In this episode, Tamsin speaks to Tom Farrell about using a financial neutral in divorce. They discuss how the process works, the potential cost saving and how using a financial neutral can unlock sticking points in the process of coming to an agreement.
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Tom Farrell
Tom is an experienced Family Mediator and Independent Financial Planner. He runs a specialist practice, exclusively working with people who are going through separation or divorce.
Tom is one of a small number of specialist financial planners to hold the Resolution Financial Adviser accreditation. Indeed, he has sat for many years as a member of the Resolution Accreditation Committee and helps to invigilate the scheme. Tom regularly acts in a neutral capacity, to bring financial expertise to negotiations in Collaborative, Mediation and other processes. He helps to gather all the relevant financial information and to understand it; to generate options for settlement and to road test them.
Tamsin Caine
Tamsin is a Chartered Financial Planner with over 20 years experience. She works with couples and individuals who are at the end of a relationship and want agree how to divide their assets FAIRLY without a fight.
You can contact Tamsin at tamsin@smartdivorce.co.uk or arrange a free initial meeting using https://bit.ly/SmDiv15min. She is also part of the team running Facebook group Separation, Divorce and Dissolution UK
Tamsin Caine MSc., FPFS
Chartered Financial Planner
Smart Divorce Ltd
Smart Divorce
P.S. I am the co-author of “My Divorce Handbook – It’s What You Do Next That Counts”, written by divorce specialists and lawyers writing about their area of expertise to help walk you through the divorce process. You can buy it by scanning the QR code…
Transcript
(The transcript has been created by an AI, apologies for any mistakes)
Tamsin Caine 0:06
Today I’m going to be talking to mediator, coach and financial neutral as well as, as he calls it jobbing IFA, Tom Farrell, Tom’s going to talk to us about the work that he does as a financial neutral. This can help unlock all sorts of problems during mediation, during Collaborative Law, and during even general roundtable meetings. I’m really looking forward to Tom’s conversation today. And I really hope you enjoy it. Let’s jump right in. Hello, and welcome to the Smart Divorce podcast. I am so happy to be joined today by the wonderful Tom Farrell, who I’ve wanted to get on this podcast for a very, very long time, because Tom actually inspired my journey into working in divorce when I met him, and he’ll probably correct me if I’m wrong on this, but I reckon it’s probably seven or eight years ago at a course that he was running in London. And so yeah, very happy for you to be with us today. Tom, welcome.
Tom Farrell 1:16
Thank you very much, Tamsin. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Tamsin Caine 1:19
Fabulous. And you’re gonna talk to us today about just one part of an of the work that you do with divorcing clients and you know, your, your work, kind of spans great breadth and depth. But let’s start off with with an introduction, if you can tell us a bit a bit about the work that you do.
Tom Farrell 1:40
Okay, so, like you I’m a jobbing IFA, I run a small financial planning practice, and give regulated financial planning advice. But for a very long time, now, my entire practice has been focused on people who are journeying through divorce and separation. And so I offer a range of other services that are not part of that regulated advice world. And those include coaching individual people who are going through these processes and helping them to understand things. I’ve also worked for the last 10 or 12 years as an all issues family mediator, mediating and working with other mediators in mediation. But predominantly, the work I think that people come to me for is that of a financial neutral. And so I’ve been focused in developing that part of my practice for the last 1215 years. And although all of these things are sort of inextricably linked, I do feel very much that that role of the financial neutral is very often the missing piece of the jigsaw that that can help to sort of stitch things together. So hopefully, we can talk a bit more about how, how that might help people.
Tamsin Caine 3:33
Yeah, absolutely. So explain for us if you would. And if you’re not watching this on YouTube, go on to YouTube and watch this because you’ll see Tom’s fabulous coffee mug. So, but you have to go on YouTube to watch that. Tell us tell us a bit about the work for financial news. So if I’m going through the divorce process, and perhaps very early on in in the stages there might have been to see a solicitor How does it financial neutral come into my into my life?
Tom Farrell 4:08
Well, I think that can vary quite a lot. And I think also the way that that that roll comes into play has changed quite dramatically over the last few years. And that’s predominantly because people have started looking for alternative ways of navigating through these times, particularly when people are trying desperately to keep things amicable to be able to talk to each other and work your way through. So historically, the role of financial neutral was one that was developed for a divorce process called the collaborative process where the solicitor act for each person, everyone sits in a room together it’s a facilitated saves face. And when when that process was originally developed in America, it was very much seen as a process that should integrate with the other professional helpers needed be that emotional support or financial support. And so the role of the financial neutral in that process is, is to help everybody concerned, navigate their way through the complexities of the finances involved, understand them, level the playing field, if there’s a disparity in financial understanding between two people, and very often a disparity of understanding between other professionals as well. If you like to sort of project manage that aspect of the process in a neutral way. And so that’s how I started acting as a neutral, it was seen as something that we, you and I both take on this specialist accreditation, to be able to act as a neutral. And when I took it was quite a long time ago, we only really talked about the collaborative divorce process. But I now act as a neutral, I would say, far more often within mediation than I do within the collaborative process. But I also act as a neutral in more traditional sort of solicitor led, round table and you know, letters back at batting backwards and forwards and all of those types of processes as well. And I also act directly for Pete for couples who don’t have solicitors and don’t have mediators. And that’s something that perhaps comes a little bit later with a bit more experience and confidence to be able to do that. But it’s a very different role. So that of a financial advisor, you need that knowledge behind you. And you need the experience of being a financial planner to be able to explain these things, these aspects to people and to understand tax and the movement of assets and all of those things. But the way that I would sort of sit and explain it to clients somehow, very often we’ll do a sort of pitch up for 15 minutes free of charge and explain what it is I do and let people decide whether they want me to become a part of their process or not, is to very clearly say this is not regulated financial advice, I’m not going to be telling you where to invest your money or what products to buy or, you know, this is about helping you understand what it is you’re dealing with. This is about signposting you to the other bits of advice that you might need, you know, if you have complex issues that might need an accountant or attack an offshore tax specialist or so you very much can act as a project manager bringing most professional people in. One of the most common aspects might be pensions and actuarial reports for pension sharing. So one of the things I might do is help people write the instruction and find the actually to write the report so that they’re asking the questions that they actually really need the answers to, rather than 55 questions that gets get scatter gun fired at people you know, so but it is about establishing that sort of trusted neutral role with within whatever that process might be for everybody concerned. So that you can really act for everyone. I very much see my duty as a financial neutral to the process itself rather than the individual people. And that’s a bit of a weird thing to say to people but I consider that to be very important. So you can help with with levelling plate playing fields you can help with everybody’s understanding of what they’re dealing with, you can help with getting the correct information in. And that’s a sort of classic mistake that happens with divorces that people don’t gather the information they need from the beginning. They don’t understand why they need to abide by people. I mean lawyers as well as clients or mediators as well as clients, you know, there isn’t that understanding that perhaps you and I have that we’re going to hit a brick wall, if we don’t already have the potentially the answers to those questions, and it may be unforeseen. It’s like having a big funnel, you’ve got to dump all the information in at the top of it so that what comes out at the bottom is what you need. Yep. So there’s, there’s that part of it, which is about helping people understand the technicalities of stuff. There’s, there’s also a whole aspect of the work which is about being in that trusted position, and perhaps being able to challenge people’s perceptions of what’s what’s possible, what’s not possible, and to be able to reflect back to people so that they see both sides of a situation. And also, the more you do this work, of course, the more you’ve already encountered all the difficulties and challenges that people are dealing with. So the more experience you have to bring to bear to make suggestions, you know, to help people brainstorm and be imaginative, because, despite the, you know, the immense sort of emotional pressure of these situations, what most people want is to do the best they possibly can, in most situations. And for it to cost as little money as possible. And to be fair to feel like what they’re doing is fair. Air is a bit of an odd word in this situation, as we all know, but and reality check with people and say, Well, what does that actually mean? You know, if you go ahead and do that, what does what does that look like? It’s that the the other huge aspect of this, of course, that you and I both encounter a lot is that people stumble, within these processes, they reach a point where they know if they if they make a big decision, they have an awful lot of hugely stressful decisions to make all at once. And it can be overwhelming. They can’t make that decision, because they have absolutely no idea what it’s going to mean to them. And that causes a huge roadblock in the process. And momentum is so important in the circumstances. And you end up going round and round in little circles. Because people are afraid to make those decisions, because they really don’t know what it’s going to mean, part of that part of the role as well, again, in a neutral way, not not sort of giving advice in that way. But it’s to say, Okay, well, if we make certain assumptions about this, and if you were to agree to this, then this is what it would mean to you. This is this is what you’d have for a housing budget. This is how much you’d be living on. And this is what your investments and pensions might do for you. And this is what you then might need to do in terms of earning money or going back to work or dealing with childcare or you know, so all of those other aspects. And so much of this is about emotional support within within these processes to actually sort of hold people up so that they feel able to make these decisions and move forward with them. So I actually think it’s that neutral role. Finance, you know, as a financial specialists is absolutely vital. And it’s it’s increasingly being used, and there are more and more people thankfully who are sort of qualifying and studying to be able to do that work. So it is very much a growing market.
Tamsin Caine 14:15
Yeah, long may that continue? We’re we’re I think we we both all of us that are accredited by resolution for this work would be delighted if there were even more of us around and available to do this work. Because we could be used so usefully. If you would talk me through the process, whether whether you’re working in, in mediation process, or whether it’s part of the collaborative process or whether you’re working directly with clients. You talked about their first 15 minutes of coming to talk to them about what you do. What does the process look like from from there?
Tom Farrell 14:56
Quite typically the answer is, it depends, but..
Tamsin Caine 14:58
I knew you were gonna say that
Tom Farrell 15:04
It depends also on how often I’ve worked with the other professionals in the room, because that’s also really important, you know that I have certain mediators that I work with all the time, who will bring me into absolutely all of their cases. And sometimes my involvement is relatively minimal. Because they’ve learned through experience what it is I need to see before I can do anything about anything. And AB that the case is relatively simple. And it’s just pensions that need to be dealt with or so very typically, what what would happen is that I’d go and do my 15 minutes of fame, as I call it, my spiel and say, look entirely up to you and I go away again, and they talk about it with the people that they’re working with, and they decide whether they’re going to engage me or not, I will then agree. Because the other people in that mix will have given me a general picture of what what we’re dealing with, I’ll then agree, an amount of time that I might need to charge for, just to read everything, and to assimilate everything, and to look at what is missing. And what what we still need to get and put timescales to that, and explain to everybody why it’s really important that we have to get it. You know, so that typically might be half an hour, three quarters of an hour of my time, I’m not getting into the really sort of detailed, nitty gritty, but it’s, it’s very easy for us to look at that information, because we’re dealing with it all the time. And we understand what it says, to say actually, that’s, that’s not a proper cetv have a pension, it’s it’s just evaluation, and it might not be what you need. Because we need all this other information that comes with that, I know it’s a pain, but you’re going to have to go back to them and ask for it and ask for all the supporting documentation that comes with it. And I’m a bit I will tend to say, look, it’s not going to be cost effective for me to work with you until we’ve got everything. Because I’m going to hit the stumbling blocks pretty quickly. But in the same instance, I might be talking carefully to people, I want to have maybe an individual Zoom meeting or conversation with each of each of the people to really get a sense of how how they’re approaching the financial aspects of this, how confident they are with the information, what their relationship with finance has been, over the years as a part of their relationship with each other, which of them has driven the big financial decisions? Or have they made them together? You know, because people quite naturally default to the things they’re good at. Absolutely. You know, and that’s normal. But the problem when you get into this situation, is that if you’ve done that, for the last 2530 years, one of you is going to be feeling pretty cost adrift from all of this stuff. Because you think Well, I haven’t I really haven’t been involved in that aspect of our lives. Particularly I didn’t engage with our financial advisor, I didn’t make those investment decisions. I didn’t do the remortgaging I didn’t, you know, they might be, you know, conversely, completely in control of the household budget, and what spent on what and you know, these things operate on lots of different levels. And so there’ll be a real nervousness, of suddenly being pushed into this situation where you’ve got to make all these decisions. We all know, for instance, how stressful buying a house or selling a house is. Well, if you’re having to do that in the midst of separating or divorcing, as well as making all these massive, potential financial decisions about going back to work or splitting pensions that you don’t understand, or it can be really difficult for people to process all of that. So I want to get a sense of that, you know, where the balance lies in the relationship historically. And whether that’s been an issue between them. Yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Have you gone? Have you gone along with these decisions or haven’t you know, and conversely, the person who’s been made One of those decisions, is also going to feel under pressure in these circumstances is going to think well, everything I’ve decided is going to be called into question, you know, my expertise at this, the fact that I’ve been responsible for it is going to be scrutinised. So I have a job of work to do there, initially talking to each of them, just to get that the sense of where that lies, and to reassure each of them, that I can help them. Yeah. It’s very often it’s a sort of typical example, I think of where you have this quite natural sort of relationship with finances, where where one person has sort of driven more or less stuff, and will come to these processes with a 35 page spreadsheet that explains everything. Yeah. And if there’s, you know, a level of conflict within that situation, the reaction that is that that spreadsheet is going to engender is not necessarily helpful in these circumstances, to either of them, you know, so part of my job is to be able to say to that person, you’ve done a brilliant job there, I understand it, I can see what you’re trying to say my job is to help you say it, so that you’re not mansplaining, or whatever it is, to the gay body, this stuff. So I can act as the diplomat, if you like, between between these people for sort of, so that’s part of that initial process is getting a sense of that, and feeding that back to everybody else, in whatever process I’m working in. So I would have permission to talk individually to, to those two people, but also have permission to feed aspects of that back to the mediator or the lawyers to say, look, they’re struggling with this aspect of it, I need to I need to do a bit of, so I might, then be able to suggest that I do a bit of coaching work with the person who’s struggling. So while we’re gathering all that information that we need, instead of everyone just having to sort of sit and not talk about money, there’s an aspect of work that I can be doing to keep momentum going to help somebody get up to speed with or just boost their confidence so that they know that when they’re in the room, having to listen to about this stuff and talk about it that I can help them voice what it is they want to say, I can help them understand the information that’s coming back. And I can sort of normalise those compensations within whatever the process might be. And it’s also about in those early stages, it’s sort of establishing that confidence in both of them that I am going to act in a in an honest and neutral way. I’m not taking sides, I’m there to make the process work. And, again, it’s professionals that I haven’t worked with particularly. I need to establish that trust with them, too.
Tamsin Caine 23:14
Absolutely. On on that point about about trust, and, and honesty and openness. You talked about meeting with the individuals having permission from the people in the room and and having that individual permission to go back with certain aspects of the conversations that you have. How do you ensure that those conversations only take place in those? Because presumably, people have your contact details they can keep? Should they should they want to? Do you ever have a situation where one party can kind of feels that they want you to take their side on certain aspects and contact you outside of that? And how do how do you deal with that? Because I think that’s interesting for both parties to understand that there’s no no secret conversations going on behind behind their backs.
Tom Farrell 24:12
I think I think this is absolutely key. It’s a really good question that the reason that we have process, whatever that might be, actually is to establish a clear set of boundaries. Yeah. So for instance, my terms of business when I when I give that to my to prospective clients and talk it through with them, it talks about being given permission to contact product providers and ask for information and talk to their existing financial advisors because I’m not there to tread on the toes of those relationships either. I’m there to help there too. But it also speaks very specifically to the fact that whatever the processes that these people have decided upon, be at mediation or collaborative divorce or roundtable negotiations with a lawyer assistance, I am going to sign up as a neutral to that process. So as an example, if it’s a mediation, I actually physically sign their agreement to mediate, I cosign it as an additional party to that mediation, and I’m bound by the same terms and conditions that they are. And a mediator were very clearly laid those boundaries about, you know, it’s not helpful actually to try and step outside the process. And so you have to be very clear about establishing boundaries, which, which isn’t to say that you can’t have individual conversations with people and do individual work with people. But the key to that is that everybody knows that’s happening. Yeah. And that, that this aspect of information sharing is also there, in my terms of business here very clearly says, if you say things that are material to this process, an extreme example might be that somebody says to me, that they’ve squirrelled some money away somewhere, and they haven’t disclosed it. Yeah, that doesn’t really tend to happen. What happens a lot more often is that the other person is, is suggesting that that’s happening, it’s actually very rare that that happens. I have an absolute duty to, you know, that’s a legal requirement. In terms of so one needs to be very, very clear about that. But if somebody says something to me in an individual meeting about how they’re feeling, you know, if there’s an emotional context, that it’s my judgement as to, you know, I’m not going to be reporting that back to everybody, you know, because it’s not, it’s not actually relevant, it’s relevant to my understanding and my relationship, professional relationship with that person to sort of help them to work with them. So boundaries have to be very clearly laid out. And, again, it’s, it’s about establishing that, that trust. And so it’s about one of the sort of levels of information, one example that springs to mind. Quite early on in my career as a neutral, I was involved in quite a big money complex case. Something that comes up quite often might be the subject of what lawyers refer to as inappropriate expenditure. So, somebody, one person has, perhaps been having a relationship outside outside of the marriage or the relationship has been spending money in terms of that. And might therefore be extremely wary about having to relinquish bank statements or credit card statements, or that you know, clearly list meals in restaurants have with their with their partner expenditure in jewellery shops, or trips away that don’t tally with where they said they were at the time or, you know, whatever it is, yeah. The job of professionals in that circumstances to establish the there’s blaming people is not something that goes on from the professional aspect of affairs. But there’s an obvious logic to identifying how much money that is, and perhaps compensating for that in some way in terms of talking about how things are going to be settled. So in that, in that particular instance, there was quite a significant amount of what one might term inappropriate expenditure. And as a result of that there was a logjam in terms of sort of releasing this financial information because actually, that person was really worried that they were going to upset their partner in that situation and make things worse. But what they weren’t saying was that they weren’t comfortable with that amount of money being identified and sort of ring fenced as their responsibility. And so by that state I’ve done enough work with everybody concerned for it to be agreed that I would sit with all of those bank statements and work out the amount. And that the, you know, those statements would be part of the disclosure, because they have to be, but but the physical detail of it didn’t need to be discussed within the process itself. And actually, everybody felt more comfortable in that regard. The the other person involved felt comfortable with me doing that, and didn’t really want to know.
Tamsin Caine 30:36
Well, they’ve got to the point of divorce by this point haven’t they.
Tom Farrell 30:39
Exactly, you know, and that was part of the reason they were getting a divorce is not good news.
Tamsin Caine 30:46
Yeah, absolutely. Details not necessary,
Tom Farrell 30:49
It can feel like rubbing someone’s nose in it, in those circumstances. So that’s, that’s a situation where this whole issue of boundaries and confidentiality and the trusted status of the neutral in this process, there had to be that level of trust with absolutely everybody concerns. So lawyers, in this instance, barristers and clients. So, yeah, you’re absolutely right, that that the boundaries are really important. And what’s also really important is, if people choose to try and step outside those boundaries, which is sort of normal, again, it’s it’s understandable that people might feel like they’re not being heard or feel so desperate in situations that they just, they’re just trying to get their point across, you have to sort of pull them up a bit and say, You can’t do that, you know, we’ve agreed how we’re going to work on this is, I can’t, I can’t engage with you in this way. So I’m going to ask you to ask that question in the next meeting, or let’s talk together about how you can ask that question in the next meeting, so that you do feel heard. So there is a big sort of, it is like, emotional project management. In that sense, you know, there’s a lot of juggling that goes on there that has very little to do with technical financial understanding or knowledge, which is why we go through this accreditation, it’s why we do the training, as you know, you know, the are the benchmark for even attempting that accreditation is that you’re already a pretty highly qualified financial adviser. So the the technical knowledge is assumed from the outset is, it’s about having a good understanding of processes that you might be involved in. As it’s easy to stomp all over that you don’t know what you’re doing.
Tamsin Caine 33:07
Absolutely.
Tom Farrell 33:07
You and I both encountered situations where that happens.
Tamsin Caine 33:11
Sadly, luckily, yes, it will be useful, I think, if you know, I’m asking you this on the hub. So really put you on the spot. But I think it might be useful. Just if you’ve got an example, if if a case where your work within the within the coupling within the divorce processes is really unlocked. Come moving from a kind of head banging situation where there was real conflict, and the couple just couldn’t move on to actually being able to kind of unlock it with the work that you did as a neutral. And I’m showing myself 1000s of examples.
Tom Farrell 33:53
Yeah, well, I’ll stick our stick to the same the same case, because it’s sort of in in my mind, you know, that. That was an example where actually they had they had reached a complete impasse. And it was it was costing them 1000s of pounds and solicitors letters batting backwards and forwards about this lack this inability to disclose this information. There was a very real possibility that as a result of that the process was going to break down. And the person who was withholding that information wouldn’t tell anybody why I had established enough trust within that working relationship for them to tell me why. And for me, then to be able to tell everybody else why in a way that they felt comfortable with and to suggest a route forward that would enable the logjam to be on blocked and for us to move forward. And I I think you know that that does happen quite often. It can, it can also happen in, it doesn’t need to, it’s not always necessarily all about the sort of emotional aspect of things, it can be quite a highly technical issue. So exactly the same case, which was quite a big case, we managed to just by again, having that depth of information, and understanding that depth of information in terms of the disclosure that had come in and being able to look at their financial situation, they bought a holiday home, overseas Off Plan. So it hadn’t been built, yet they they put a deposit down on this dream holiday home development. And they had the balance to pay. I won’t say exactly where it was
Tamsin Caine 36:06
somewhere in Europe.
Tom Farrell 36:09
It wasn’t in Europe, it was it was somewhere overseas, that was the case had limited connections to the mainland, let’s say that and was subjected to the most horrendous tornado that eliminated its connection to the mainland, and flattened the development completely weird. So of course, in this happened in the midst of the process, sure. The purchase of that Off Plan holiday home had very much been driven by one of the two of them, and was a bone of contention to start with. And effectively, the 100,000 pounds disappearing down the drain, in the midst of all of this could have been an absolute disaster. But because of the technicalities of it, because effectively, that money was lost, we were able to use that in within the settlement to enable movement of other assets that had gains attached to them.
Tamsin Caine 37:27
Wow, yeah.
Tom Farrell 37:28
So we could move the loss to the person, actually, who hadn’t wanted to buy the thing in the first place. By doing that, create the use of that loss against something else that we moved to them that would otherwise have created a massive tax bill. We actually saved about 60,000 pounds by doing that.
Tamsin Caine 37:51
That’s genius.
Tom Farrell 37:55
This is where when you create a situation where people are actually positively engaging in the process, and being open to imaginative ideas. And the solutions that come out. Because frankly, the last thing that anybody should want is for a judge to be making these decisions. The last thing the judge wants is to be making these decisions. Yep. Because there’s no nuance to it. Yeah, they will, they’re busy people, and they’re gonna look at the disclosure for a little bit and they’re gonna make a judgement, there’s, there’s no imagination there, because they haven’t got time for it. There’s no nuance they might see a report from an actuary, or, and they will just default to what seems sensible at the time. And very often, that’s not actually the best solution for people. So I think, you know, if you can act as a trusted person within that, that process to be able to say, you know, let’s just think outside the box a bit here, let’s, let’s think about what we can do here. And so those those solutions do come up. And can be incredibly cost effective, but can also be incredibly life affirming, in a way, you know, there are points in these processes that are really positive. From
Tamsin Caine 39:47
Yeah, yeah, I mean, the difference that we’ll have had in the move from it being in negative bone of contention to actually this is, this has gone horribly wrong, but it’s also crazy In an opportunity to save some tax, whatever, it that’s massive and that that’s going to change that relationship as well, because it’s going to remove something that was a bone of contention and allow that copper to move forward, which is so, so incredibly important. So totally, totally say that. Tom, I knew our conversation would be fascinating. And I could genuinely speak to you for hours picking your brain. So it’s always a pleasure to chat with you. Have I missed anything? Is there something that I haven’t asked you that I really should have done that you feel do you think would be important for our listeners to hear?
Tom Farrell 40:40
I think the thing I would say the most important thing, and I absolutely passionately believe this, that people will think that involving more people in their process will cost them more money. If if you can create a genuine team environment of the right professional people at the right time. It doesn’t matter how many people are involved, you will spend less money and the emotional cost to you will be that much less to. So that that would be something that, you know, I think that’s a difficult one for potential clients to grasp. Yeah, absolutely. Because the frustrations that are there, in terms of completely understandable frustrations in terms of the eye watering cost, that can be incurred by people who, frankly should be able to spend that money on themselves and their families rather than people like us. You know, we’ll find that hard to accept. Yeah. But my experience of of that, if you have a team of people who work together effectively trust one another, to be able to let go. Or the person whose job it really is to deal with those aspects. You’ll get the right advice from the right people at the right time. It will cost you less money. And it will cost you a lot less emotionally too because it can be quicker and easier to navigate your way through.
Tamsin Caine 42:27
Absolutely, I’m so glad you said that that’s a that’s a vitally important point. And the the time, the time that it takes to resolve things and the shortness of time that you spend in that limbo situation is is so, so incredibly important to everybody emotionally as well. So, Tom, thank you so very much for your time today. I’ve absolutely loved talking to hopefully we may get to do one of these again, because I’m sure there’s loads of aspects that we haven’t covered that we could we could carry on with
Tom Farrell 42:58
Thank you for asking me!
Tamsin Caine 42:59
It’s an absolute pleasure. I will see you all again soon. I hope you enjoyed the episode of the Smart Divorce podcast. If you would like to get in touch please have a look in the show notes for our details or go onto the website www.smartdivorce.co.uk. Also if you are listening on Apple podcasts or on Spotify and you wouldn’t mind leaving us a lovely five star review. That would be fantastic. I know that lots of our listeners are finding this is incredibly helpful in their journey through separation divorce and dissolving a civil partnership. Also, if you would like some further support, we do have Facebook group now. It’s called ‘Separation divorce and dissolution UK.’ Please do go on to Facebook, search up the group and we’d be delighted to have you join us. The one thing I would say is do please answer their membership questions. Okay, have a great day and take care!