Lawyers 'should be last resort for separating families'

The President of the Family Court Division, has stated that parents who are separating should turn to lawyers and the courts only as a last resort.

The response was prompted by the publication of the report by the Family Solutions Group, which was asked to look at improving the experiences and opportunities of separating families, specifically away from the family court system.

Importantly, the report also states that the family justice system is in crisis, as parents make ‘unmanageable’ numbers of applications and family courts remain ‘stretched beyond limits’. The delays have only been exacerbated by lockdown periods due to the pandemic.

Around 40% of all separating parents bring issues about their children’s care to the family court to determine. Sir Andrew McFarlane, the president of the family division, said he considered this a ‘startling and worrying’ figure.

We have long offered alternative family dispute resolution methods, believing this to be the way forward to support clients and their families best, offering good value for money and efficient results. These include family mediation, collaborative family law, family arbitration, shuttle mediation, Private FDRs and hybrid family mediation.

Sir Andrew McFarlane continued his response by saying: ‘The number of these private law applications continues to increase, and the trend is that more and more parents see lawyers and the court as the first port of call in dispute resolution, rather than as the facility of last resort as it should be in all cases where domestic abuse or child protection are not an issue.’

‘Where there are no issues of domestic abuse or child protection, parents ought to be able, or encouraged, to make arrangements for their own child, rather than come to a court of law and a judge to resolve the issues”.

Law Gazette report on ‘Lawyers last resort only for separating families.’