Legal or ethical?

I turned up to court yesterday to find my STBE-husband was being represented by his current partner! She is, apparently, a lawyer, but not in family law. She was openly hostile towards me and turned an already stressful situation into a waking nightmare!
He has insisted throughout that he does not have a solicitor and had not filed a ''notice of change'' with the court.
Is this legal?

Don''t know the answer but just wanted to send support: that sounds absolutely awful for you, as if going to court were not bad enough...

The lady could not represent him in court unless she is listed as his lawyer, so worth checking, it sounds as though you have formally?, if she is not listed then perhaps she acted as MF with the right to talk in court (right of audience).

It was AWFUL! I thought I was quite calm but it all went completely to bits when I got there. The CAFCASS chap was supposed to meet with us an hour before the hearing to discuss things but didn''t appear until five minutes after we were actually IN court. By then ex''s girlfriend had spent a good hour staring at me with her lip curled, occasionally whispering with him. Was virtually in tears by the time we got into court....

She was definitely representing him dukey. He has said all along that he has no legal representation but sends incredibly long, detailed letters to my solicitor-having insisted from the very start that I am only to contact him through my solicitor-he then says I am being difficult and ignoring his letters because I can''t afford to reply to his every missive. Couldn''t afford to have my solicitor appear with me in court and CAFCASS officer said on the phone that I seemed ''entirely child focused'' so would be fine without one. Ex''s girlfriend marched up to me while we were waiting, gave me a look that would kill small rodents, and presented me with ANOTHER raft of paperwork totally annihilating my every action as a parent with her name signed at the bottom as ''legal representation''. I checked with the court usher afterwards and no ''notice of acting'' had been filed. Waited for an hour afterwards to speak to the CAFCASS officer too (having not spoken to him beforehand) but he was too busy then had to get back to meet the school bus.

Hi Purplepea

Surely there is a conflict of interest here.
When I worked for a lawyer I was not able to deal with anything for family and/or friends.

Like Dukey says, I would check she is actually a lawyer. If she is and doesn''t practice family law, then what the hell is she doing?

Good luck

She passed her law degree in late 2013 according to Linkedin and currently works as in-house counsel for a non-SRA company. Nothing to do with family law.