Sending your child for contact with the other parent, when you have concerns about what happens during that time, is one of the hardest things a parent can be asked to do. Family court orders and arrangements are generally made on the basis that contact with both parents is in...
Evidence Gathering for Family Court
Family court proceedings concerning children operate under their own specific rules, expectations, and sensitivities. Evidence that would be straightforwardly admissible and persuasive in a civil dispute can be viewed very differently in a family court, where the overriding consideration is always the welfare of the child, and where the court...
Family Court Surveillance Evidence
Surveillance evidence occupies a particular position in family court proceedings. It can be highly persuasive — video footage of a specific event speaks for itself in a way that a disputed account cannot. But it can also be viewed with suspicion if it appears to have been gathered disproportionately, if...
Investigating Unknown Partners Around Children
One of the most common reasons separated parents contact us is concern about a new partner who has entered their ex-partner’s life, and by extension, their child’s life. This is a natural and understandable concern: you have no control over who your ex-partner chooses to introduce to your child, and...
Investigating Unsafe Living Conditions
Concerns about the physical environment a child is living in or visiting for contact — cleanliness, safety hazards, overcrowding, or general unsuitability — are a common and legitimate category of welfare concern. Establishing the true state of a property, in a way that is fair, accurate, and useful for any...
Lifestyle Checks for Child Contact Cases
A lifestyle check, in the context of a child contact case, is an investigation into the actual circumstances of a parent or carer’s life — their living arrangements, their habits, their associations, their day-to-day reality — as opposed to what they have represented those circumstances to be, whether to you,...
What Is a Lifestyle Investigation?
A lifestyle investigation is an inquiry into the actual day-to-day reality of a person’s life — their living circumstances, their habits, their relationships, and their general conduct — as distinct from what they have claimed or represented about themselves. The term is used across several contexts: family law disputes, insurance...
Landlord Investigations
I check out plenty of tenants for landlords, but just as often I get the call the other way round — a tenant who’s about to hand over a deposit and wants to know the person on the other end of the email is actually who they say they are....
Verifying Someone’s Identity
Identity verification is the most fundamental form of background check, and it is needed in a surprisingly wide range of everyday situations: confirming that someone you have met online, are renting a property to or from, are entering into a financial arrangement with, or are otherwise placing some degree of...
Tenant Background Investigations
Private landlords letting a property without the support of a managing agent are often relying on relatively limited information when deciding who to let their property to: a reference, an income figure, and a conversation. A professional tenant background investigation provides considerably more confidence before you hand over the keys...
Online Dating Background Checks
Online dating has become the most common way that new couples meet, and with that shift has come a corresponding rise in the number of people who want to verify that the person they have been talking to is genuinely who they claim to be before they meet in person,...
Neighbour Dispute Investigations
Disputes with neighbours — over boundaries, noise, anti-social behaviour, or harassment — are among the most stressful disputes ordinary people face, precisely because they involve someone you cannot avoid and whose conduct directly affects your home and your peace of mind. When informal resolution has failed, evidence becomes important, both...
Investigating a New Partner
Whether it is your own new relationship or that of an adult child or close family member, wanting to know more about a new partner before things get more serious is a natural and reasonable instinct. This article explains the circumstances in which a background investigation on a new partner...
Marriage Background Checks
Marriage is one of the most significant commitments a person makes, and it is entirely reasonable to want confidence in your partner’s background and history before taking that step. A marriage background check is not an act of mistrust in itself — it is a sensible precaution that many people...
How Background Checks Work
A professional background check is a structured investigation into a person’s identity, history, and circumstances, drawing on a combination of data sources, public records, and intelligence techniques. It is not the same as a quick internet search, though it includes elements of that. This article explains what actually happens during...
Commercial Debtor Risk Assessments
A commercial debtor risk assessment is a structured, investigative evaluation of the risk that a specific individual or business presents as a debtor, conducted before credit is extended, before a significant commercial relationship is entered into, or before litigation is commenced. It is the investigative equivalent of credit checking, applied...
How Investigators Locate Debtors
Locating a debtor who does not want to be found is a structured investigative task, not a guessing exercise. The methods available to professional investigators — the data sources, the intelligence techniques, the physical investigation capabilities — are substantially more comprehensive than those available to a credit controller running a...
Tracing Property Ownership
Property is the most commonly held significant asset class and the most frequently investigated in asset tracing cases. Real estate is difficult to move, difficult to disguise, and — in jurisdictions with effective land registration systems — the subject of public records that provide a reliable starting point for investigation....
Recovering Commercial Debts
Commercial debt recovery is one of the most practically consequential areas of business risk management, and one of the most consistently mishandled. The failure of a business to recover money owed to it is not merely a financial problem. It consumes management time, distorts cash flow, and in its more...
Pre-Litigation Investigations
The decision to litigate is one of the most significant financial decisions a business makes. Proceedings are expensive, the outcome is uncertain, and the cost of securing a judgment that cannot be enforced is both the direct cost of the litigation and the opportunity cost of the resource deployed. Pre-litigation...