As a divorce lawyer with 18 years’ experience, Barbara Johnson-Stern has seen her fair share of heartbreak and agony, stepping in to comfort distraught clients bullied by their partners.

But in her case these clients are men, not women. Barbara heads up the UK’s first law firm for men only and says not only do we severely underestimate the trauma suffered by men in divorce, but that settlements are too often biased in favour of women.

It’s a burgeoning industry: Barbara’s firm Cordell & Cordell has had four solicitors at its base near Chancery Lane, London, since opening in 2015, but is planning to recruit more and to expand into Cardiff, Birmingham and Manchester.

Barbara Johnson-Stern heads up the UK's first law firm for men only

The company has more than 100 offices in the U.S., where it began 26 years ago promising American husbands: ‘We’re going to help you keep the dollars you earned.’

‘Women are often seen as the biggest losers in divorce, but that’s an outdated view — it’s almost the opposite now,’ says Barbara, 49, a softly-spoken but tenacious lawyer from Colorado, whose husband Dan is British.

She feels there’s so much support for women getting a divorce — from retreats to online clubs — that now it’s men’s turn to get specialist help. ‘Men come to us and say: “She’s told me I’m going to lose everything and I’ll never see my children again.” They feel their wives hold all the cards.’

She knows her views won’t be popular with many, but she feels women — and it’s women who instigate 65 per cent of divorces — often have a sense of entitlement. There’s an unspoken rule she’ll keep the family house, the children and also the standard of living she enjoyed when they were married.

‘They want their life to stay the same — they just don’t want their husband in it.’

Too often, she says, men are paying long-term spousal maintenance to their ex-wives even after the children have grown up, which is unfair to men and outdated.

According to Johnson-Stern, not only do we severely underestimate the trauma suffered by men in divorce, but settlements are often biased in favour of women

‘Women should be expecting to work,’ she argues. ‘Someone like my grandmother did what was expected of her — she got married, had babies (eight of them) and raised the family. She wouldn’t have been able to move into the workplace after a divorce; she had a very basic education and no opportunities.

‘But it’s different now. Women come to the marriage table able to make decisions about their future and having the skills to keep them competitive in the workplace.’

Barbara agrees with Baroness Deech, who has tabled a Bill in the House of Lords to limit maintenance payments for ex-partners to three years after a divorce.

It passed its second reading in February and is in the committee stage. Baroness Deech argues that British judges are being old-fashioned and over-chivalrous in awarding women payments for 15 or 20 years when they are perfectly capable of earning their own money.

‘People wonder why, 15 years after a marriage has ended, one person has to keep paying money to another,’ she said, arguing that these kinds of settlements undermined women’s equality rather than did them a favour.

Her Bill follows intense debate over a string of high-profile cases in recent years where ex-wives were awarded what appeared to be eyebrow-raising settlements.

Earlier this year, surveyor Graham Mills was forced to increase the monthly payments he makes to his ex-wife Maria, despite the fact they divorced 15 years ago and she got a lump sum of £230,000 plus £1,100 a month maintenance.

He’d wanted to cut the payments as their son was 23 and he felt his ex-wife should be independent. ‘I feel like I’m paying for her mismanagement of her finances.

‘I don’t think it’s a good message to send to men or women,’ he said after the case.

But his ex-wife argued she’d run up debts over the years as a single mother with a history of bad health, which had prevented her from working at times.

She knows her views won’t be popular with many, but Johnson-Stern feels women — and it’s women who instigate 65 per cent of divorces — often have a sense of entitlement. There’s an unspoken rule she’ll keep the family house, the children and also the standard of living she enjoyed when they were married

Other cases have seen women awarded huge sums, adding to London’s reputation as the wives’ divorce capital of the world. In 2014, financier Sir Chris Hohn had to pay his ex-wife £337 million in what is thought to be Britain’s biggest divorce settlement. They had four children and were married for 17 years.

In what has become a classic case from 2006, Alan Miller was ordered to give his wife Melissa £5 million after a childless marriage lasting under three years.

And last June, millionaire entrepreneur Dale Vince had to give his ex-wife a lump sum of £300,000 even though he started his business a decade after they split up in 1992, when both were penniless peace protesters.

Barbara says it’s incredibly difficult to get women primary earners to pay their lower-earning husbands maintenance. ‘There’s hostility and resistance — they feel it’s not fair.’

She feels that for most ex-partners, three to five years of maintenance is enough while they get back into the workplace. This is separate from child maintenance, which she stresses should always be paid, because children’s interests take priority.

But doesn’t that mean the woman’s standard of living may drop if she’s taken time out from work to look after children and finds her earning power reduced, post-divorce?

Perhaps, admits Barbara, but adds: ‘A lot of women stay at home [to look after children] because they want to. They knowingly make decisions that will impact on their future, and they have to be responsible for those decisions.

‘I don’t think it’s fair that the woman expects to be looked after. I think that we should all — men and women — expect to take care of ourselves.’

‘It’s getting better for men, particularly if your children are older,' says Johnson-Stern. 'But when they are very young it can be harder for the man. Even if the couple work full time and their baby is in a nursery and taking a bottle, the mother will still often get preference. I think that’s unfair'

And while our mothers’ generation may have reasonably expected to keep the family home after divorce, that’s simply not possible for most people now house prices are so high.

‘If you are going to stay in it you have to be able to share it — and that means refinancing to give equity to the other partner so they can have a comparable house with bedrooms for the kids to stay in.’

She says there’s an unspoken expectation the man will leave the family home, no matter who has instigated the divorce. ‘Women tend to say, right, we’re divorcing so will you please leave — and the man packs his suitcase, a bit like leaving a hotel room. That’s unfair.’

Telecoms engineer Martin Newton, 44, faced this situation when his wife Eve asked for a divorce after 13 years together. He’d paid a £200,000 deposit on their £320,000 house in Surrey using all his life savings, and had viewed it as their pension.

But when Eve announced she wanted a divorce, she demanded she keep the house for herself and their two sons aged ten and eight, plus maintenance, so she didn’t have to work for the first year or two after the divorce.

Martin agreed, and had to move in with his elderly mother while the divorce went through.

‘I felt she was the one with all the power because I didn’t want my children to suffer, so I basically traded everything for that.

‘I lost my life savings and pension pot — friends said I was mad, but I knew I would have the moral high ground, and Eve couldn’t use anything to turn the kids against me or stop me seeing them.

‘I thought in divorce things got divided 50:50, but solicitor friends told me it was more like 70:30 to the woman, usually. How is that fair?’

Martin suffered depression after his divorce in 2015, which is very common, says Barbara. We can underestimate the trauma men feel during divorce, she adds, partly because men don’t tend to share their feelings.

She’s had clients come to meetings with spreadsheets of the family finances — which can make the woman think he isn’t that upset. ‘Many men find comfort in numbers versus the emotional side. They never tell me if they’re scared or overwhelmed. But it doesn’t mean they’re not feeling these things.’

In almost every one of her firm’s cases, it’s the woman asking for the divorce. She suspects many have been planning a split for two or three years and the man’s often unaware. That’s certainly the position Clive Harrington, 48, from Sussex, found himself in. His wife Claire had an affair six years ago and the couple moved home four years ago to make a fresh start. But she told him last autumn she wanted a divorce, and wanted him out of the house.

‘She was so calm, she’d obviously been planning it for months,’ he says. ‘She’d even earmarked one-bed flats I could rent, and worked out which days I could take our youngest son to school that would fit in with her part-time job.

‘She was sitting at the kitchen table telling me all this, but I could hardly hear her.

‘I was completely pole-axed by what she was saying because as far as I was concerned things were ok — not great, but ok — between us. I’ve refused to move out for now, but living apart under the same roof creates a toxic atmosphere, especially for the children.’

He adds: ‘But I know if I move out I won’t see the kids so often and family life would essentially be over for me.’

It’s getting better for men, particularly if your children are older. But when they are very young it can be harder for the man. Even if the couple work full time and their baby is in a nursery and taking a bottle, the mother will still often get preference. I think that’s unfair.

Barbara says men should never move out of the family home until it’s been decided how and when they’ll see their children.

‘It’s getting better for men, particularly if your children are older. But when they are very young it can be harder for the man. Even if the couple work full time and their baby is in a nursery and taking a bottle, the mother will still often get preference. I think that’s unfair.’

She is aware her firm raises eyebrows in the legal profession: she’s heard people say they’re anti-women, and that it pits the sexes against each other.

‘We are not anti-women,’ she says. ‘You can want men to have the best settlement possible without thinking you want women to walk away with nothing.’

The average divorced woman has one third of the pension a divorced man has, and research shows a divorced man’s income increases by 11 per cent, while a woman’s falls by 17 per cent.

‘Men-only firms are a terrible idea,’ says Liz Cowell, principal family lawyer at Slater And Gordon, who also sits as a district judge. She worries such firms take a needlessly confrontational approach.

Barbara disagrees: ‘When I joined the firm I worried I’d be representing men who wanted to bring their wives down.

‘But you really don’t see that — they just want a fair settlement. We want men to understand they have a voice and they have rights.’

Some of the names have been changed.