Amongst the excitement of the Olympics two weeks ago, one can be forgiven for missing the announcement by Mr Justice Ryder of the plans for modernising the family justice system...
As a London divorce lawyer I have experienced firsthand how the current system often increases the costs and stress of those using the family courts.
Too often the courts lose files, take weeks to issue proceedings and generally cause chaos with the proceedings issued.
In the last year alone, I have been before District Judges who were downright embarrassed by the service the court was providing. Constantly having to chase the court for missing paperwork increases costs for clients and gives an appalling impression to those who start off by having faith in the family justice system.
Their stress levels are then increased as a result of the system in which they should be able to have complete faith...
On one occasion a clerk at the Family Division was not at all ashamed to tell me that they had lost the key to the locked room where several hundred files were kept and would we please provide copies of the client's file; an atrocious incident in a system which is overloaded and hires insufficient staff for the workload facing them.
The Family Justice Review was published in November 2011 and Mr Justice Ryder was appointed to provide a judicial response. Over the last nine months the judiciary have considered the Review and the Ryder and have now made their proposals for modernising the family justice system. It is now up to the Government and the court service to implement those proposals.
In simple terms, Mr Justice Ryder's proposals begin with the launch of a single Family Court arising from the Crime and Courts Bill currently before Parliament.
The intention is for this single court to replace and simplify the current system of County Court and Family Proceedings Court but the High Court will remain as it is. There will be a change of culture to "strong judicial leadership" rather than various judges dipping into a case at various hearings.
The changes will be made with two proposals: effective judicial case management to reduce delay and matching resources to need. Judicial case management will ensure delays are minimised, keeping costs down with fewer hearings and concluding the proceedings at the earliest.
Matching resources to need is extremely overdue; a simple example is telephone calls to the Court going unanswered for hours on end. Staff are often just not available to process paperwork. District Judges with knowledge of a case can be unavailable at the last moment and instead the case is heard by a judge with no former knowledge of the case.
Whilst how the changes are achieved may be fascinating to any Family Lawyer, all a client wants to know is "will my case be dealt with quickly and effectively?" It is hoped that the answer to that will be yes by the end of 2014.
The changes will be introduced in two phases, each of about a year. In Phase 1, the structural, leadership and management principles will be put into place so the new Court can be introduced at the end of 2013. Phase 2 will be in 2013-2014.
In the summer of 2014, the Children and Families Bill will be introduced. This is likely to limit care cases to 26 weeks and put into effect proposals for shared parenting, child arrangement orders and contact enforcement. The various options will be debated in the public domain and ultimately decided by Parliament.
The immediate challenge, however, before then is to ensure that those without legal advisors receive the assistance of the court.
With very few private children cases qualifying for public funding from April 2013 there are difficult times ahead and I wait curiously to see how this will be handled by the courts.
The Ryder proposals speak of a "robust framework to incorporate the new legislative framework and the recommendations of the judiciary" but with so many court users without legal advisors from next year, the system must be extremely robust and effective to process the applications of the public.
There is the promise of a "private law pathway" being published to describe what a court can and cannot do and how it does it to assist these court users acting without legal representation and the possibility of restrictions on the right of one party to cross-examine another.
The family court service has been in general decline over recent years and it is to be hoped that the Ryder proposals will see a change in culture. However, unless more resources are available to deal with the workload of the family court, I still see difficult times ahead.
In these times of budget cuts, I imagine that the availability of more salary costs will be zero and the Ryder proposals would then fall of stony ground.
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Top divorce lawyer, Deborah Jeff, is the Founding Partner and Head of Family at Seddons solicitors, dealing with high-profile divorces. She specialises in such fields as prenuptial agreements, with the majority of her work concerning complex financial disputes within divorce.