Blog
Of a piece…
We wrote last week about a misleading piece in Byline Times about Afsana Lachaux and the family court litigation she had been involved in. We set out a number of serious errors and omissions from that article that overall gave a significantly distorted impression to...
Remote hearings: Surveying where we are at
As lawyers and judges become increasingly accustomed to remote hearings, is there a danger of professional complacency about parents' access to justice? In April, we published the interim results of our survey about remote hearings in the Family Court which we had...
The things left unsaid…
Stephen Colegrave looks at the case of Afsana Lachaux who is facing the threat of bankruptcy because a British judge upheld Dubai law So goes the headline of a recent article by Byline Times, an independent newspaper which prides itself on being straight and rigorous,...
A #BackTo60 Setback
This post, by one of our regular writers Barbara Rich, originally appeared on Medium and is reproduced with kind permission. Introduction On Tuesday 15 September 2020, the Court of Appeal gave judgment in R (Delve and Glynn) v. The Secretary of State for...
Family Court Reporting Watch Roundup
Welcome to this month's Roundup, where we correct, clarify and comment on media reports of family court cases, explain and comment on published family court judgments and highlight other transparency news MEDIA COVERAGE OF FAMILY COURT MATTERS BBC Radio 4 PM and BBC...
What IS A contract of expectations or a written agreement? Should you sign one?
When social services are involved with children their parents or extended family are often asked to sign up to a document which is often called a “written agreement“, a “contract of expectations”, a “working agreement” or a “partnership agreement”. Parents are not...
Legal Blogging the Lay Justices
On Friday I took the opportunity to try my hand at a spot more legal blogging. It was the last ‘working’ day before the end of my staycation, and I was somewhat ambivalent about using it up on this busman’s holiday – but in the end decided I was getting rusty, and I’d...
Has the revolution happened? Can we ever go back?
The Lord Chief Justice called it “the biggest pilot project that the justice system has ever seen” and said “there will be no going back to February 2020”. Remote court hearings would have come sooner or later, but thanks to Covid-19 they came at us fast, in March...
Messing about on the river (or CoP-Celia, you’re breaking my heart…)
As the summer has worn on, clouds have been gathering. In exchanges with other Transparency Project team members, I’ve been threatening to write a rather sullen blog post about transparency for a few weeks, and have finally been gathering my thoughts on the bow of our...
THE FAMILY COURTS MUST SHOW THEIR WORKINGS
Melanie Newman is a freelance journalist. Previously a reporter at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, she has also worked for BBC Newsnight and the Victoria Derbyshire Programme. She writes for the British Medical Journal and is a regular contributor to the Law...