Legal Update

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This document is an overview of resources, to be read alongside the PowerPoint presentation.

You can find the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act in full at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2020/11/contents/enacted

You can find a good survey of the legislation at: https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/family-and-children/no-fault-divorce

You can point clients to https://www.gov.uk/divorce to find out about applying online – the whole of www.gov.uk is a good resource for clients and mediators. You can see the latest (May 2021) information about the working of the online systems at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/hmcts-services-online-divorce-and-financial-remedy

You can find the February message from the President of the Family Division, called ‘The Road Ahead 2021’, at https://www.judiciary.uk/announcements/message-from-the-president-of-the-family-division-the-road-ahead-2021/ With its Annex on remote hearings, including guidance on good practice, it is 11 pages long and gives a good sense of what many court hearings are still like.

You can have a look at the structure of the Financial Remedy Court in this court service Organogram, published on 1 October 2021. https://www.judiciary.uk/announcements/financial-remedy-court-organogram/

The Farquhar Committee has produced two reports on practice and procedures in this court, published in May and October 2021, including some really interesting statistics on the 2019 functioning of the court. You can find both at https://www.judiciary.uk/publications/reports-of-the-farquhar-committee-on-the-financial-remedies-court-parts-12/

Interesting Nuffield Family Justice Observatory materials can be found at: https://www.nuffieldfjo.org.uk/resources and the webinar mentioned in the Powerpoint can be found here: https://www.nuffieldfjo.org.uk/news/webinar-remote-hearings-fair-covid-19 You can see their final report, published on 23 July 2021, at https://www.nuffieldfjo.org.uk/resource/remote-hearings-post-pandemic

Anonymity – a good survey in https://unit.law/2021/11/16/redressing-the-balance-in-the-financial-remedies-court/, albeit one definitely slanted in favour of less anonymity in financial cases.

Mediators really don’t need a detailed understanding of the Family Procedure Rules 2010 (FPR 2010) but if you are interested, you can find them here: http://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/family/rules_pd_menu Part 3 deals with non-court dispute resolution. Part 28 deals with costs and Practice Direction 28A on costs includes the duty to negotiate reasonably currently hitting the (law report) headlines.

You can see a fact-sheet guide to the new Domestic Abuse Act 2021 here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/domestic-abuse-bill-2020-factsheets/domestic-abuse-bill-2020-overarching-factsheet and you can find information about the Harm Panel report here: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2020-06-25/HCWS313

A reference document with case reports is attached – it includes a case report (but not the full text of the judgment) for each case mentioned in the Powerpoint – and a few others. The cases in the Powerpoint have green case names, the other have purple case names – the cases are in the same order as on the Powerpoint, with the ‘extras’ at the end (including the sample case we discussed). This 109 page document isn’t in any way intended to be read all the way through (unless you are already very bored indeed!) but is for reading more about any particular topic that you might be interested in. The case reports do not always contain all the legal thinking behind the decision, in the interests of keeping them reasonably accessible to mediators with no legal training (and the document under 110 pages!) If you are interested in looking at the original judgment for any case, rather than relying on the summaries, they can all be found at https://www.bailii.org/