The Cost of Delay – Delaying Seeking Advice or Responding in Your Matter
It is pretty safe to say that nobody enters a long term relationship or marriage and expects that it will end in separation. The legal process associated with separation is sometimes unexpected, often unwanted, and almost certainly the last thing you want to be dealing with in your day-to-day life.
Life is busy, separation is emotional and we understand that answering emails, letters and calls from lawyers can be time consuming. It is sometimes appealing to people to just go into denial and not want to deal with the issue. There can be some serious consequences to you by failing to deal with an issue in a timely manner. Delay is not always in your favour.
Let’s use a case study to explain our point:
Mark and Mary have separated. Mark is ready to separate their finances and move on, but Mary is devastated. Mary is overwhelmed and she just can’t find the time or the inclination to deal with the separation. Mark invites Mary to try and reach agreement about their finances, but Mary just isn’t interested in dealing with it. Mark then instructs a lawyer to reach out to Mary, but Mary promptly files the lawyer’s correspondence in the ‘too hard basket’.
Mark’s lawyers over time continue to try and reach out to Mary to get her to engage in the process. They ask her to provide documents, to participate in mediation and ultimately get to the stage of sending letters that they will commence Court action. Unfortunately, Mary is in a holding pattern and can’t break it. After a few months of this, suddenly Mary gets served with Court documents from Mark. Mark had no option to get the matter moving, so he instructed his lawyers to file a Court application, because the one place she can’t avoid is the Court once pressed.
Mary finally goes to see a lawyer and finds out that she is going to have to file a bunch of Court documents in response and she is probably also going to have to attend mediation unless Mark and Mary can reach agreement beforehand.
So, the point? Had Mary engaged in the process from the start, there is the possibility that the Court proceedings could have been avoided entirely and Mary wouldn’t need to be put to the expense of filing court documents in sesponse.
Now, because Mary didn’t see a lawyer and get advice about how to handle her family law matter, she needs to prepare and file her Court documents and explain to the Court why she didn’t respond. This has caused Mary to spend money she could have saved by seeing a family lawyer early, who could advise her about the best way to respond. This would have been more cost effective than needing to file court documents and for a lawyer to appear on her behalf before the Court.
Nobody wants to spend money on lawyers unnecessarily. But the fact is a lot of people do simply by not investing a little early on in or order to save possibly tens of thousands in the long run.
In our case study above, we have demonstrated how taking charge and engaging in the process can save you money.
Our excellent and experienced team has availability to see you as soon as possible and can usually see you within a day or so of booking. You can book a free discovery call here or contact us at the office on (02) 8379 1835.
We look forward to helping you.
Author: Kalisha Martin, Senior Lawyer at Lagom Family Law
** The information contained in this blog is general and does not constitute legal advice on your particular maner. You should consult a lawyer specialising in family law for independent legal advice regarding your particular circumstances **
Lagom is Swedish and means not too little, not too much, just right. This is our philosophy of practice as we aim to provide tailored advice specific for your individual needs - that’s just right for you!
Lagom Family Law is a boutique legal practice lead by Principal Lichee Hogland who strives to achieve the best possible outcome for her clients whilst being approachable and respectful.