Surviving a Stepfamily Christmas

I must be moving up in the world: I haven’t dealt with a single last minute spat over who gets the kids on Christmas Day this year. I had steeled myself for the annual onset of the Christmas Contact frenzy: desperate attempts to shoehorn in urgent hearings, and to persuade a judge to give the [...]

Open Debate

The FLBA hosted a panel discussion on ‘Publicity in Family Proceedings’ today. It was moderated by Mr Justice Coleridge, and the panel was comprised of Mrs Justice Eleanor King, Anthony Hayden QC, Joshua Rozenberg and Dr Julia Brophy. It was a really interesting discussion. There was some consensus on a number of points: that greater [...]

Wishes & Feelings Reports – No Panacea

I attended the FLBA Annual Conference in Bath today and was struck by a really interesting talk by Dr Kirk Weir, Consultant Child, Adolescent & Family Psychiatrist. He presented statistics based on his work as an expert reporting in High Conflict Contact Cases over a number of years, in support of the proposition that an emphasis [...]

‘Don’t you lot EVER think about the kids?’

No, you are absolutely right. We have spent years acquiring expertise, passed up the opportunity to earn three times as much money in any other area of law you care to choose, regularly work into the night reading graphic details about head injuries and abuse and neglect, and spend 50% of our time telling our [...]

How the Millionaires Live

Classy: Businessman sues ex-wife for money spent on children after finding out they were not his. Hat tip to Family Lore Focus.

House of Lords Judgment: Be More Accomodating

I was thinking it was about time I posted on a recent legal judgment. And so I was just sitting down to type a post about the case of R (on the application of G) (FC) (Appellant) v London Borough of Southwark (Respondents) [2009] UKHL 26 when I saw that Nearly Legal has beaten me to it. In [...]

Seen and Heard

I’ve just read an interesting article by District Judge Paul Carr who sits at Watford County Court on ‘The Voice of the Child’ published in [2009] Fam Law 290 (1 Apr 09) in which he sets out his views about Judges seeing children involved in proceedings and how that should be handled. I’ve posted on the [...]

Keeping Watch on the Purse Strings

Dealing recently with a case where a publicly mother ordered to make a child available for contact but who had concerns about its continuation was refused public funding to make an application to vary until such time as the father had applied to enforce. How can that be a) in the interests of the child, causing delay [...]

Participation of Children

An interesting article by District Judge Crichton (Inner London FPC, champion of the Drug & Alcohol Court Pilot) about enhancing the participation of children in Family Proceedings. He suggests that children of an appropriate age should be routinely asked by CAFCASS about the possibility of meeting the judge and that judges should not be reluctant to [...]

Contact Inactivity?

I promised I would post when I found the elusive list of contact activity providers that the DCSF / CAFCASS have been threatening to publish since early December. And so here is the link. I want to weep. I knew there would be holes in the provision at the outset, but in my region (the [...]