Occupation Orders

Family Law Week publishes an interesting article this week on the recent case of Grubb v Grubb which concerns an appeal against the granting of an occupation order ousting a husband from the matrimonial home. The article appears here and the transcript here. I am going to take a slightly different slant on that case [...]

‘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 [...]

Trustee in Bankruptcy has 3 Year Window

I have not had time to read the full report of this case reported last week in The Times: Lewis and Another v Metropolitan Property Realisations Ltd (Court of Appeal, July 15 2009), but it is certainly going to be worth a look both for families concerned about losing their home and ex-(or soon to [...]

Writing About Family Proceedings – A Blogger’s Guide

Thinking about telling the world about the injustice you have suffered at the hands of the family court system? Understandably many parents who have been through family court proceedings want to blog or write about their experience of trying to get contact with their son or daughter, or about how the state wrongly took their children from [...]

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 [...]

Divorce in Haste Repent at Leisure

Divorce Online offer the ‘UK’s best selling managed divorce service’ for the slender sum of £182. And, their website tells me, this is not the only ‘UK’s best’ they offer: ‘We use the UK’s fastest divorce court* – We visit the court every working day.’ Scroll to the very small print at the bottom to [...]

Facebook Families

I am beginning to think that an understanding of Facebook and social media will have to form a part of a family practitioner’s annual CPD requirements. Here are a few of the ways that I have seen facebook, myspace and other similar websites crop up in a court or family context: public arguments between couples over [...]

You! You at the back! PAY ATTENTION!

As reported in The Times today journalists and activists are beginning to realise that the reforms in respect of media access to family proceedings are not a green light to report anything and everything juicy, salacious or gruesome. Or really much of anything at all. Not a few people were so caught up whooping at [...]

Did you know…?

…that Deputy District Judges are now not permitted to deal with most Children Act matters? No, nor did I (a gap in my capacious knowledge, how embarrassing) until arriving at court this morning only to be told that the matter would have to be put back as it had accidentally been listed in front of [...]

Still Here

Am aware of paucity of blog posts recently, owing to unusually hectic work life and poorly boy. Normal service will be resumed soon… In the meantime take a look at the draft rules due to come into force on 27th April (not yet available on OPSI) which modify privacy rules in children proceedings as set out in [...]