It is always pleasant to be part of the IAFL AP chapter meeting, a chance to communicate, exchange ideas and have fun with peer family lawyers from other jurisdictions like Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, USA, Singapore, UK and even France.
As a fellow speaker, I was speaking on the panel discussing legal issues related to relocation and child abduction across borders.
At such event, casual talk with other lawyers is always a great way of learning from peer family lawyers, a good way to keep pace with the developments of family laws in other jurisdictions, for example:
Same sex marriage in may never see the dawn shedding light on mainland China, a traditional society where LGBT has always been living in the shadow.
Through private talk with English family lawyers from London, I came to know why London has earned the crown of “divorce capital of the world” over the past decades, and what the tourism divorce means for London. Indeed this is very enlightening to me, because it offers an option for divorcing couple where one spouse holds huge amount of assets (often in the form of stock) outside China, and such assets are often not dealt with by Chinese family courts. Now with English courts’ judgments being more easily to be enforced in foreign jurisdictions, Chinese clients may also resort to tourism divorce in London.
At IAFL Brisbane meeting, to my big and joyful surprise, I met two different family lawyers respectively from London and Hong Kong with whom I used to work in collaberation for clients divorcing in their jurisdictions. As you may know, most of time, we work with foreign family lawyers via emails, and for many, I have never met or seen them in real life. These two lawyers remembered me and approached me in networking events, and it was such a terrific joy to meet mysterious fellow lawyers face to face.
At IAFL events, it is always fun to participate some social networking program to know other family lawyers from other jurisdictions. This time in Brisbane, I joined two programs: real rock climbing and surfing at the Gold Coast area.
Rock Climbing during IAFL Brisbane Conference
It was an unforgetable experience of leaving three blisters on my fingers:
And my first time surfing lesson:
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