Family Justice Review Final Report

I don`t mean it as a personal issue, the problem for judges is the court process has rules and lots of them, there is also a procedure to follow, the are time scales strict rules for the format and content of bundles.

If both parties act in person very often one or both has not taken the time to learn what needs to be done, when, and how.

As an example a wiki members final hearing earlier this year with both acting in person, the judge ordered a joint bundle to be formed by the guy, he turned up with about a 1000 pages of what he thought was evidence in two plastic bags, the judge took one look at it and told him to go away and learn how it should be produced, hearing adjourned for three months.

It can be done and done correctly and the judge will be less strict when both act in person but the chances are most will end up being a mess, if you read blogs like family lore and family law week you will quickly see judges are dreading it happening and being unusually vocal about it.

It's a simple case of providing information in a set format which is easy to read.

Imagine going to an accountant with a bin bag full of statements, invoices, receipts etc. You are unlikely to know if everything is there as it is no particular order.

The accountant will have to spend time putting the information into order and ascertaining what is superfluous to requirements (accounts from a previous year and some non-business statements) and what is missing (P11D, pension information, calculation of interest earned and tax paid thereon). Once all information is in order, present and correct, the accountant can prepare a tax return.

The position is the same with a trial judge. They have many hearings and lots of paperwork to do and only a limited time in which to do it all. Receiving a possibly incomplete, unsorted bundle of documents will ensure that the final hearing will be difficult and possibly impossible.

If the court had more judges and those judges had more time all of this might not be a problem. As it is, judges' time comes at a premium and the more prepared the parties are, the more consideration the judge can give to the facts of the case and not the vaguaries of the documentation.

Charles

Some of you might be interested in reading the thoughts of a family law sols on the report, from today's Solicitors Journal

Norgrove review could have gone further

rubytuesday wrote:
Some of you might be interested in reading the thoughts of a family law sols on the report, from today's Solicitors Journal

Norgrove review could have gone further

Interesting. One of the things Norgrove highlighted - particularly in the Interim Report - was how little the family justice system knows about itself and how little research there is upon which to ­base­ decisions.

One vital area in which evidence is missing is research into the outcomes of court-ordered shared residence. Of course,the courts don't monitor any outcomes, so the lack of this knowledge isn't surprising. We know that shared parenting can work well when parents agree arrangements between themselves, and there is good evidence from abroad that court-ordered solutions can be effective, but no evidence from the UK.

The Norgrove Committee commissioned a review of UK research evidence into outcomes of Children's Proceedings - this includes public as well as private law. Some of the research summarised did look at longer term outcomes post-litigation. The review can be found here:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/research-and -analysis/moj-research/outcomes-family- justice-childrens-proceedings.pdf

Best wishes,
Carrie

Thanks for this, Carrie. It rather confirms what I said!

With Norgrove they obviously got the wrong man for the job.
­base­d on his previous experience he obviously wasn't qualified to write this report so we should hardly be surprised at the outcome.

What concerns me is the lack of comment from Cameron or Duncan Smith taking into account this is current news.If there is no comment now then the more days that pass the less likely that will be.

Father rights is not big news or a big vote winner.Right now his hands are tied with the failing economy,eurozone,student protests,
the health service,unemployment,immigration,etc etc.These are the big vote winners.

I don't expect any positive news any time soon.