Divorce involving Personality Disorders and Addiction

We are uniquely placed to understand and engage with the impact of addiction and mental health issues on relationships. Clients facing these issues often come to us at a time when they are either severely damaged or almost broken by years of emotional uncertainty and often abuse.

The team has forged strong relationships with the therapeutic community in many fields, both in the UK and abroad, with the objective of working together with our clients to provide knowledgeable and well-rounded advice and support.

We actively encourage our clients to engage with their own therapeutic support throughout the separation process.  This can lessen the damage that can be caused by what is often a high conflict court process, but also can encourage personal and emotional healing and avoid an identical future path.

Addiction and divorce

We work with addicts and their spouses, families and support teams.  We recognise the pressure that divorce places on a chronic relapsing condition and the responsibility we have as lawyers to avoid damaging long fought battles whilst at the same time implementing change.

Family courts will treat addiction as an illness and will not apportion blame. The courts will understand that there are generally financial consequences of addiction and often adopt an “in sickness and in health” approach that will not punish the addict’s spouse.

Personality disorders and divorce

We have also set about understanding and developing approaches to tackle clients wishing to separate from a spouse with a personality disorder or on the narcissistic spectrum, while also recognising that the charismatic appeal of such a partner often has its origins in our clients’ past.

There is a real failure in many family courts for judges to recognise and tackle the negative impact of narcissistic behaviour.  Court time is limited, allowing only the usual, “on the face of it”, positive, public characteristics of the narcissist to be seen.  Recognising that narcissism is a mental health issue which needs to be identified by the court should be an essential first step in the more chronic situations.

Using only a lawyer to fight a fire is likely to leave you without a house and nothing in the bank.  High conflict divorces burn families’ financial resources making it vital to identify a strategy that will consider the risks as well as the rewards of pursuit.  There is often a lot to be said for “Plan B” if we can support our clients in making themselves strong enough to see the long-term financial and emotional rewards of accepting what on the face of it may be a non-punitive outcome. 

Ideally we would like our clients to come to us as early as possible as, the later they leave it, the harder it is to shift confidence from an overriding sense of defeat.

We will encourage our clients to obtain parallel support from their own therapists or a divorce coach, often both, and we would ask our clients for permission to work with that support team.

We will support our clients in entering in to a new form of communication or parenting and will carry out a comprehensive assessment of any strategy.

If the only solution is to go to court, then we will encourage a “get on with it” strategy with a built in allowance for the costs of engagement, both emotional and financial.

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If you require further information or advice from our team of specialist family lawyers, please contact a member of our team or call us on +44 (0)20 7814 1200.