Re:Final hearing

How far in advance of the court hearing should skeleton arguments be forwarded - ideal time ­frame­?

You make your submissions as soon as you practically can, in accordance with CPR rules that is within 2 weeks of a hearing unless a judge rules otherwize.

In my case I complied totally with CPR but the other side did not, submitting bundles just 2 days before a FH. If the case was that they were unable to do so because of sensible reasons that would have been acceptable, as if documents or arguments are not available before hand a party should not be prejudiced and neither should the court because of real reasons for non submission or "non compliance". The main thing is that justice should be served - a good recent case is the on going trial of murder for Lawrence.

Best foot forward and best endeavour. A final hearing is the nearest thing to civil litigation in family proceedings. Once you get to appeal of a final judgmenet in ancilliary relief you are into pure CPR and pure litigation which is civil prosecution.

Ancillary relief hearings don`t follow civil practice rules they follow the family bench book guide, the court will say when the bundle is to be filed, usually no later than tree days before the hearing, a skeleton argument is a submission and goes in with the bundle.

I did not hear any response from my ex husband solicitors regarding the offer which is now closed.I do not think they have updated their bundle or sent their skeletal argument yet. I am not sure what they are up to!.
I have a review on Wednesday, they might negotiate, any advice on how to handle them?
My case is complex as there are properties in another jurisdiction, he is disputing they are ours, they are all acquired after the marriage with my help.
My ex had put an offer without prejudice save for costs( Calderbank in May 2011 but they did not follow the inter-Counsel agreement between the two sides, in which the two offers should have been exchanged at the same time) My legal team at the time advised that we should not respond to it. The offer was ridiculous half the assets not mentioned and the dissipated savings in excess of £100,000.
He only wants to give 1/3 of his pension, we are married 30yrs and all assets including his earning capacity is acquired during the marriage. In fact I sacrificed my own career for his as we were same profession.

Any comments or advices will be appreciated.

Thank you all.

If you are in a position to submit a bundle then you should do so as obviously you need documents to be able to argue this case and the court will need documents to be able to make a judgment upon it.

Write a letter to his solicitors asking them for a copy of the bundle they will be submitting and then put that in your bundle as evidence that you are attempting negotiations.

It is a somewhat contentious issue so you do need to tread carefully but there is no merit in putting in an offer to another litigant and then marking the offer as "without prejudice" in the belief that this will protect you from disclosure of the offer from the other side when the offer is most definately prejudiced and without prejudice is in an attempt to stop your dishonestly being revealed to the court.

An obvious example would be that someone sends you a death threat or other threat of harm and then marks it without prejudice in an attempt to stop the threat being admissible during prosecution proceedings.

So, if I were you I would put in your skeleton argument that you received via solitiors an offer which was obviously not in accordance with protocol but do not disclose the contents of the offer in your argument and do not put the without prejudice offer in your bundle to court - BUT DO take the offer to court with you if this gets that far and in your summing up ask the judge if he/she would look at it and consider it in their judgment.

You are going to have to make up your mind what you want to do regarding the forgeign properties and alot of this is going to depend on how much disclosure and documents you have in your possession regarding it.

I think it is also a bit tricky as it falls outside marital assets as they are non marital assets and assets aquired by the sounds of it as a result of your partnership in purchase after divorce.

There is still time for you to put another offer to the other side which you can say is open until the day you go to court but BEFORE entry into the court and mark your offer as such.

As long as your offer is genuine and made in good faith to settle then you should not be penalised for this and also it may concentrate both your ex-s and his legal teams mind with regard to costs in all of this.

Make sure that you take the schedule of costs from the previous advisers and also in your argument make sure you point out the advice of your previous advisers in relation to the "without prejudice" offer and any other issues that you believe relevant (statement of issues - which is basically the issues you feel relevant both in terms of your conduct and also his conduct).

Hope this helps.