The 53-page Playbook that teaches UK limited company directors what solicitors charge £400/hour to explain — so you can protect your shares, value your business fairly, and stop getting billed for your own education.
If you're a limited company director whose marriage is ending, you are about to discover something nobody warns you about: the UK legal system was not built for you.
It was built for salaried employees. For people whose financial life can be reconstructed from three payslips and a mortgage statement. Not for directors with shares, director's loan accounts, dividend history, retained profits, and a balance sheet that needs interpretation. Every one of those things is a line on Form E. Every line is a potential question. Every question is billed at £350 an hour.
I've watched a lot of intelligent, commercially literate business owners walk into their first meeting with a family solicitor and come out £2,000 poorer with no more understanding than they started with. Not because their solicitor was dishonest. Because their solicitor gets paid to explain things, and they didn't know the things already.
The amount you ultimately pay — both to your spouse and to the professionals advising you — depends on decisions you make in the first ninety days. Most of those decisions have nothing to do with law. They're about preparation, documentation, and understanding what drives the numbers. That's what this Playbook is. It's the stuff I wish every director had read before their first solicitor's meeting.
By the time you finish the Playbook, you'll know what your company is really worth, what a forensic accountant can and can't do to it, what the 2025 Standish Supreme Court ruling means for your pre-marital value, and how to walk into mediation or FDR with the kind of folder of preparation that changes the tone of the entire negotiation.
The guide is £47. It will save you, at minimum, thousands. If it doesn't, email me within 14 days and I'll refund you. I'd rather have the right readers than the wrong ones.
Half the money directors waste in divorce is spent correcting false beliefs they walked in with. Here are six of the most expensive. The Playbook has all ten, with technical detail behind each.
On 2 July 2025, the UK Supreme Court handed down Standish v Standish [2025] UKSC 26 — the first Supreme Court decision on matrimonial property principles in nearly two decades. It changes the landscape for directors whose companies pre-date their marriage.
The Court ruled that the sharing principle — the thing that makes your spouse's lawyer argue for 50/50 — applies only to matrimonial property. Non-matrimonial property (pre-marital business value, inheritance, external gifts) is not ordinarily subject to sharing. The bar for 'matrimonialising' a pre-marital asset was meaningfully raised.
Practical translation: if you founded or owned your company before marriage, a significant chunk of its value may now sit outside the sharing principle. Growth during the marriage is shareable. The pre-marriage base is not. For directors with businesses worth £500k+, that distinction is routinely worth tens or hundreds of thousands in settlement.
Chapter 3 of the Playbook explains the ruling in plain English, sets out the five principles the court established, and gives you a concrete checklist of what to do before your Form E is filed.
A selection of feedback from early readers. Names altered at request — these are director-level financial matters.
Written at the density of an FT long-read, not the thinness of an internet ebook. Every chapter earns its place. Every page is something you'd otherwise pay a lawyer to tell you.
A single, professionally designed PDF. Works on any device. Yours forever. Updated annually.
That's not a rhetorical promise. If within fourteen days you decide the Playbook hasn't earned back many times its price, reply to your receipt and I'll refund you. No questions asked. You keep the guide. I'd rather have the right readers than the wrong ones.
No. The Playbook is an educational product. It's a plain-English translation of the areas of family law, valuation practice, and divorce procedure that directors are routinely expected to pay £300–£600 an hour to have explained to them. It doesn't create a solicitor-client relationship and isn't a substitute for advice on your specific case.
What it does do: make sure when you do speak to a solicitor, you ask better questions, spend less time on the clock being educated, and are materially harder to overcharge.
The opposite. The single most valuable time to read this is before anything becomes formal. Chapters on pre-marital asset protection, director's loan accounts, and the Standish ruling are things you can act on today in ways you cannot act on once proceedings start.
No. Scottish and Northern Irish family law differ materially from the law of England and Wales. The Playbook is written for directors whose divorce will be governed by the law of England and Wales. If your case will be heard outside those jurisdictions, this isn't the right product for you — I'd rather tell you now than refund you later.
A single, professionally typeset PDF. Downloads immediately after payment. Works on any device — phone, tablet, laptop — and on all major PDF readers. You'll also get a link to re-download whenever you like.
Only if you tell them. Your payment shows up on your statement under a neutral trading name. The download is a PDF on your device. Nothing about the purchase signals what it's for.
Full refund within 14 days. No questions. You keep the guide. At £47 the maths is straightforward — if it saves you even a single hour of solicitor's time, it's paid for itself several times over.
The Playbook is published by the Director's Playbook Series, which produces practical guides for UK limited company owners on financial, tax, and legal matters. Content is prepared in consultation with family law practitioners and forensic accountants. It's written specifically for directors who want technical substance delivered without legal jargon.
If the Playbook saves you a single hour of solicitor's time, it's paid for itself. Most readers tell us it saves more than that in the first week. £47. Instant download. 14-day guarantee.
Get The Playbook — £47