Nothing else will do.

by Annie Surviving Safeguarding | Sep 26, 2019 | Analysis, Cases, Comment, Explanation, FCReportingWatch

This is a post by Annie, one half of our Project Coordination team, author of Surviving Safeguarding; a parents’ guide to the child protection process and a birth parent who has been through several sets of concurrent public and private law proceedings. Annie now...

Lomax v Lomax – must parties consent to Early Neutral Evaluation process?

by Paul M | Sep 17, 2019 | Analysis, Cases, Comment, Explanation

In an appeal from a decision made by a family judge in an inheritance dispute, the Court of Appeal has ruled that the consent of the parties is not needed for a court to order them to submit their case to an ENE, or “early neutral evaluation”. So what...

Suspended prison sentence for paralegal who sent family court papers to the wrong judge is ruled unfair

by Julie Doughty | Sep 8, 2019 | Analysis, Cases, FCReportingWatch, Notorious

UPDATE 16 September: We have now seen the appeal judgment itself and have edited and updated this post. Please scroll to the end of this post for the update. A story appeared in The Times [paywalled] this week: ‘Trainee lawyer unfairly convicted of contempt over...

Change of residence – do we listen to children?

by Julie Doughty | Aug 30, 2019 | Analysis, Cases, FCReportingWatch

‘Change of residence’ in the context of a child arrangements order (a reform that was supposed to get rid of the ‘win-lose’ concept of residence and contact before 2014) is quite a cold, technical term to describe a child having to move from...

The danger of crusades

by Lucy R | Aug 30, 2019 | Analysis, Cases, Comment, Explanation, FCReportingWatch

In the last few months, the Daily Express has been running a ‘Crusade’ (their label) with the banner ‘End This Injustice’. Under this banner they have published a number of accounts from mothers who tell of abuse at the hands of the fathers of...

How does the family court treat domestic abuse?: A ‘snapshot’ (continued – part 6)

by Sophie Smith Holland | Aug 17, 2019 | Analysis, Cases, Comment, FCReportingWatch

This is a post from Sophie Smith-Holland, who tweets as @SSmithHolland. With thanks also to Alice Twaite. The question of how the family court deals with domestic abuse has had a huge amount of public and media attention recently. Concerns have been raised...