One of our clients, Alison Walker, has written down her experience with Fair-Result. More specifically Chris and Peter – who helped her get divorce costs under wraps and achieve the best results from the divorce.
I contacted Fair Result after Chris appeared as a guest speaker on a live forum group discussion, of which I am a member.
I was keen to hear how their fixed-fee model worked and whether it really did cover everything from beginning to signing off on the consent order.
My situation was that my husband owns a business which was quite successful with him having taken it over from his father in the mid-90s. I work for the local authority and have done for many years in local government admin so have a relatively good index-linked pension which I was keen to preserve and we have a holiday home in the Burgundy region of France which we always went to in the summer holidays with our children but who at the time of my divorce were approaching A-Levels and university.
As is common my husband left me just at the time thought we were getting straight from bringing up the children. My world was devastated when he told me he was leaving. After 6 months on my own, I knew he wasn’t coming back, and divorce was inevitable, but I didn’t have loads of money to pay lawyers fees. Although my husband was still paying his half towards the mortgage the running costs of a home with two young men still present were beginning to get me down.
The divorce group I’m in told me about Fair Results and how they gave a fixed fee right from the start to do everything in the divorce including court costs barristers’ fees and all valuations. So, when I heard Chris was on the discussion, I joined to see how everything worked.
Chris explained it all to the group in the meeting and I private messaged him afterwards to see how we could move matters forward. He arranged a zoom call with him and Pete the next day at a time that suited me – 7 in the evening so I didn’t even need to take time off work.
On the zoom, they quickly explained everything to me again and quickly got to grips providing me with a good idea of my overall marital pot and what I should be expecting on a fair split of the assets considering my income and housing needs.
Within an hour of the meeting, Pete had emailed me with a fixed fee quote to complete my divorce right up to a final hearing if my husband wouldn’t settle. He also broke the fee down into sections for me should we be able to settle at the First appointment or at the FDR.
At first, I have to say I thought the overall fee was high but when they explained it included everything as opposed to the uncertainty of traditional legal fees rising by the hour and not knowing where they could end, I decided to go with Fair Result on the stage by stage basis. Boy am I happy I did.
I thought my husband would have been reasonable in his approach and accept he would have to split all our assets fairly. He certainly didn’t and right from the response to the initial letter Fair Result sent it was obvious I was in for a fight. Straight away he said I wasn’t having anything of the business, and he wanted the holiday home as he had paid for it out of the business.
Immediately, Pete and Chris discussed with me they didn’t think the case was going to settle at the First Appointment, so we needed to get the business valued and the home in France. After some arguing my husband reluctantly agreed that the rise in the value of his business during the marriage since the time he owned it was to be included in the pot. So, we needed to get the business independently valued. Peter took the lead with this and using his accountant skills he liaised with the independent valuer and got me a fantastic value of my husband’s business, which the FDR the court accepted and I was entitled to half the increase in value – the rise in value when I was married.
They also managed to get the house in France valued and my husband had to buy me out of my half share in it.
When the case was presented at the FDR, I couldn’t believe how much work had gone into preparing my case. You forget what’s been done for you in the 8 months I was working with the team at Fair Result. All the time I emailed, and they responded within 24 hours – all the comforting phone calls I had with them when I was in the middle of desperate moments not knowing how it would all turn out.
I cannot thank the team at Fair Result for all the care and effort they put into my case and I was delighted with the outcome. Yes, I thought the fee was high at first but when I heard how much my husband had paid, I knew I got the bargain and I got the best result. I’m sure overall at the end of the day I saved myself 25% on fees that I would have paid with traditional lawyers. If in doubt pick up the phone and have a chat with the team.
