Two recent publications are relevant to litigants in person (LiPs) in family courts who are conducting their own case without being represented by a lawyer. The first one is important because it is guidance that a LiP will need to follow. The second is of wider interest and might be helpful to anyone involved in child arrangements cases where there are domestic abuse issues, whether or not they have a lawyer.
1. Guidance to LiPs on court bundles (i.e. the agreed set of documents that has to be provided to the court and all parties in a hearing)
On 2nd March, the President of the Family Division issued ‘Preparing Court Bundles for Family Proceedings: Guide for Litigants in Person’ to accompany the introduction of a new Practice Direction 27A (PD27A) in the Family Procedure Rules. PD27A must be complied with in all family cases in the Family Court and High Court (children and financial). It sets out in detail the requirements for a bundle to be acceptable. PD27A covers:
- what documents must or must not go in the bundle;
- how bundles should be organised, for example, in sections, with documents in chronological order with an index at the beginning;
- page numbering and document formatting;
- limits on bundle size and length;
- whether the bundle should be electronic or paper and when paper bundles may be permitted;
- who must prepare the bundle, and send it to the court and to the other people involved in the case; and
- when and how bundles should be sent
It’s essential for a LiP to understand what’s required in a court bundle, because other documents can’t normally be called on in evidence later on.
Drawing the bundle together is usually the responsibility of the applicant. If the applicant is a LiP, the responsibility falls to the legal representative of the next party. If no one has a lawyer, the judge will make a decision about who should prepare the bundle. It may have to be done by the Court Service.
The bundle will usually be in electronic form, but if there’s a likelihood of someone having to give oral evidence in the courtroom, the person who has responsibility for drawing together the bundle also has to provide a paper copy for the witness to refer to.
This guidance is also quite helpful in providing definitions of the sorts of terms that are used by the court and how some of the procedures work, so we’d recommend it to LiPs generally, even those not having to prepare a bundle. There are some examples of different types of document in a bundle and what these might look like e.g. case summaries, chronologies etc.
There’s an odd sentence on page 3 suggesting this is not the final draft, so we emailed to ask about this, and have been assured by the Family Procedure Rule Committee that this is the correct and final version of the guide.
2. Research briefing: Child arrangements orders – the family court and domestic abuse
This research briefing for Parliament was written by David Foster and published on 26 February by way of an update to include the repeal of the ‘presumption of parental involvement’. The repeal is in clause 17 of the Courts and Tribunals Bill currrently going through Parliament. This isn’t a review of research but rather a summary of the issues to help MPs understand these when debating them. It explains the role of the court and Cafcass in basic terms and gives references to the major sources of information e.g the Harm report and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s report. It covers the use of ‘parental alienation’ as a deflection of allegations of domestic abuse. It concludes by listing recent Government reforms to improve safeguarding.
Although written for MPs, the briefing might be helpful to a LiP who is wondering where to begin in understanding the court’s approach to issues of domestic abuse in child arrangements cases, which, as the briefing says, features in most of the cases that reach court.
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