Award-winning legal firm Higgs & Sons is strengthening its family team with a new associate, coinciding with the publication of a new far reaching review into family law.
Sarah Martin joins Higgs as an associate. She specialises in divorce, civil partnership dissolution and cohabitation disputes as well as advising on issues relating to children and relationship breakdown.
Speaking of her appointment, Sarah said: “There has never been a more important time in family law than now. The long anticipated Family Justice Review panel final report has been published this week and it’s clear that people in the region need to ensure they get the very best legal advice in the most cost-efficient way.”
Sarah is a member of Resolution and qualified as a solicitor in 1999. She said that the Family Justice Review will bring the biggest changes to family law in a generation: “It’s been well documented in the press this week about the legal rights of children after a break-up, with fathers not automatically being given shared or equal time with the children, should a relationship end. Similarly, it is not proposed that grandparents have an automatic right to have contact either.
“An increase in the number of cases being dealt with by the family justice system means it is being put under significant strain. In my experience, parents often find the system complicated, expensive and emotionally exhausting. It’s therefore important that clear, concise advice is given.”
The Family Justice Review panel was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Education and the Welsh Government to undertake a comprehensive review of the family justice system in England and Wales.
To find out more about the report, visit www.higgsandsons.co.uk.