Family lawyer. Passionate to put relationships at the heart of society. Empowering you to be relationship-smarter.
Strengthening your unique blueprint for happier relationships/families
'We have never been taught how to be relationship-smart;
Happy relationships often happen by trial and error.'
'Good relationships don’t just happen.
You need to work at creating the relationship you want-do you know how?'
'No one is immune from relationship break-up.
Our sobering divorce statistics is proof of this.'
Don’t give up on your relationship when it gets ‘bumpy;
Many regret doing so. You can learn to be relationship-smarter
It is never too late to start strengthening your relationships;
Small interventions can make long term differences
Are you relationship-smart or do you want to be relationship-smarter?
Join me now. Be part of our national family and be empowered to be ‘relationship-smarter;
Together we can transform your relationships and our society.
'You can be the change you wish to see in the world... Ghandi.'
Family lawyer. Passionate to put relationships at the heart of society. Empowering you to be relationship-smarter.
Strengthening your unique blueprint for happier relationships/families
‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way…….Tolstoy’
Strong relationships & families are vital for our well-being and health of society.
Being contented in a happy, loving & fulfilling relationship is intoxicating. We ALL aspire to achieve it.
‘Are you ‘relationship-smart’? How ‘fit’ and healthy is your relationship? Do you need some help to be ‘relationship-smarter’?’
Sheela Mackintosh-Stewart is a highly experienced family lawyer (solicitor and barrister), who also provides relationship ‘coaching’ and writes regularly on relationships. She gives talks and seminars on nurturing personal relationships and reducing marital stress and tensions, including presenting a seminar on ‘Creating a Blueprint for Better Relationships ‘at the Discovery Channel. She is quoted in the media for her views on relationships, marriages, families and family breakdown.
Sheela’s greatest hopes, aspirations and future vision is her crusade to reduce divorce and relationship break-down in this country by making everyone ‘relationship-smarter’ and ultimately creating a happier nation brimming with strong, successful relationships and families.
She founded and now run a bespoke, confidential legal consultancy, iFamiliesuk.com previously (‘Divorce & Family Law Information Service’) because she feels very strongly that if family break-up is inevitable because people have made a decision to leave, then they must be empowered with good information to make informed decisions about their family’s future particularly at the outset, by fully understanding the outcomes and consequences of their decisions. She shares this valuable information acquired from her many years of working in family law.
Sheela says ‘doing what I do is very fraught at times. But I enjoy the intellectual challenge of being on hand to persuade often highly emotional clients to better manage and handle their parting and explore ways for them to plan and decide on their exit strategy or deal with the aftermath of being left by a partner, with the ultimate goal of an amicable resolution. This often includes managing expectations of splitting up a family’s wealth to meet their respective needs whilst assisting them to deal with often highly charged children issues, as sensitively as possible. It gives me much satisfaction, especially when I see clients smiling again after their traumatic experience.’
Q: Why practise family law?
‘’Being an effective strategic problem solver and lateral thinker, I enjoy the challenge of finding the best and most amicable ways for families to part and manage their parting and ultimately create happier post-separation/divorced families for everyone’s benefit, particularly the children.’’
Many people often ask me as though I am mad to choose to do family work saying ‘Isn’t it depressing to hear other people’s woes every day?’
I smile and say that ‘I enjoy family work, because I love interfacing with people, am a good listener and I have enormous empathy, as family law is ultimately about people, their broken relationships and how as a lawyer, I can best use good negotiating skills and the law effectively to untangle family affairs for everyone’s benefit and well-being.
I would also like to think that I add value to families. If a relationship has irretrievably broken down, I enjoy the challenge of finding the best and most amicable ways for families to part and manage their parting and ultimately create happier post-separation/divorced families, with the children benefitting most.
Also, having personally been through the divorce process, I believe the empathy I have with divorcees enable me to provide a service with greater clarity and insight into the complex area of family breakdown, that is hard to replicate, unless one has been through it.
As a young solicitor working for a large City law firm, I started out doing mainly civil litigation work. I learnt very quickly that common sense, lateral thinking and good communication skills with clients were the key skills needed to be an able lawyer. My legal training at Bar School did not really prepare me for what law was actually really like in practice.
I eventually started to do family work, when a senior partner of the City law firm I was working at, asked me to help on a family case which involved family sagas, wrangling over vast fortunes and drama. I was hooked from then on.
Whilst busy juggling work and motherhood, I have been a campaigner, fund-raiser and an active contributor to the local and wider communities and charities locally, nationally and internationally.