Since 22 April 2014 the Child Arrangements Programme set out in Practice Direction 12B to the Family Procedure Rules 2010 has set out the manner in which private law disputes over children must be handled by the courts.  The importance of out of court resolution of such disputes, particularly by way of mediation, is now a core part of the whole process.  In this post I consider whether there is enough clarity over when negotiations between the parties to a dispute over children are protected by without prejudice privilege.

At the very outset of almost all private law proceedings about children the applicant must now attend a meeting with a suitably qualified mediator (a Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting or 'MIAM') to be provided with information about the use of mediation to resolve the dispute without a court process.  At each stage of the proceedings the judge must also consider whether the proceedings should be adjourned to allow non-court dispute resolution to take place (but only if the parties agree to do so).  It is not yet possible for the courts to simply refuse to hear proceedings in order to require out of court resolution (but that may happen in the future - see my earlier post on this issue).  

The encouragement of a negotiated resolution of the case is also built into the court process itself.  The first hearing in nearly every case will be the First Hearing Dispute Resolution Appointment ('FHDRA') at which the parties will be asked to discuss the dispute with an officer from CAFCASS who will seek to 'conciliate' between them.  There may also be a mediator available at court who may formally 'mediate' between the parties.  The judge may also try to assist the parties find some level of agreement during the four hearing itself.  If no agreement is reached at the FHDRA there will be a Dispute Resolution Appointment ('DRA') later in the case.  At this hearing the judge will review the evidence and determine the extent to which any issues can be resolved or narrowed at that hearing.  Only after that hearing will any matters which are not agreed be listed for a final hearing where the court will finally determine them.

Given that it has been reported that around half of all private law proceedings concerning children now involve parties who are not legally represented since he virtual abolition of legal aid for private law children proceedings in 2013, many of the case proceeding through the above process will have one or both parties acting in person.  One particular matter all litigants will have to have in mind is understanding when what they say may be 'privileged' or effectively 'off the record' for the purposes of negotiations and when such discussions are a matter which can be referred to in court when the judge is being asked to make a decision.  A proper understanding of this may well assist frank and constructive negotiations which lead to more compromise and agreements.

It is a general principal of English law that any statements or admissions made in the course of negotiations in an effort to compromise a dispute are protected by without prejudice privilege.  The privilege means that neither party may use the without prejudice material or statements in the course of the proceedings.  The result of this is that a party can speak frankly in negotiations without fear of being confronted by the adverse admissions before the judge later in the proceedings.  It is extremely useful.  A party can 'test the water' by making admissions and offering to settle on terms which are not as good as those he or she will seek if the matter goes to court in the hope that this will lead to fruitful discussions and compromise.  If there is no compromise nothing has been lost.  The privilege is not absolute, but the grounds upon which it is disapplied are quite narrow.  

Most of the case law relating to without privilege is in the context of commercial disputes.  In my experience, quite a few family lawyers seem to believe that the privilege does not apply in proceedings concerning children.  It is not really clear to me how they reach that view.  The confidentiality of any process of family mediation is covered by an existing precedent: Re D (Minors)(Conciliation: Privilege) Disclosure of Information) [1993] 1 FLR 932, which states that “parents would not achieve a compromise unless they approached conciliation openly and were prepared to give and take. They would not make admissions or conciliatory gestures unless they were confident that these could not be used against them. Any attempt at conciliation must be off the record but there were exceptions . . . “ and further “the only exception would be in rare cases where a statement made during conciliation indicates that the maker has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to a child”.  This case continues to be cited as part of guidance issued to the judges by the Family Mediation Council and the Family Justice Council.  It seems likely, although it has not yet been tested by a reported case decision, that the same principles also apply to settlement negotiations taking place between the parties, whether with a lawyer or mediator involved or not.

So which parts of the process of set out by the Child Arrangements Programme are potentially privileged and which are not?  Somewhat, unhelpfully, the Child Arrangements Programme does not really make this clear at all.  Only at paragraph 14.9 is there a reference to privilege: 'The FHDRA is not privileged. That is to say that what is said at the FHDRA may be referred to at later hearings.'  OK, that is clear enough, or is it? What does the FHDRA actually include? Clearly what is said inside the courtroom to the judge during the hearing is not privileged; but surely what is said to a mediator at court is privileged in the usual way.  What about what is said to the CAFCASS officer during the conciliation meeting?  This will feel like a mediation meeting to the parties but is what they say 'open' or 'without prejudice'.  According to Re D, these discussions should be privileged, but past experience suggests that many CAFCASS officers do not regard them as being without prejudice.  Clarity would be very useful.  

The same difficulties may arise at the DRA.  In financial proceedings there is a hearing called the Financial Dispute Resolution Hearing ('FDRH' - just to add more to the acronym heap so loved by modern family lawyers).  The rules say that this is a hearing at which comments are treated as being without prejudice and the judge who hears the FDRH may play no further role in resolving any of the contested issues in the proceedings (other than to preside over another FDRH, of course).  The DRA in proceedings over children does not have those provisions to protect anything which is said during the appointment with the judge.  In fact, the judge hearing the DRA will often be the judge who will conduct any final hearing. Yet again, the parties may feel as though they are in a mediation type situation but they are not.  Any admission or concession they make at the DRA will be treated as being 'open' and to be used by the court at any subsequent hearing.  Either the parties will realise that this is the case and be much more cautious in making any concessions at all (so that compromise of the dispute or any issue is made more difficult) or they will not realise that what they are saying can be used against them and then feel cheated or hard done by when their concessions made in good faith and in a spirit of compromise are used against them.  If they do not realise that they can have without prejudice negotiations outside the DRA without prejudicing their position in court then a compromise is even less likely.

This is an area of law which requires greater clarity in the way it is stated and presented to those using the family justice system, particularly now that far more litigants in these case are acting in person.  One side may be legally represented and aware of the rules over without prejudice privilege while the other is not.  It is a matter of some surprise that despite the growth in mediation and alternative dispute resolution it is now over two decades since the decision in Re D and yet there has been no further clarification of the law.  The introduction of the Child Arrangements Programme is an opportunity to grasp the nettle.

36Mediation has 9 highly experienced family barristers who are trained as family mediators.  Choose from experts in various aspects of child law and family finance issues to find a more civilised and better way to resolve your dispute.  

Reading a recent blog post from Pannone about the perils of delaying divorce while a couple live apart ('Let's separate but remain married' by Patricia Robinson)  reminded me of an article I wrote over a year ago discussing the reasons for this phenomenon of people postponing their divorce for a long time.  When I wrote my last article in 2013 the latest economic figures suggested that after the temporary lift created by the Olympic Games the economy had moved into reverse again, plunging the United Kingdom into a ‘triple dip recession’. At that time many family lawyers were seeing a reluctance from separating parties to push towards resolving all their financial issues.  Certainly more couples seemed to be muddling through their marital difficulties and putting together their own interim arrangements rather than going to lawyers to formalise a final divorce and financial settlement.  Often the interim arrangements the parties had put in place continued for years.  

Economic problems have a particular effect on couples whose relationship has hit the buffers.  Now that we seem to be heading out of the economic slump, especially as liquidity begins to return to the housing market around the country, we are seeing parties beginning to revisit those interim arrangements. It is remarkable how a more positive economic sentiment combined with rising asset values makes people less risk-averse and more willing to begin to spend time and money unravelling their affairs.

An economic slump is difficult for everyone but those who are experiencing the breakdown of a married or unmarried relationship may feel that a difficult process is made even more difficult. There are many anecdotal stories of people gritting their teeth and continuing to live in the same house until they feel they can afford to separate. The emotional cost to both of them and to their children is often huge. Of course, sometimes the common adversity the couple experience may motivate them to heal the difficulties between them and bring them closer together. However, experience suggests that financial pressures laid on top of the emotional pressures of a relationship breakdown tend to make things worse rather than better in most cases.

Some of the issues which cause people to decide that they should avoid any formal steps to extricate themselves from the relationship are:

(1) Difficulty in selling the family home. Although residential property values remained surprisingly resilient in spite of the wider economic downturn. However, there is little doubt that there have been very great regional differences. London prices continued to rise, along with a few other pockets of prosperity around the country. Other places have either seen falls in prices or a simple lack of activity in the market, making a sale difficult to achieve. Many couples who have decided that their relationship is over seem to have interpreted this as a reason as to why they cannot move on.  Some have continued to share the family home, living as two households under one roof.  Others who can afford to have separated and dealt with the interim arrangements as best they can.  Now that the property market is becoming more active again one or both parties are feeling that changes need to be made.  It is a fact that is many of those couples had consulted a family lawyer or mediator sooner some other and more comfortable solution could have been found before now.

(2) Difficulty in raising finance to buy a new home. Although bank interest rates remain low and some mortgage lenders have been offering very attractive rates the lending criteria are often very strict and not everyone has been able to get the best deals or borrow at all. The problems have been particularly acute when the mortgage is a high percentage of the property value or where one or both of the parties are out of employment. Many parties  However, once again, if rather than making assumptions which may be too pessimistic, some of those couples had explored their options more fully they might have found a solution before now. An experienced independent mortgage advisor may be able to identify options which are not obvious to the non-expert. A family lawyer can often give advice as to creative solutions to what seems to be an insoluble problem.

(3) No income. Often one of the couple works and earns and the other does not. This financial disparity can leave one party feeling in control and the other helpless and vulnerable. It does not have to be like that. Through negotiation and, if necessary by way of an application to a court, it may be possible to make arrangements which level the playing field for the parties. There may also be options from benefits and tax credits which the parties may not have realized that they have.

(4) ‘We want to wait until the value of our assets increase again.’ That is a perfectly reasonable stance to take and many people have adopted that position.  I have seen this most often in those cases where there is a family business which it is difficult to extract value from at the moment. A similar problem arises where there is a holiday home in another European country whose property market has collapsed. However, many people forget that there are ways of sorting out the interim position to make it more tolerable while they wait for the right time to sort out the long-term position. The longer the worldwide crisis that started with the credit crunch more than 5 years ago goes on the more apparent it is becoming that this is not a short-term problem. Even now as the UK economy shows improvements the rest of the Euro Zone is in a different phase of the economic cycle.  The growth of the 'BRIC' economies has faltered.  Economic uncertainty and volatility used to be the exception but now it seems to have become the norm and in a globalised economy even an island is no longer an island. Day to day events are difficult to understand or predict. For example on the same day that the last set of very pessimistic UK GDP figures were announced share prices in London and around the world were going up:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9827967/Investors-defy-prospect-of-triple-dip-as-FTSE-hits-four-and-a-half-year-high.html

Separation is always tough. Although for some an immediate divorce is the way forward it is not right for all.  In fact, delaying a resolution of financial matters can make the whole process much more difficult and expensive once one of the parties decides that the time for a resolution has arrived.  Even if a final divorce is not what the parties want, there are many options which can be considered to make life more settled and dignified in the interim period. The options are much greater than many think they are. The sensible thing is to seek advice from an experienced family lawyer so that all the options and their pros and cons can be considered before making a fully informed decision as to the best way forward.

Is ‘private judging’ by way of arbitration to become the preferred route for resolving financial disputes on divorce and separation?  The Financial Times suggested as much on 28 October 2013 when reporting that the Young v Young divorce dispute starting in the London High Court on that day could be the last big money divorce in the courts as wealthy separating parties turned towards arbitration rather than the courts.  In one of the first family law decisions of 2014 the President of the Family Division, Sir James Munby, gave family arbitration a ringing endorsement by declaring that the courts would give an arbitrator’s award the same status as a settlement agreement reached between the parties[2]. As this article explains, family arbitration is not just for the super wealthy and it has particular advantages for those who are living outside England or who have demands on their time which make conventional litigation through the courts very inconvenient.

In many areas of business and commerce the default method for resolving disputes is arbitration.  Why?  It allows the parties to control the process of dispute resolution in a way which the ‘one size fits all’ court system does not usually allow.  There are many reasons why businesses choose arbitration in preference to the courts.  They include:

·      Dealing with disputes disrupts the ongoing business so a quick resolution is desirable. The courts can be slow and inconvenient but an arbitration can be arranged and conducted at the time, the place and the speed the parties demand.

·      The judge allocated to the case by the court may not have the expertise required to resolve often very technical and nuanced complexities.  An arbitrator can be appointed by the parties who is an expert in the subject matter of the dispute.

·      The courts are very public and the parties are unlikely to want to air their dispute where the media and public can report it.  Arbitration is entirely private and confidential.

Family disputes, whether arising from divorce or the breakdown of an unmarried relationship, are no less complex than those which arise in the commercial world.  Untangling complex financial affairs, often involving companies, trusts and a web of international property and investments, is a complex task requiring highly specialist skills and experience on the part of the lawyers.  This is compounded where cultural or religious factors specific to the parties also come into the equation. When a hearing comes before the court there is no guarantee that the judge allocated will have the necessary experience.  Furthermore, in many courts in England and Wales the delays in waiting for a court hearing in even a relatively simple case can run to a year or more.  In the meantime the parties legal costs rise and neither is able to move forward with their life.

In 2012 came a significant development.  In a joint venture between the world renowned Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, the Family Law Bar Association and Resolution, the Institute of Family Law Arbitrators was formed.  IFLA trains family lawyers to become arbitrators. Further information about the scope of the IFLA arbitration scheme, the applicable rules and a list of qualified arbitrators can be found at www.ifla.org.uk.

In simple terms, the IFLA scheme operates on the basis that once the parties agree to refer their dispute to arbitration they select their arbitrator (or ask IFLA to appoint one in the event they cannot agree).  The parties then sign an arbitration agreement which sets out the issue or issues for the arbitrator to decide.  The parties may wish their whole dispute to be arbitrator or they may only wish the arbitrator to determine a single issue.  Once the agreement with the arbitrator is signed the arbitration commences.  The arbitration follows the procedure the parties have agreed upon and this may be quite different from the normal court process.  Once the arbitration is heard the arbitrator makes his or her decision, called the Award, in writing.  The parties having agreed to be bound by the decision of the arbitrator then submit an order to the court in the terms of the Award (to the extent that a court order is required to finalise matters between them).

Once the parties choose their arbitrator there is considerable scope to customise the procedure for the arbitration to suit the parties and the particular subject matter of he dispute.  The hearings can be conducted in whatever way the parties and arbitrator agree.  Where distance is an issue hearings can be dealt with by way of telephone conference call, video-conferencing, Skype or FaceTime.  The parties can choose the date when the arbitration will be heard, according to the arbitrator’s availability, rather than having a hearing date imposed as the courts do.  The arbitration hearing can take place anywhere in the world which is convenient to the parties. Where the issues permit it, the arbitration can be conducted entirely on paper without any face to face hearing.  This flexibility and ability to tailor the procedure to the needs of the parties is unique to the arbitration process.  This flexibility is likely to be particularly attractive for parties who are living abroad but having their proceedings dealt with in England or Wales.  It saves on the need to travel to England for hearings (hearings which are often cancelled at short notice in any event).  The arbitrator can even travel to where the parties are and hear the arbitration there.

Mediation and arbitration are increasingly seen as the better option compared to going to the courts. These options lie in a broad spectrum. At 36Family we have 9 family mediators and 3 family arbitrators[3].  We also have a team of 11 CEDR accredited mediators able to conduct mediations with the parties' lawyers present, whether the dispute concerns a family matter or a civil dispute.  For those who are looking for a non-binding neutral evaluation of their dispute several of the team offer private FDRs and other neutral evaluation.

More information about family arbitration can be found on the excellent Family Arbitrator website.

[1] This article was first published in 36 Bedford Row’s special international newsletter circulated to clients in Dubai and the Middle East in November 2013.


[2] S v S [2014] EWHC 7 (Fam).  This case is the subject of a separate article in this newsletter by Rebecca Rothwell in the 36Family newsletter.


[3] The author amongst them, and he conducted one of the very first family arbitrations in England, during which the flexibility of the arbitration process was fully utilised by the parties to reach a rapid and cost effective conclusion to a complicated but relatively low value dispute.

Are you living with someone but not married or in a civil partnership?  If so, having some sort of agreement to deal with what might happen to your assets if you split up is even more important than if you are married (see my earlier blog).  Married couples or civil partners can apply to the court when they separate for orders which share their assets or for maintenance payments, to be decided according to their needs and what would be fair.  Unmarried couples generally do not have those rights, save for some limited rights where children are concerned (unless you live in Scotland where there are greater remedies for unmarried couples).  If they have entered into a living together agreement, sometimes called a 'no-nup',  they can set out what will happen if and when they split up.  When drafted properly this can save a lot of angst and expense upon separation.  Such agreements are, without doubt, a prudent and sensible idea.  Not enough people think about them or use them.

Online services to help people draw up such agreements are springing up.  The enticement of these services is an agreement done on a DIY basis at low cost.  But before launching into such a DIY agreement, beware.  As with all things, you get what you pay for.  Any kind of legal contract may have implications which the parties may not appreciate.  Once agreed by the parties the terms of their agreement may be binding on them even after they separate; perhaps in ways they had not entirely intended or understood at the time they entered into it.  Unlike married couples, there is no general law permitting a court to vary most of the terms of a contract or trust which unmarried parties have created between each other.  

Tempting although a cheap online agreement may be, do not underestimate how complex the issues may be.  Investing in a family lawyer to provide some advice based on long experience and wisdom and to draft the agreement may seem comparatively expensive compared to the DIY option.  However, experience shows that those costs pale into insignificance when compared with the consequences of trying to unravel a poorly thought out and or ill-drafted agreement years later.

According to the Office for National Statistic in 2012, there were 5.9 million people cohabiting in the UK, double the 1996 figure. Over the same period, the percentage of people aged 16 or over who were cohabiting steadily increased, from 6.5 per cent in 1996 to 11.7 per cent in 2012. This makes cohabitation the fastest growing family type in the UK. 

Has the law kept pace with this social change? All family lawyers know that it has not. Various statutes have given some rights to parties who have lived together for at least two years upon the death of one of them (e.g. the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1973 and the Fatal Accidents Act 1976) but where the relationship breaks down instead of being ended by death the parties are thrown back onto the strict law of property. The law of property has moved only slowly to recognise the special circumstances which exist in cohabiting relationships, despite the social changes to family life being recognised by Lord Denning as long ago as the 1960s. Real injustice can result unless judges are persuaded to strain the law or the facts of cases to the limit to achieve 'fair' outcomes.

In July 2007 the Law Commission proposed legislation to empower the courts to grant discretionary financial relief to cohabitants after relationship breakdown. The law in Scotland had already taken a leap forward by that time. In 2006 the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006 provided cohabiting parties in Scotland with the power to seek financial provision upon their relationship breaking down. The Supreme Court scrutinised the Scottish law in Gow v Grant [2012] UKSC 29 and gave it a broad, purposive interpretation. Baroness Hale called on English law to introduce similar remedies.

So far the Westminster Government has taken no steps to change the law. Personally, I think this is a shameful dereliction of duty. The law does not currently serve the needs of the vulnerable parties to a family very well where the parties are unmarried.  Recently Lord Marks of Henley placed his Cohabitation Rights Bill before Parliament as a Private Members Bill. The text can be found here.  The Bill does not follow the Scottish model exactly. It is, however, an interesting and potentially useful scheme to obviate the injustice which can occur after long cohabiting relationships end, especially those cases where children have grown up and remedies under Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989 do not provide a means of meeting income and housing needs for at least a limited time.

The prospects of this Bill becoming law are very, very low given that it is a private members bill, without Government sponsorship and we are nearing the end of another Parliamentary session.

The contrast between the law for unmarried couples in Scotland and that applying to those over the border in England is now very striking.  I am sure many non-lawyers. and even many lawyers, will be surprised that the law on such an important social issue is so different in two parts of the UK. In Scotland an unmarried cohabiting couple can, when they separate, go to court and ask that their property is divided in a way which is fair based in what happened during their relationship.  In England and Wales there is no such right. In England and Wales when a couple separate each is only entitled to keep what each of them owns according to strict property law. Although the cases of Stack v Dowden and Kernott v Jones have potentially made the law a little more flexible in England and Wales the state of the law still makes cases complicated, expensive and often results in real unfairness to one or other of the parties. It is not the only big difference between family law in England and Scotland: financial settlements after divorce are also very different, but that can be the subject of discussion some other time.  

The Law Commission has already recommended a system similar to the Scottish system for England and Wales. The Supreme Court has called for similar legislation. So far the Government has refused to commit to any such new laws. Why? Presumably they fear being portrayed as being ‘anti-marriage’.  It is often said that 'there are no votes in divorce.'  The 2011 census shows that fewer people are getting married. More are choosing to cohabit. The need for legislation is stronger than ever. At the moment it is not even on the horizon.

You meet someone, you fall in love, you begin to live together, you have children….and so life takes its own course. Most people do not give much thought to what will happen if the relationship breaks down.  At least, they tend not to until cracks begin to appear in the relationship.  Statistics, and our own experience with friends and family, tell us that relationships fail with disturbing regularity these days.  In the middle of the pain and acrimony of a separation, the partners need to confront the financial implications of their separation.

Where the couple was married or in a civil partnership (in the case of a same sex relationship) the law provides extensive powers to sort out the financial affairs in a fair way.  In those cases it does not matter very much which partner owns the property or earns the money.  A court is able to redistribute the assets and income in a way which is fair according to the facts of each relationship.

But what if the couple was not married or in a civil partnership?  In England and Wales there has been no way of informally acquiring the status of man and wife since the mid-18th Century at the latest.  Despite that fact it is astonishing how many people think that once they have been living together ‘as man and wife’ for a couple of years or so, they acquire rights to the other’s property and income by way of a concept they tend to refer to as ‘common law marriage’.  As a specialist barrister working in family law for approaching two decades I have often been amazed to hear this belief expressed by people who I would have assumed are educated and intelligent enough to know better.  There is no such thing as common law marriage in English law.  The simple fact is that when it comes to property ownership and rights to financial support the law in England and Wales basically treats two unmarried people who have lived together as a family in  much the same way as it would two strangers who had a business relationship with each other.

This can lead to very expensive court disputes and, in many of them, very hard outcomes.  Someone who moves into another’s house and lives there for many years, being a dutiful and loving partner, helping with the housework, helping with the family finances etc can find when the relationship ends that they have no easy claim for financial support from their partner.  This is hard for people to take and it is, in some ways, an odd situation the law has allowed to continue.  For example, where a woman has lived with a man for two years and the man is killed in an accident which is someone else’s fault, the woman is able to claim damages against the person who caused the accident for the financial loss caused to her by the death of the partner she was financial dependant on.  That has been the case under the Fatal Accidents Act for several decades now.  In a similar way, if someone you have lived with for at least two years dies and leaves no reasonable financial provision for you in their will, the court can be asked to consider effectively rewriting their will after their death to benefit you.  That has been the law since the 1970s.  So someone who loses their partner by death is potentially much better off than someone who has their partner of many years throw them out of their home.  Where there are children concerned, there are legal powers under which the court may be able to help.  But if there are no children, obtaining financial support can be very difficult.  Although there is talk of changing the law, it is unlikely to happen for years to come.

So, unromantic though it seems, any couple embarking on a long-term relationship but not planning to marry would be well advised to sit down at an early stage and consider drawing up a living together agreement (also known as a cohabitation agreement).  Such an agreement can set out how your financial affairs will be run during the marriage and, critically, what you intend to happen if you separate at some point in the future.  It is similar to a pre-nuptial agreement prior to a marriage, but potentially even more important because without marriage there is no divorce procedure which includes a careful consideration of financial issues within it.  It is also important to review such an agreement at regular intervals because as time goes on circumstances change.  Many modern couples see such an agreement as a useful part of life: like annual health checks or MOTs for cars.  It is an opportunity to check that everything is still alright.

But before you sit down over the kitchen table to thrash out a living together agreement, do not underestimate how technical things can get.  In most cases the drafting of an agreement is best left to an experienced lawyer.  It is also important that both sides take independent legal advice before signing an agreement.  This may not cost as much as you think.  A specialist family lawyer, solicitor or direct access barrister, is likely to provide the drafting of the agreement and advice on it quickly and at a price which is very competitive bearing in mind the level of expertise you will be receiving.  Compared to the costs of court proceedings sorting out the financial arrangements at the end of a long cohabiting relationship where there was no living together agreement, the costs of making such an agreement are small beer indeed!

If you are married and separate you go to see a family lawyer to discuss divorce and the financial arrangements.   If matters cannot be agreed you do to the family court and a judge decides.  But what if you are not married?  There is no legal concept of common law marriage in English law (more on that in a forthcoming piece here).  The law deals with property disputes between unmarried couples on strict property law principles.  Those disputes are not dealt with under the family court rules but under the civil court rules.  However, if the unmarried couple have children there may also be claims in respect to the financial needs of the children, in which case there would be proceedings in the family court under Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989.  

So if you are not married, who do you consult for advice?  A family lawyer who is able to deal with all the issues in a sensitive, family law type way, or a civil lawyer who is able to navigate through the complexities of civil litigation?  In truth, relatively few family lawyers are skilled and experienced enough to undertake full-blooded litigation in the civil courts (especially since 2013 when the penalties for failing to comply with the court rules have become very severe indeed).  On the other hand, most civil lawyers are not equipped to deal with the issues over provision for the children and, furthermore, they are unlikely to approach the litigation in the same way as a family lawyer who abides by the Resolution code.  There are a few lawyers able to do both, but they are relatively limited in number.

Tonight my colleague Rhys Taylor and I (together with Simon Gore Events) begin our campaign to try to rectify this situation.  We will be presenting the first of a series of lectures to help family lawyers navigate their way through the complex mass of civil procure rules so that unmarried couples can benefit from the same degree of sensitivity and awareness offered by family lawyers as those parties who are married.