Family


Judge excoriates “shameless” family case with costs of £5.5m

20 March 2023

A family court judge has described a case where the two parties racked up costs of £5.5m as “one of the most shameless pieces of litigation” he has ever seen.


Solicitor ghosted client and SRA after receiving divorce settlement

14 February 2023

A solicitor who failed to pass on to a client the £132,000 due to her from her divorce settlement – money the profession has now had to stump up – has been struck off.


Consumers “don’t care whether legal businesses are regulated”

18 November 2022

Consumers of divorce and separation services “don’t care whether a business is regulated”, the co-founder of pioneering service amicable said this week.


Separating couples should “try almost anything” before going to court

2 November 2022

Separating couples should “try almost anything” before turning to the courts, the president of the Family Division has said, arguing that there has “got to be a better way” to resolve child disputes in particular.


Family lawyers and judges “need menopause training”

21 October 2022

Women who have experienced divorce or separation and the menopause believe family lawyers and judges should have training on the issue so they can “factor it into their cases”.


McFarlane urges shift away from mediation in mandatory pre-divorce meetings

5 October 2022

Mediation should no longer be the focus of divorce information meetings and they should be run by “generalist” lawyers and social workers as well as mediators.


Insurance and client capability are “main barriers” to unbundling

12 July 2022

The availability of professional indemnity insurance and the capability of clients are the main concerns for law firms looking at unbundled services, research has indicated.


Law firm’s “extremely disquieting” failure to comply with court order

11 July 2022

A High Court judge has described as “extremely disquieting” the failure of a North-West law firm to comply with a disclosure order – even though ultimately the order was unnecessary.


Resolution embraces ‘one lawyer, one couple’ approach to divorce

8 July 2022

Family lawyers group Resolution is to start promoting the ‘one lawyer, two clients’ model for divorce that both law firms and unregulated providers are starting to offer.


Family specialists choose employee ownership over acquisition

22 June 2022

The founders of a specialist family law firm have spurned potential acquirors to transfer it instead into an employee ownership trust, saying the move sends a positive signal to would-be staff.


Divorce litigation becoming unaffordable for all but the rich, warns judge

14 June 2022

Financial remedy litigation seems to be “fast heading for Ritz Hotel status – so expensive that it is only accessible by the very rich”, a senior family judge warned yesterday.


Online rule committee will be catalyst for digital justice, says Birss

9 June 2022

The work of the new Online Procedure Rules Committee will help connect the whiplash portal and other pre-action regimes to the court system electronically, the deputy head of civil justice has said.


Fixed-fee family law information service aims to “fill knowledge gap”

1 June 2022

A fixed-fee family law information service was launched this week to “fill a real gap in public knowledge” about the divorce process, and ensure people are properly informed before seeing a solicitor.


Research: Family law market grows as number of firms falls

30 May 2022

The family law market grew by 4.1% in 2021 and the rate of growth should increase in the coming years, but the number of law firms in the field is falling, a new report has found.


Treat family separations “as transactions, not litigation”

14 April 2022

Family separation cases should “operate in a transactional way, as with conveyancing, rather than under the banner of litigation”, the chair of the Family Solutions Group has argued.

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