How does the family court treat domestic abuse?: A snapshot (continued – Part 7)

by Sophie Smith Holland | Nov 27, 2019 | Analysis, Cases, Comment, Consultations, FCReportingWatch

This is a post from Sophie Smith-Holland, who tweets as @SSmithHolland. 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 that the system is placing children...

Orphans from Syria

by Lucy R | Nov 27, 2019 | Cases, Comment, FCReportingWatch, Notorious

Mr Justice Keehan has this week published an extraordinary judgment of a mere 17 staccato paragraphs. It is called Re Orphans From Syria [2019] EWHC 3202 (Fam). It begins : This matter concerns British citizens who were in Syria who are orphans. I made a...

Cape v Dring and legal blogging

by Lucy R | Nov 23, 2019 | Analysis, Cases, Explanation, FCReportingWatch, Legal blogging, Transparency News

This blog post originally appeared as the Transparency Project’s monthly column for October 2019 in Family Law [2019] Fam Law 1208(1). Cape v Dring In July 2019, the Supreme Court handed down judgment in the case of Cape Intermediate Holdings Ltd v Dring...

Brothers’ and sisters’ rights in care

by Julie Doughty | Nov 17, 2019 | Cases, FCReportingWatch

Many people believe that we do not pay enough attention to the rights of children in care to stay with, or at least stay in touch with, their brothers and sisters. Our relationships with our brothers and sisters can be the longest and most valuable in our lives but,...

‘Are you here because of the significant failure?’

by Lucy R | Nov 6, 2019 | Cases, FCReportingWatch, Legal blogging

As it happens I wasn’t, and the lawyer who asked me this had assumed wrongly. I was attending court just to see what was on that day, and to use the legal blogging pilot to try to report a typical day in the life of a circuit judge. But I’d stumbled upon a...

Accuracy enthusiasts ban dodgy headlines – journalist blasts sub-editors for lie that made it around the world before the truth had got its boots on

by Louise Tickle | Oct 28, 2019 | Cases, Comment, FCReportingWatch

Last Wednesday, the Mail and the Sun published an article about a father who had just withdrawn from eight years of family court litigation. This man had been trying to re-establish his relationship with his children. His ex, the judge explained in a published...