Family lawyers need to start adjusting to forthcoming changes

"We live in challenging times," said Sir James Munby in his first View From The President's Chambers in 2013. "The family justice system is undergoing the most radical reforms in a lifetime. The process of reform is little short of revolutionary."

Since then, family lawyers have had regular updates direct from the President of the Family Division highlighting the progress being made on the programme of reforms.

April 2014 will see significant and wide ranging changes in the family law world at a number of levels: statutory developments, procedural changes and major structural reorganisation.

The introduction of the Single Family Court will see the merger of the Family Proceedings Court with the family section of the County Court and most of the Family Division High Court functions to produce a single court. Each area will have a Designated Family Centre and a Designated Family Judge and there will be a process of gate keeping and allocation to determine where and by whom a case will be heard.

The Children and Families Bill, due to receive royal assent imminently, will introduce substantive changes to a number of areas of children work. The adoption process sees a major overhaul, as does the whole of public law children work with the Public Law Outline taking on a final, rather than pilot, status. Private law children work will see reform with the introduction of the child arrangement orders and the strengthening of the requirements for parents to consider mediation as a first step. The Private Law Working Group will shortly be making proposals for the new Child Arrangements Programme which will result in further procedure rules relating to private child law work.

Practitioners will need to get to grips with these new procedure rules as well as practice directions that will cover such a range of matters as where to issue, allocation of cases, the remaining specialist jurisdiction of the High Court, preparation of bundles and expected rules changes to accommodate arbitration.

The introduction of standard orders appears to have been postponed for further consultation, but new guidance on transparency and reporting of family cases has already been introduced.

These reforms to the family justice system have been on the horizon for some time, some being introduced well ahead of the legislation; others have been long anticipated, but without certainty as to the scope or timing of the changes. The president has, however, now confirmed his intention to bring in all of these changes in April and family lawyers will now need to look at the detail of the changes and put them into practice.

Julia Thackray is former head of family at Penningtons and course director at CLT

www.clt.co.uk

.