Boots offering safe space for domestic abuse victims Boots pharmacies are being used as safe spaces to help victims of domestic abuse seeking support during the coronavirus lockdown. Victims are able to contact domestic abuse support services from the company’s consultation rooms across its 2,400 UK stores. Domestic abuse charity Hestia has been overseeing the […]

It has been reported that lawyers have been “inundated” with inquiries from separated parents arguing about where their children should stay during the Coronavirus lockdown, with some trying to get the other parent sent to prison for breaking existing child arrangements. The evidence is anecdotal, but the report says that some parents are using the […]

The Department for Work and Pensions has published the latest release of annual statistics on separated families in Great Britain, for the period April 2014 to March 2018. Amongst the main stories were that in 2017/18 there were approximately 2.4 million separated families in Great Britain including 3.5 million children; 48% of separated families had […]

COVID-19, or the Coronavirus, is impacting the lives of all of us. For anyone with family law issues, however, it brings particular problems. Here, therefore, is some basic advice that we hope will be helpful, together with some links to further information. Please note that this advice is subject to change, as the situation develops […]

Family hearings at the Court of Appeal are to be live-streamed, under a joint initiative by the judiciary and government to boost transparency in the justice system. A statutory instrument laid in Parliament on the 12th of March paved the way for the project, following the success of a pilot to live-stream civil cases launched […]

The Solicitor General has succeeded in an appeal against a lenient sentence given to a man convicted of controlling and coercive behaviour towards his former partner. In what is believed to be the first case of its kind, the Solicitor General took advantage of the expanded unduly lenient sentence scheme, which allows victims or members […]

Quarterly statistics on the progress of the Child Support Agency (‘CSA’) child support schemes, to September 2019, have been published by the Department for Work & Pensions. The CSA was set up in 1993, and in 2012 the Child Maintenance Service (‘CMS’) was created to replace the CSA. The closure of the CSA is progressing, […]

The latest figures for public law (including care) applications and private law demand, for December 2019, have been published by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (‘Cafcass’), the organisation that looks after the interests of children involved in family proceedings. In that month the service received a total of 955 new care […]

The Office for National Statistics has published its first compendium of child abuse statistics, drawing on a range of data sources to improve understanding of the extent and circumstances of abuse in childhood. The statistics deal with child abuse in England and Wales, for the year ending March 2019. Amongst the main points are that […]

The Government has re-introduced the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill, which will bring in a system of no-fault divorce, to Parliament. The Bill was first introduced in June 2019 after a public consultation and is being brought before Parliament again following the General Election. The new law will remove the ‘blame game’ by allowing one […]