Crime and Courts Bill

Headlines : provides for creation of new single family court (a court of record) and repeal of Pt 2 CSFA 2010 (long anticipated) on privacy rules. In short this means no change to existing rules on attendance of press and reporting restrictions. Am up to my eyeballs, but you can read all abartit on Obiter [...]

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 [...]

Shared Parenting: Reciprocity and Colin

This is a guest blog post by Melanie Barnes. Melanie is qualified as a Solicitor Advocate and is trained as a mediator.  She has a specialism in child support law and currently sits on the Resolution National Committee for Child Maintenance.  She has a particular interest in international child maintenance and has been actively involved in policy discussions [...]

Children & Families Bill

‘Twas Queen’s Speech day yesterday – incase you didn’t notice. Cue much criticism of the Government for not announcing the “Economic Miracle Bill” or the “Job creation Bill”. As if legislation were no more than a fortune cookie. Anyhoo…as anticipated there was a lot of family law stuff in there (not gay marriage tho – [...]

More (Bump &) Grind Required

Written betwixt Paddington and Templemeads last night… I didn’t hear Sir Paul Coleridge on the Today programme this morning (yesterday), owing to my broken foot (I had to cadge a lift to work with my brother who is allergic to Radio 4. Sadly, I am allergic to Kiss FM but this cuts no ice). I [...]

Family Court a law unto itself?

By now the press are reporting widely the case of Alas Al-Wray (FD10C00445 LB of Islington v Al Alas and Wray Approved Judgment 19 April 2012). Not many other than lawyers will have the fortitude to get all the way through the judgment, which is extremely lengthy and medically technical. But it is a shocking [...]

Experts in Family Courts

I don’t subscribe to The Times, but whilst waiting for my taxi to court yesterday I came across [a letter in*] yesterday’s edition from Psychologist Sam Westmacott: Sir, Professor Jane Ireland shocked psychologists when she published her research on expert witnesses (“The shocking tale of a mother seeking help” Camilla Cavendish, Opinion, Apr 12). Her [...]

Stuff I grazed on today

It was a slow old day today. A spot of overlisting and a lot of hanging around at court, a couple of hours on a train….The iphone has had a workout today – I cleared all my backlog of unread RSS feeds, gorged on twitter and read Metro from cover to cover whilst languishing in [...]

News of my appointment has been greatly exaggerated

Oops. The Times have me down as not just a silk but also an arbitrator. And not just that but an arbitrator who is dealing with a complex international dynastic “feud” with Cherie Blair. Anyone got ANY idea who they have mistaken me for?? I can’t work it out!! (one other Lucy Reed is an arbitrator but [...]

Adoption Targets

Unusually, this month sees the emergence of a system that creates an disincentive to adoption for Local Authorities, if this report on Family Law is correct. It suggests that as a result of the target being drawn so as to require all children for whom the plan is adoption to be placed within 12 months, [...]