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If it's Broken - Fix it

Date:23 JAN 2006

Nicholas Francis QC 29 Bedford Row. When their Lordships gave their opinions in White v White [2000] 2 FLR 981 in October 2000 they would probably have been astonished if able to look forward in time they had discovered that confusion now reigned where relative certainty existed in the bad old days of discrimination. Now so obsessed are we with percentages that fortunes are spent deciding the value of the whole before the ordained part of the whole can be awarded to the applicant. Forensic accountants are having their own dot.com style boom. No longer can we say to our client the range is between x and y rather we say we really do not know what the answer is it all depends. Clients despair that we are unable to tell them the answer. There can be few professions where two alleged experts can legitimately provide such different views of the same case on the same facts. At the time Nicholas Francis QC wrote this article the two very different cases (McFarlane and Miller) had not been heard together. Nicholas Francis comments that...

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