Posts
Hair strand testing – pitfalls and limitations
This is a guest post by Lucy Taylor. Lucy is a pupil barrister at Coram Chambers. When it is disputed whether a person uses drugs, the family court can – and often does - order hair strand testing to determine the issue. This article draws upon the work of lawyer...
Reporting Pilot expanded across England
As anticipated, the Reporting Pilot is now being extended to more courts - another 16, as well as the existing pilot in Cardiff, Carlisle and Leeds. We have copied the Judiciary press release below. As more metropolitan courts are now included, we may well see a lot...
What is a rubric and why does it matter?
We're posting a link to this new article by Sir James Munby, retired President of the Family Division, which has been published by the Financial Remedies Journal here - The Use and Misuse of the Rubric in the Family Courts The article isn't just about financial cases...
Legal blogging – parents’ evidence in a private law contact dispute
Attending a case under the Reporting Pilot at Cardiff court recently, two questions arose for me that might be recognised more widely in private law disputes: How does a judge manage a fair hearing where one party is represented by a barrister and the other party has...
New reporting pilot for Financial Remedies Courts
The 'Reporting Pilot' currently operates in three family courts with regard to cases about children. A new pilot is to begin in cases about financial disputes on divorce. The following press release was sent out by the Judicial Press Office on 14 December: ***...
What happened to the Ks?
Further to our post on the Court of Appeal judgment in April 2022, 'K v K – Court of Appeal give guidance on fact-finding hearings and on MIAMs', here is an in-depth analysis of the developments in the Re K case. Many thanks for this guest post by Charlotte Baker, a...
Transcript reveals what one judge really thinks of transparency
I begin this post by saying frankly that the transcript I have just read is shocking. If I had been told what was in it, I would not have believed it. Not so much the individual errors, but the combination of so many things gone wrong in one single transcript. Before...
When a judge prefers his own biases to the law, all is lost
“If you want to know my view on the transparency project, it is not supportive. I have always felt these cases are deeply private, and my judgments are there really for the parents, to help them, to help the families, they are not for public consumption or to allow...
Behind closed doors – a transcript from a private hearing
In August this year, a journalist attempted to observe the first day of a multi-day final hearing in a private children case. She was refused access by the judge, His Honour Judge Haigh. The following day, another journalist [Louise Tickle, who is a member of The...
The Cafcass in-house psychological service – our unanswered questions
We wrote about the Cafcass in-house psychology service 'that no one seemed to know about' back in April and again in October. We received replies on 10 November from Cafcass Governance to our follow-up freedom of information questions. We weren't satisfied with these...