Revisions to family law have been welcomed by the Law Society, although there is concern that cuts to legal aid could hinder the delivery of the proposals’ aims. The organisation is worried that cuts to legal aid will lead to fewer family lawyers practicing, creating delays.
Desmond Hudson, chief executive of the Law Society, noted that children need to remain at the heart of the family justice system in a statement earlier this week.

“Delays in care cases amount to a national disgrace – children most in need of society’s care are being failed,” he explained.

Mr Hudson added that, in addition to fewer family lawyers, “cuts in legal aid eligibility will mean more people going to court unrepresented, taking up huge amounts of court time, just when court staff and facilities are being cut dramatically”.

He added that ministers should make efforts to ensure reforms are given the time and resources necessary to achieve the outcomes targeted.

In the Government’s response to the recommendations made by the independent Family Justice Review Panel, Ministers have outlined their plans to reform the system to help strengthen parenting, reduce the time it takes cases to progress through the courts, and simplify the family justice system.

Shared parenting for the best interests of the child:

• The changes in education and the introduction of parenting agreements which the Review recommended will help ensure better recognition of the joint role of parents within wider society.
• We also accept the need to clarify and restore public confidence that the courts recognise the joint nature of parenting. We will therefore make a legislative statement emphasising the importance of children having an ongoing relationship with both their parents after family separation, where that is safe, and in the child’s best interests. The Government is mindful of the lessons which must be learnt from the Australian experience of legislating in this area, which were highlighted by the Review and led them to urge caution. We will therefore consider very carefully how legislation can be framed to ensure that a meaningful relationship is not about equal division of time, but the quality of parenting received by the child.

Speeding up care and adoption cases by reforming the Public Law System and increasing transparency. We have already begun to publish data on the timeliness of court cases so we can see where delays are occurring. We will introduce legislation at the earliest opportunity to enable a six month time limit to be set and wherever possible we expect cases to be completed more quickly, while retaining the flexibility to extend complex cases where this is genuinely in the children’s interest.

Simplifying the family justice system to help separating couples reach lasting agreement speedily, if possible without going to court. We will make it mandatory for separating parents who propose court action to resolve a dispute about their child to have an initial assessment to see if mediation is something which would be suitable instead, to help them agree on the arrangements for their child. We estimate that we will spend an extra £10m a year on legal aid for family mediation taking the total to £25m per year (although we have placed no upper limit on this figure). We will also examine how to give the Courts more robust enforcement tools to combat failure to comply with judgments.

Driving culture change and better cross-system working through the establishment of a new Family Justice Board, accountable to Ministers, made up of senior figures representing the key organisations who play a role within the system and who will have a clear remit to improve performance.

Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke said:

The reform of family justice and child protection is a critical priority for Government. Our reforms are ambitious and system-wide and particularly tackle the crucial problem of delay.

More use of mediation, more effective court processes and more efficient provision of advice will help to create a family justice system which can better resolve these difficult emotional problems in the best interests of children and families.

Children’s Minister Tim Loughton said:

It is unacceptable for vulnerable children, who come into the court system through no fault of their own, to be waiting an average of 55 weeks for a decision about their future.

The introduction of a new six month time limit on care cases sends a clear signal to everyone involved in the process that we want to see radical improvement. Speeding up the court system, and getting earlier decisions about a child’s future, will help ensure that more children are found loving homes more quickly.”

On the issue of shared parenting, we accept the need to clarify and restore public confidence that the courts properly recognise the joint nature of parenting.  We will be legislating to emphasise the importance of children having an ongoing relationship with both their parents after separation, where that is safe and in the child’s best interests.

Family Justice Review Chair, David Norgrove said:

I welcome the Government Response to the Family Justice Review. The Review presented the Government with a bold and challenging agenda for change. I am pleased the Government have accepted the overwhelming majority of our recommendations.  The result should be to reduce the long delays that are so damaging to children and families and to help separating couples sort out their issues for themselves to the benefit of their children.

Other key commitments in the Government’s response are:

• To consider how Parenting Agreements could be used to emphasise the need for parents to consider how the child can maintain a relationship with other close family members, such as grandparents.
• To reduce expense and delay caused by the excessive use of expert reports, strengthening their quality and ensuring only essential reports are commissioned
• To reduce the amount of time spent by Judges and Courts scrutinising care plans, focusing instead on the core or essential components when making care orders.
• To bring court social work closer to other court services by transferring Cafcass sponsorship to the Ministry of Justice;
• To create a single family court across England and Wales, with a single point of entry, to simplify the system and make it more accessible for families using the system.

Ministers to look at changing rules to include ‘a presumption of shared parenting’, in biggest family law reform in 20 years

Ofsted is to introduce no notice inspection for child protection services. The new child protection framework will come into effect in May.

The no notice inspections, carried out over a two-week period, will see a team of experienced inspectors spending the majority of their time talking directly to children and their families about their experiences, as well as front-line social workers and managers. Inspectors will also shadow social workers in their work with children and their families, and observe multi-agency working.

Ofsted Deputy Chief Inspector, John Goldup said:

‘This new framework puts the child’s experience at the heart of inspection. We want to ensure that inspectors are able to judge the impact that professionals working in child protection are making to help children and protect them from harm.

‘For the first time in our child protection inspections, we’ll be talking to children and their families directly and shadowing social workers in their day-to-day work. This will be a very important part of the evidence that inspectors will use. We won’t just look at what happens to children when they become subject to formal child protection processes – it’s just as important to evaluate the help that children and their families do or don’t get early on, when problems first emerge, because that can make a critical difference to whether the problems get worse and the risks to the child escalate.’

The number of cases being examined by inspectors will be doubled to ensure there is an in-depth understanding of how well children are protected. Inspectors will sit alongside social workers and managers to go through case files and explore the support provided for each child.

The new framework will focus on those things that Ofsted identifies as making the most difference to children. Inspectors will make judgements in three key areas, replacing the nine judgements made in current inspections:

• The effectiveness of the help and protection provided to children, young people, families and carers
• The quality of practice
• Leadership and governance.

Inspectors will gather evidence from these key areas and make a summary judgement on the overall effectiveness of the service.

The new framework comes about after taking into account the responses from a public consultation held between July and September last year.

More couples may be divorcing as a result of money problems during the 2008-09 recession.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show there were 119,589 divorces in England and Wales during 2010, an increase of 5 per cent on the previous year.

It means that one in three marriages now breaks down by the 15th anniversary, compared with a fifth in 1970, with more men and women in their early forties splitting up than in other age groups. The average marriage now lasts 11.4 years.

Half of the spouses had children under 16, while the proportion of divorcing men and women who have had previous failed marriages has doubled since 1980.

The increase in the number of divorces, the first since 2003, follows years of decline as more and more couples have chosen to live together rather than getting married.

It has surprised some commentators who believed couples could not afford to split up in tough economic times.

But others suggested that arguments between spouses over money and job prospects would have risen during the recent recession, leading to separation and eventual divorce last year.

The ONS said in its statistical bulletin: “The small rise in the divorce rate and the number of divorces in 2010 could be associated with the economic climate following the 2008-09 recession.

“One theory suggests that recession could contribute to a rise in partnership break-ups because of increased financial strain, changes and employment and related lifestyle changes. In addition some individuals may believe they will get a more favourable settlement if their income is currently low.

“In contrast, an alternative theory suggests that partnerships would be less likely to dissolve in an unfavourable economic climate since couples would be less able to end the partnership for financial reasons – these may include the cost of lawyers, negative equity in housing or not being able to afford to maintain two households following divorce.”

Divorce rates also rose in 1993 following the 1990-92 recession, suggesting that there is a “delayed impact” of tough economic times as couples either go through separation before being granted a decree absolute, or wait until their finances have improved.

The Bar Council and the Family Law Bar Association (FLBA) held a national meeting of the family Bar to warn of the effects of the Government’s intended justice cuts.

The meeting, attended by the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve QC MP, took place in London and was linked by video conference to venues around the country. It focused on the Government’s proposals, contained within the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, to cut large swathes of family law from the scope of legal aid.

Stephen Cobb QC, Chairman of the FLBA, said: “If the Government pushes through its proposed cuts to legal aid, the future for family justice looks bleak. This is not a matter of lawyers bemoaning further fee cuts: we have the support of a number of voluntary organisations representing women, children and victims of domestic abuse. These reforms will result in 54,000 fewer people represented in the family courts annually, affecting 68,000 children at the centre of traumatic family breakdown.

“The court system will be placed under considerable strain as unrepresented individuals, some suffering from mental health problems and the effects of domestic abuse, attempt to represent themselves in court, in some cases opposite experienced lawyers. Vulnerable children face the prospect of being cross-examined by their allegedly abusive parent.

“The Government’s assertion that more cases will be resolved by mediation is not borne out by the experience of senior lawyers and judges. Only three per cent of those who responded to the legal aid consultation supported these proposals. We urge the Government to think again.”

The legal profession have called for people to view prenuptial agreements as wills for relationships, based on sound financial planning.

Attitudes towards prenuptial agreements, which would be better called pre-relationship agreements, are thawing in the wake of recent high profile cases in the media which have seen courts back the arrangements.

Individuals could save themselves significant time and money in the event of a separation or divorce by investing in a prenuptial agreement early on in their relationship and the
emergence of the prenuptial agreements as a recognised and reliable tool is one of the biggest issues in family law over the last year.

It is preferable to get a prenuptial agreement like this as early as possible in a relationship rather than wait until things go wrong and then try and sort things out. The prenuptial agreement gives much greater clarity if things go sour further down the road and can significantly cut the time it takes to sort matters out. The stigma surrounding prenuptial agreements is slowly going down and they should now be seen as pre-relationship agreements viewed in the same way as a will.