How does the family court deal with domestic abuse? A snapshot

by Sophie Smith Holland | Jun 7, 2019 | Analysis, Cases, Comment, Explanation

This is a first post from Sophie Smith-Holland, one of our new contributors. Sophie tweets as @SSmithHolland. The post is divided into two parts. This is Part One. The question of how the Family Court deals with domestic abuse has had a huge amount of public...

Do social workers have a duty of care to protect children of local authority tenants?

by Julie D | Jun 6, 2019 | Cases, Explanation

You can tell this was likely to be an important case because there are five ‘interverners’ – organisations that have an interest, in principle, in the outcome – in this particular case, from a human rights and children’s rights perspective. The applicants were two...

Independent research on domestic abuse and family courts

by reporting watch team | Jun 1, 2019 | Analysis, FCReportingWatch

In the Victoria Derbyshire television programme on 16 May, Sir James Munby, the former President of the Family Division, acknowledged (via a written statement) the weight of expressions of dissatisfaction and concern that was building up about orders for contact...

Money, money, money, must be funny, in an [anonymised beneficiary’s] world: protecting child beneficiaries in variation of trust cases

by Paul M | Jun 1, 2019 | Analysis, Cases, Explanation, FCReportingWatch

A typical plot development in old novels is the sudden discovery of unexpected wealth, usually in the form of an inheritance, or the discovery of a long lost will or hidden relationship to a wealthy benefactor.   That is sometimes what it...

Legal blogging by consent

by Lucy R | May 30, 2019 | Cases, Explanation, FCReportingWatch, Legal blogging

On 10 May I attended the Family Court to see if I could attend a hearing under the Legal Blogging Pilot before heading off to collecting judgment in one of my cases at noon. I wasn’t sure that this would be very productive because of the fact I could only fit in a...

Judge agrees learning disabled man can make his own choice about marriage and should be told about his finances

by Abigail Bond | May 24, 2019 | Cases, Explanation

This is a first post from Abigail Bond, one of our new contributors. Abigail tweets as @AbigailBond1. In May this year Mr Justice Francis handed down a carefully anonymised judgment in a case concerning PBM, a man in his mid-twenties who had an acquired brain injury...