Accessing a solicitor

Accessing a solicitor can seem daunting but we have good working relationships with several solicitors working in the Wrexham area and offer meeting room facilities to solicitors wishing to operate out of our one stop shop in Temple Row.

Your solicitor should advise you about what you can do and the best choices for your situation. Not everyone has to get an injunction to be safe from a violent or abusive partner. Sometimes a strongly worded solicitor’s letter can stop your abuser from continuing to abuse you.

Your solicitor should check whether you can get public funding (legal aid) to pay for court proceedings. Whether you can receive public funding depends on how much money you earn and how much money and property you have. It also depends on your case and whether you need a solicitor to apply to the court for you. Some solicitors may tell you that you cannot have public funding if you can use the police instead, but this is not true. If you want to apply for a court order to protect yourself from domestic abuse and need public funding to do so, the application form for funding asks whether you have reported the matter to the police.

A solicitor can provide vital support in safety planning through various court orders which generally fall in two parts:

Orders about the way your abuser should behave in the future – ‘non-molestation orders’.

this order tells your abuser they must not use or threaten to use violence against you, or ‘harass, pester or intimidate’ you or any children living with you. The order is generally written in wide terms to stop all forms of unpleasant behaviour including for example threatening phone calls.

Orders saying who has the right to live in the home – ‘occupation orders’.

if your abuser’s behaviour has been serious enough for them to be kept away from you so as to protect you, then you will need an order saying who can live in the home.

If the situation is so serious that you need an order immediately, you can apply to the court on the same day without telling your abuser. This is called applying ‘without notice’ and you can generally get a non-molestation order which is then served on your abuser and the judge will fix a day in the near future for a court hearing that you must both attend.