Gold Band : Gold Standard?

Excessive Verbosity Warning. Do not go past this point unless you have at least two packs of kendall mint cake and a powerade about your person.  [UPDATE : Office for Judicial Complaints now investigating Coleridge J - see end 5pm 15 May] This weekend I listened to Coleridge J talk about his Marriage Foundation at [...]

Marrying Up is Down

DISCLAIMER: I’m not a social scientist, a statistician, an economist or a politician. So I may be talking out of my hat. Again.   The IPPR has published a report on marriage patterns, and it shows that fewer women are “marrying up”. According to the report I read in the Observer today “IPPR director Nick Pearce [...]

Odd Socks

An interesting project is on the drawing board over at OnlyDads and OnlyMums : Odd Socks. You can read all about it on Flawbord here, but below is a little summary of what they have in mind. Sounds inspiring – but they need your help : Project Summary To develop (probably in partnership) a web-based [...]

Shared Parenting Postponed

Don’t panic. It’s just a postponement of my post on the topic (although there may be a certain prescience in the title – I don’t think you’d get great odds on getting the shared parenting legislation through Parliament before the next General Election…). I was full of good intentions to finish my shared parenting blog post [...]

The Daily Mail and the Moral Crusade

Sir Paul Coleridge may not be on a moral crusade but his Marriage Foundation has certainly inspired the crusading spirit in the Daily Mail (download pdf of article here: It’s down to the judges to mend our divorce laws – they trashed them in the first place By STEVE DOUGHTY if you don’t want to give google [...]

BAD TIMING

This blog is not just about family law. As is required pursuant to the law of sod I am too darn busy to post anything much about the biggest family law news for some time, the publication of the Family Justice Review. And since this is not my day job it’s the blog that has [...]

Go Solo To Gain Tactical Advantage?

A letter to the Law Society Gazette last week from a family solicitor suggested that the represented litigant is now at a distinct disadvantage when appearing opposite a litigant in person. Caroline Goorney wrote that: “The rise of the litigant in person is an inevitable fact of life, but their favourable treatment by the courts is [...]

Manifesto for Family Justice

This morning (24th October) the FLBA together with the Bar Council and an alliance of other organisations publishes a Manifesto for Family Justice.   The alliance, which comprises the Association of Lawyers for Children, the Bar Council, CAADA, the Children’s Commissioner, the Family Law Bar Association, Gingerbread, Liberty, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, Resolution and Women’s Aid, has called upon the Government to: ·         Protect vulnerable women and [...]

LiP Service

Litigants in Person are in the news. The penny seems to be dropping that they are becoming the norm rather than the exception. The Gazette carries a piece on the soaring numbers of LiPs, based upon a recent and stark increase in demand upon the services offered by the PSU at the RCJ, in particular [...]

Litigants in Person v Counsel

Our latest Professional Update from the Bar Standards Board tells us that there has been “an unprecedented increase in complaints from Litigants in Person”. The figures are not astronomical at 35 in the year to date, but apparently this is more than the total number of complaints received in 2009 and 2010 combined. The author [...]