News & Blog

President warns of crisis in family courts The President of the Family Division Sir Andrew McFarlane has warned that the crisis in the family courts due to their high caseload were not going away, and are getting worse. Speaking at a meeting of the Family Justice Council, whose primary role is to promote an inter-disciplinary […]

Barrister prohibited from acting in children case The High Court has dismissed an appeal by a father involved in proceedings concerning arrangements for his daughter, against an order prohibiting his barrister from accepting further instructions from him in those proceedings.  The court had made the order because of acrimony between the barrister and the mother, […]

Bill introduced to ban marriage for under-18s An MP has introduced a Private Members’ Bill calling for the minimum age of marriage to be changed to 18, with no exceptions.  Currently the legal minimum age of marriage is 16, but children aged under 18 must have parental consent. Pauline Latham, Conservative MP for Mid Derbyshire, […]

Child Maintenance Service statistics The Department for Work and Pensions (‘DWP’) has published the latest statistics for the Child Maintenance Service (‘CMS’), for the quarter to June 2020. The statistics show that there are now 741,200 children covered by CMS arrangements, 474,700 through Direct Pay arrangements (where the CMS calculates the amount of maintenance to […]

Lockdown surge in male domestic abuse victims Male domestic abuse charities have reported a rise of up to 60% in men seeking their help during the lockdown.  Respect, the helpline for male victims of domestic abuse, said it had received 13,812 calls and emails between April and July in lockdown, compared to 8,648 in the […]