Back in February 2014 I published a blog in which I rather grandly set out the Armstrong Family Law reform manifesto. Now that the General Election is so close, it seems a good time to repeat it.
This is not the only such manifesto out there. Resolution recently announced its own manifesto, which I would wholeheartedly endorse.
No-fault divorce is, as far as I am aware, the policy of both the Conservatives and Labour, but none of them have said much about it since the abandonment of the Family Law Act 1996 in the late nineties. Labour are in favour of cohabitation law reform, whereas the Cconservatives are not. I have no idea what the other parties’ policies are, so if you want to know you’ll have to look elsewhere for that. The sad reality is that there are no votes in family law reform, so none of the parties talk about it.
The legal system does its best to resolve family disputes, but although the law works well for the most part, there are a number of areas where reform is needed.
Armstrong Family Law’s position is that the following changes to the English family law and legal system would vastly benefit the country as a whole by reducing the potential for further conflict and by promoting swifter and cheaper resolution of family disputes.
Far too much time and clients’ money is wasted on arguments about who divorces who and on what grounds. No fault divorce would allow divorcing couples to concentrate instead of sorting out their family finances and arrangements for children. No fault divorce is the norm in the USA, Australia and many other countries. It would not make divorce easier as it is not difficult to get divorced already, you just have to be nasty to each other to get it. It makes no difference to the financial outcome of the divorce or to disputes about children.
The laws that apply to disputes between unmarried couples about property issues are woefully deficient. The law needs to be reformed to introduce a better way to resolve these disputes and fairer laws. I am not suggesting that unmarried couples should have the same rights as married couples, but the current law leads to unfair outcomes far too often.
If you divorce and then remarry without first issuing an application for a financial order or stating in your divorce petition that you are seeking financial orders, you lose the right to make a claim for a fair share of the assets in your case (part from pension claims). This is a bizarre and unjustifiable throwback to a bygone age and there is no sensible reason for this rule to exist. It should go.
4. Legal aid
The reality is that some people need legal representation who cannot afford a lawyer. The government’s view that these disputes can be resolved through legally aided mediation or by some of internet solution is naïve; how can a father on a low income obtain contact with his children if the mother won’t come to the mediation appointment? How can he enforce a contact order if the mother fails to abide by it? How can a wife on a low income properly seek a fair share of the assets to meet her and her children’s needs if she cannot afford a lawyer and cannot raise funding elsewhere?
Legal aid should never be a blank cheque to have a huge fight at court, but all these unresolved disputes damage our society.
5. An entirely professional judiciary
The County Court and Family Proceedings Court have been merged together to form a single unified Family Court. This comprises professional District Judges and Circuit Judges together with lay magistrates. With the greatest of respect to the family magistrates, they are amateurs guided by a Legal Advisor (as court clerks are now known) and are a means of providing justice on the cheap. As one former District Judge once said to me “Imagine you arrived at hospital for an operation and you were told that the surgeon was not going to operate on you and instead three very nice, but medically unqualified people were going to do it instead? You’d turn around and go home.”
2nd May 2015