Legal costs v Judges salary

Anyone who has been following my saga will know that mine was a small money divorce which has seen me in court now 32 times - I wonder how many days Paul MacCartney spent in court getting divorced from Heather Mills?

Anyway I do know that she wasn''t that vindictive or her legal team that stupid to transfer from family, then commercial then chancery and then Queens Bench.

Still, the point is that having seen the post on judges salaries put up by dukey I believe that the Judge who is now involved in my case is on a salary of approx £100,000 - he is a Master of the Supreme Court UK.

The lastest application made by my ex-s legal teams is to make insolvent a company of which I am trustee and not a current creditor or beneficiary and of which he was never a creditor or beneficiary.

The cost for liquidating the company as court appointed deceiver is quoted by his legal teams to be £65,000 plus vat (estimated - they still cannot make up their minds how much more they are going to charge and they have been taking me to court in Queens Bench now for 9 months) for the insolvency practitioner, £10,000 for the insolvency solicitors and £7,000 for the regional lawyer.

In reality if the directors of the company wanted to liquidate the company ligitimatey it would take me about 20 minutes to instruct the account holders on line (for which I would make no charge as I am a non paid trustee) and approx £5,000 to £7,000 for accountancy and insolvency fees by a competent insolvency practioner.

In addition, there would be no costs to UK courts as I would be responsible for making sure as trustee of the funds that the money was properly spent on the creditor/beneficiary, the function of putting a solvent company through insolvency practitioners is to make sure that the liquidation is not to prevent ligitimate creditors being deprived of funds - insolvency practioners remain independent and if court proceedings ensue they are classed as non party as they are supposed to stand up if they believe an order is being made which is outside the jurisdiction of the court of the aims of the company.

I do know that their are ethical solicitors out there and some of those take time to post and contribute to this site.

However, big however, some seriously abuse their positions of trust and totally ignore their duties to comply with their oath and their duties as codified in practice Directions in accordance with the Legal Services Act 2007 - the overriding objective is supposed to be to uphold the belief the general public have in the legal system.

Well I believe in judicial discretion but I do not believe in lawyers disecretion at present as I cannot see that it is really objective or even subjective in way too many cases.

To break it down into easy to understand numbers a judge at that level costs around £700 per day what it costs when you add court staff admin security building ect i dare not even think.

Often the biggest problem is that these matters are driven by clients and they of course have the legal right to have a decision made final in court, often on wiki you`ll read i don`t know why my ex`s solicitor is doing this?, its not the solicitor, the solicitor takes instruction and even if the solicitor barrister ect advises against it they have no choice but to follow instruction, or refuse to represent, if you do that though they don`t get paid, see the dilemma.

dukey that I agree is shocking.

However I do not really agree with you in saying that it is the client to blame and the solicitor is only taking their instructions.

It is the solicitors job to advice their client of the law and not to just keeping meritless or vexatious or protracted applications just because client appears to want it.

If a solicitor gives advice and the client fails to accept - and I point out we wouldn''t need a qualified legal professional if we knew how to do it ourselves or had gone through years of university and then been a trainee with a legal firm - then the solicitor is supposed to stop acting for the client.

Solicitors as well as individual litigants can have civil restaint orders made against them as they are made against humans and companies - so legal firms - can be pronounced vexatious litigants.

It is one of the main reasons why vexatious litigants are unable to obtain legal representation in civil courts and I believe one of the reasons why my book seems to be marked BLACK because I have had to dismiss 5 legal teams for serious misrepresentation and failure to stand up to the agressive and abusive correspondence and applications put in by my ex-s legal teams on his behalf.

I know that my ex is pretty thick (sorry to be so blunt) as he only managed 2 cses''s at school despite a private and privileged education. He hasn''t a clue about finance or accounts but he is very malicious and will literally let a legal team make any application against me, his children and my mother - the more abusive, malicous and harrassing the better. He also seems to delight in false and malicous allegations about my conduct and that of my previous legal teams (I did part on reasonable terms with all but one of them) and is prepared to submit to court letters I wrote to him and his wife at the beginning of our break up before petition about our love life stating that they were death threats and subjecting me to the embarassment of having them read by every court judge that he has applied to since - so my extremely intimate physical desires are now in the domain of the court - the legal team is actually worse than my original abuser - 4 years attempting to escape hideous escalating and terrifying abuse only to find that when legal teams get involved the abuse and the harrasment is like a Napalm bomb.

He even went to the extent as did his legal team of harrassing me at my private oral - just means hearing for one party in the litigation rather than both - hearing in the Court of Appeal last year.

How much more evidence do you need that a legal firm can be a vexatious litigant as all family firms even at entry level should know that partners of divorcing spouses are not allowed in the court house let alone the court room during financial remedies in divorce (thanks for the heads up on the other thread) .

In fact as it was open court that day (court reporter was there and someone else) they could have, as a legal firm, sent someone low key to sit at the back and take notes - usually firms employ agency advocates both from the point of view of being less harrassing and also from the point of view of costs.

That is not what they did, what they did was walk brazenly into court, insist on sitting on the front bench along side me, so at my private hearing I was outnumbered three to one on the bench and they tried to get an extended civil restraint order when in fact when you look at the form - which states order rather than application you have to be either a claiment or a defendent not an appellant or a respondent - I think that this is because strictly speaking you are not vexatious by making an appeal - appeals are generally seen as a right even if they are somewhat frivolous.

Ex''s legals take claim and claim and claim and claim out against me and don''t even expect ex to attend court. If a litigant is responsible for the applications of a legal team then why is it that my ex and his legal team do not think that his general presence in court is required?

I don''t know how many times I am going to have to hear UK judges say NO NO NO and NO to his increasingly growing gang of legal representatives and for them to think that they can continue to rack up costs and any order of court that they get is always going to turn out to be in their favour.

Well, we will see as this as I have said before is set to hit Open court in RCJ in Queens Bench where an equitable prosecution will take place.

An equitable remedy is one where a financial reward would not be sufficient and a legal remedy is based I believe on financial damages.

I think the number of times both my ex and his wife and his legal teams are in contempt of court and found to be abusing process is going to wipe the smile off a face or two.

I hope so as I am sick of being personally distressed, my mum and children being distressed and witnessing UK Judges being distressed or abused in Court and also in Court corridors.

I think on the whole UK judges are awesome - so I have come along way from beleiving or fearing that they were corrupt or prejudiced. Sadly I do not have the same respect for too many who practice law in legal practice.

How sad is that?

Soulruler

Your matter is quite extreme by just about any standards, don`t think anyone would argue with that, the other issue is your case crosses civil and family law, what i know about civil law i could write on the back of a fag packet, what is plain is that in civil cases costs follow which is why you have been hit time and again with costs, if you loose you pay.

I only read about family law cases and i have noticed over the years the number of cases that run to the end when the money is just not here, often 100k or less, more frightening is those who use legal aid not understanding in many cases it must be paid back with interest, crazy, do some solicitors pour oil on the fire, yes some do, most are simply doing as asked by their client, but there is no black and white here, all matters are unique and very often you never really know what the motivation is, or what happened that two people who once loved each other will tear lumps out of each other in court.

What i would like to know is if you were to ask everyone who fought through court was it worth it what would they say, for sure some would say i had no choice others would think what a waste, court can irreparably damage relationships between children and parents, it does much the same with extended families, maybe form A should come with a public health warning.

The real point here is that my ex-s legal team are so abusive that they will threaten me with every type of order and just think that if they "get it" (well they should properly read the orders that they are getting and then comply with them not start again once starting in one court not finishing and then starting again asking for orders and costs).

Yes, I agree that they appear to be successful in getting cost order after cost order after cost order against me but this is about to hit the national headline and be reported from the RCJ.

Do you really think it is going to look good for his legal teams who have taken a small money case out of family division, failed to negotiate, failed to comply with statute law and applications, insulted judges calling them names and stating that they are "slow pedantic and not the most impressive", interupting them in conversations in court corridors, failing to comply with orders they seek then blaming me for not complying with them, purjuring themselves on oath, misleading the court and misdirecting me, making malicous and unfounded allegations up about my conduct when all I do is attend court when I receive a court order and point out that the first judge in family confirmed that there was no jurisdiction for this - presumably what made them say he was slow pedantic and not the most impressive and we should not allow him to be railroaded into complying with soulrulers demands - actually I just said lets put this aside and everyone can get on with their lives - no more court.

Judges have a terrible job, legal argument should look no different from judicial discretion - court would be a much less harrassing place if it did and so would a lot of other problems which should be able to be resolved by financial dispute resolution - out of court.