Family Lore Blogs: January 2017

X v X: special contributions and discounted share values (part 2)

In part two of this extended look at the implications of the recent X v X case, Julian explores the husband’s claims in court.

Full post: Marilyn Stowe Blog

Coercing the obdurate (and other exercises in futility)…

We have previously written about the case of MM (an incapacitated adult living in Portugal in a care home) and Mrs Kirk, who was imprisoned for refusing to assist the court with his return to be cared for back in Devon where he had previously been living.

Full post: The Transparency Project

On-line divorce scheme

As the debate on the EU withdrawal bill rages in the House of Commons I reflect on the latest practice direction to be added to Family Procedure Rules 2010, namely FPR 2010 PD36D – Pilot Scheme: procedure for using an online system to generate applications in certain proceedings for a matrimonial order.

Full post: dbfamilylaw

Transgender v ultra-Orthodox Jewish community?

The press widely report the decision of Mr Justice Peter Jackson in a very sad and difficult case involving an ultra-orthodox Jewish (Charedi) family, where the father left the community to become a transgender woman, and has not seen her five children since.

Full post: The Transparency Project

A feast of legal issues: the X v X divorce (part 1)

In the first of a special two part feature, Stowe Family Law Managing Partner Julian Hawkhead considers the many issues raised in recent case of X v X.

Full post: Marilyn Stowe Blog

From one extreme to another: media reports on the role of social workers in the death of Poppy Widdison

Two detailed media reports on Poppy’s death took strikingly different positions. The Daily Mail on the 19th January and the Hull local Daily Mail on the 21st.

Full post: The Transparency Project

Dossier claims children unnecessarily removed from parents

We’ll take a walk through the dossier, highlighting interesting or illustrative features as we go.

Full post: The Transparency Project

Das reBoot – Court of Appeal find reverse gear (once again)

London Borough of Hackney v Williams & Anor [2017] EWCA Civ 26 (26 January 2017).

Full post: suesspiciousminds

Reasons for judgment

Lord Phillips MP in English v Emery Reimbold & Strick Ltd: ‘while it is perfectly acceptable for reasons to be set out briefly in a judgment, it is the duty of the Judge to produce a judgment that gives a clear explanation for his or her order’. This case and the principles encapsulated in it were recently referred to in Iqbal v Iqbal.

Full post: dbfamilylaw

Imaginary judges use imaginary powers to reform imaginary law

Lucy Reed explains what is wrong with a recent newspaper headline.

Full post: The Transparency Project

Domestic violence & family proceedings : Practice direction amendments to protect vulnerable witnesses & children

On 21 January 2017 Sir James Munby published his 16th View from the President’s Chambers ‘Children and vulnerable witnesses – where are we?. This was accompanied by a report from Cobb J. This report includes a redrafted family proceedings practice direction (PD12J: ‘Child arrangements & contact order: domestic violence and harm’,

Full post: The Transparency Project

Transparency in CoP and Family Courts – the President’s view.

On January 23rd 2017, the President of the Family Division and the Court of Protection, Sir James Munby, visited the Bristol Civil Justice Centre to have general discussion with local professionals about recent developments for the Court of Protection.

Full post: The Transparency Project

Wife leads – and loses – fight to keep divorce hearings secret

The Times reported earlier this week that a case was about to be heard in which the Court of Appeal was being asked to consider the question of privacy in respect of financial remedy cases and appeals – and that it was thought that the Appeal Judges might issue some guidance to clear up a rumbling dispute about the correct approach to the privacy of ex-couples in this sort of case.

Full post: The Transparency Project

Rock bands, impenetrable vocabulary and Peers of the realm making off with wards of Court

There’s a High Court case that I’m going to briefly write about, called Egeneonu v Egeneonu 2017.

Full post: suesspiciousminds

Revised guidance issued on the duration of orders made ex parte (without notice)

The President of the Family Division, Sir James Munby, has issued guidance on the duration of orders made without notice (ex parte) in family proceedings, revising guidance issued in 2014.

Full post: Family Law Blog

If the Health and Care Professions Council really have found the social workers who lied on oath in ‘the Hampshire case’, NOT to have committed professional misconduct, should they publish this decision?

An important conversation burst out on twitter last night, with the suggestion that the three social workers found by the family court to have lied on oath, may now have been cleared of professional misconduct by the Health and Care Professions Council.

Full post: The Transparency Project

What does open justice actually mean?

The notion that justice must be seen to be done needs little introduction to either a lay or legal audience, but its familiarity belies an underlying complexity.

Full post: The Transparency Project

Abuse by cross-examination in family courts

Law reform, Women’s Aid and a Parliamentary domestic violence group.

Full post: dbfamilylaw

Judge rejects Welsh local authority’s care plan and allows mother to keep her eighth baby

The judgment of His Honour Judge Gareth Jones in Re A (A Child) [2016] EWFC B101 (25 August 2016) was recently published on BAILII.

Full post: The Transparency Project

Bradford Councils claim that it has decided to cut foster care allowances to the government national minimum level to comply with the law rather than principally to reduce costs

Saturday’s local Telegraph and Argus report, (‘Union hits out at Council plans to cut foster carers allowances’) of Bradford City Councils plan to reduce the core child element of their foster care allowances to the government minimum level, triggered twitter confusion about the applicable law and whether anything had changed.

Full post: The Transparency Project

Women’s Aid answer our queries about their evidence base

We have been in dialogue with Women’s Aid about assertions made by them that family courts frequently breach PD12J (practice direction in the Family Courts concerning domestic abuse) by allowing victims to be cross examined by their abusers.

Full post: The Transparency Project