“People’s character is revealed”: Meet family lawyer Timothy Nicholls
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Plan for the worst, and the worst won’t happen. These are the words of advice that family lawyer Timothy Nicholls from DDCS Lawyers often gives people.
While none of us expect things to go wrong in our families and relationships, the unexpected nature of life means that they can and do. And this is where family lawyers come in.
While many people would know someone who has been through a divorce and assume that’s all there is to family law, Timothy says the majority of cases tend to be around sorting parenting arrangements for children and the division of property following the breakdown of a relationship.
Just like with anything, Timothy says being aware of your circumstances and being prepared are the best ways to protect yourself, even during the times when everything is going well.
“The reality is that if you are secure in your relationship, and you are secure about the future of your relationship, taking care of these matters shouldn’t bother you on the basis that it’s not going to happen. There are things you can do to be proactive and protect yourself in the event of a relationship breakdown. Good planning means that in the event that it does happen, you are prepared and you can move through it as cleanly as possible,” he says.
Chatting to Timothy, it’s easy to tell he’s passionate about family law and helping people. After not enjoying studying business commerce, Timothy moved from Sydney to Canberra to study law, and instantly loved it. He says he, “fell into”, family law, taking on a clerkship at Canberra family law specialists DDCS Lawyers around a decade ago. Since then, he’s worked across both Canberra and Sydney at specialist family law firms, and in early 2022 made the move back to DDCS once again.
While he grew up in Tamworth, Canberra is firmly home now for not only himself, but also his three sisters and parents who also made the move over the years.
As a lawyer, Timothy is a skilled litigator, although he always looks for opportunities to resolve a case first. He’s also an Accredited Specialist in family law, which is much more than just a fancy title. It’s a peer-reviewed process through which lawyers are assessed on their knowledge in their speciality field. And it’s a gruelling assessment process, with a series of assessments and exams designed to really test their knowledge, to assist the public and profession identify solicitors who have demonstrated particular expertise in their area of specialisation.
He spent many months dedicating his nights and weekends to studying for the exam, and was named an Accredited Specialist in 2021. Following this, Timothy was named as one of the highest performing candidates from the 2021 cohort and one of his assessments, the recorded simulated client interview, is being used as a teaching aid for future candidates to demonstrate the standard required to become an accredited specialist in family law. It’s just another reason why he is a sought after family lawyer.
And at the end of the day, it’s the people he deals with every day that drives his passion for work.
“I love connecting with people and I love everything about the process of family law. I think that it’s really telling when somebody is going through something like this. It’s one thing to deal with the breakdown of a relationship, which we’ve all been through and can relate to. That’s really, really difficult. But when you’ve got to also deal with children, finances, and every aspect of your life in a kind of vacuum, people’s character is revealed and how they behave and how they operate in that moment, in my view, is a true reflection of who they are as people.”
“And the reality is that people don’t behave honourably all the time. People try but I think it’s a real process of growth and development that people go through, when every aspect of their life has been thrown into the wind. People can come through this process stronger, more resilient and ready to start an amazing next chapter in their lives.
“And I enjoy working with people through that and helping them through that process. I think that our fundamental role as lawyers, in its essence, is to provide solutions to problems. That’s what we’re there for. And I think that that is truer in family law than it is in any other area of the law. We’re dealing with people’s lives and the things they hold most dear, and that has a direct consequence on their emotional wellbeing and every other aspect of their life.”
