce between tech mogul Dominic West and glamourous film star Sienna Miller being presented as the biggest divorce trial in British legal history. The police didn’t really have to break sweat to hold back what was supposed to be a horde of scoop hungry journalists outside the court building. In fact if the reporters had lined up nicely they would all have easily got their photos.

From mediation to arbitration to court. How did we get here?

Anyway, that aside, how did we get here?

Dom and Sienna decide to divorce. Seemingly the day after, they trot off to mediation and start trading offers without anyone actually sitting down (despite Sienna’s legal teams’ entire office being employed on their one and only case) and working out what Dom’s company shares are worth. Ok, so mediation doesn’t work, so they decide to arbitrate. Now arbitration is a good idea. Confidential and less acrimonious (ok, I know Brad and Angelina are arbitrating and that has been going on a bit but that’s America and they do things differently there) but that didn’t seem to work either. Let’s gloss over the fact that once you sign up to arbitrate you are locked into the process and can’t just decide to pop off to court instead. Our intrepid legal teams have decided that court is best so here we are.

Section 25 statements. Timing is everything!

Twenty fours hour before the Big Day, Budgie the Barrister (who comes up with these names?) is busy “completing section 25”. Now a s25 statement is the statement which effectively sets out your case. It is a key document that you are required to exchange at least a month or so before the hearing. It stands as your evidence in chief at court so that you don’t have to spend hours on it in court and you are then cross examined by the other party’s barrister on the contents. What you don’t do is ask your client to draft it and you most certainly don’t do it the day before the hearing! Nor is its focus undermining hubby’s character! His hanky panky with the honeytrap is not going to feature in the judge’s summing up trust me!

Whatever happened to the Financial Dispute Resolution Hearing?

And what happened to the Financial Dispute Resolution Hearing?! This is a pretty much compulsory hearing when everyone attends court to try and settle matters with the help of the judge as a sort of referee. We seem to have skipped that bit. And this must be the fastest divorce case in legal history. A case like this would probably take at least 12 to 18 months to get to a final hearing not 12 to 18 weeks. And it would start with a First Directions Appointment when the judge (the solicitors and Budgie having seemingly having overlooked this rather key issue) would probably have queried the need for a valuation of the business (and hopefully put the honey trap line of argument to bed).

The mystery of the missing share valuation

And so we still haven’t had those shares valued! Yes, the infamous Zephyr shares that Dom was transferring to his financial advisor….like no one was going to notice!

And (yes, I know I keep starting sentences with and but I’m on a roll here so bear with me….) Budgie the barrister appears to be having her strategy meeting with her client practically on the eve of trial. Bad planning there I’d say.

No win, no fee? Not in family law!

Sienna’s Team is still looking worried with more mutterings about how if they lose the case the firm will fail. I explained last week why that is a nonsense; family lawyers are, for what I hope are obvious reasons, not allowed to take cases on a no win, no fee basis! Send the woman a bill for goodness sake!

The final twist. Who is the Mole?

Anyway, the episode ends with the Pregnant One clocking who the Mole is. As least the hapless Saeed is off the hook. I bet the Pregnant One’s waters will break at a key moment and I still think Dom and Sienna will get back together, the Mole and Dom’s Team will get their come uppance and roll on series 2.