President of Family Division speaks on the Financial Remedies Court
Sir Andrew McFarlane, the President of the Family Division, looked specifically at the topic of financial remedy courts in a recent address to the Family Law Bar Association.
Financial Dispute Resolution Judges encourage parties to engage in private Financial Dispute Resolution, which have a high rate of settlement.
Private FDRs are without-prejudice hearings designed to enable clients, with the assistance of the judge, to identify and seek to resolve the real issues in the case, at a time and in a manner intended to limit the overall financial cost for the parties. It can also reduce delays in resolving the case and to lessen the emotional and practical strain on the family of continuing litigation.
Sir Andrew McFarlane further noted that for financial remedy courts, the work is now always undertaken by specialist judges, it being ‘very rare’ that are cases are undertaken by non-specialist judges.
He went on to mention the efficiency of the full digitalisation of these court processes, using the My HMCTS platform, whereby applications are processed online, with no paper-based processing.
However, one concern Sir McFarlane did speak on was the ‘very high levels of costs in some cases’ being worrisome and exorbitant, remaining a continuing issue.
You can read more on this topic, including Sir McFarlane’s speech in full, at this link.