Rocky foundations

Last December, Sir Paul Coleridge, then still a judge in the Family Division, declared in newspaper interviews with The Times and The Daily Telegraph that couples should not have children unless their relationship was serious enough for marriage. He went on to say that parents had responsibilities rather than rights, and couples who lived together without marriage should think twice before having children.

He has now gone further. The founder of the Marriage Foundation and now no longer part of the judiciary, Sir Paul is off the leash and free to say what he likes and he has done just that again in an interview with The Sunday Times.

He criticises the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, who had censured him for behaving in a way that was ‘incompatible with his judicial responsibilities’ for providing these media interviews and sharing his opinions as the founder of the Marriage Foundation, while he was still a judge.

Sir Paul told The Sunday
Times, “He thinks I’m the one who brought the judiciary into disrepute. I’m not sure about that... I think allowing this to get out of hand has done us [the judiciary] no good at all. It makes us look stupid. It
makes us look risk-averse to
the point of being ridiculous when half a dozen members of the public can provoke this kind of storm.”

This is strong stuff for one former judge to say of another.

He had originally told The Daily Telegraph, “If your relationship is stable enough to cope with the rigours of child rearing then you should consider seriously adding the protection of marriage to your relationship.”

Surely these concerns apply equally to married couples, too? Marriage doesn’t confer a magic seal of stability upon a relationship. In my experience the feuding parents criticised by Sir Paul, who put their own rights above those of their children, are just as likely to proliferate within the wedded ranks.

That said, I am a strong supporter of marriage, and of having children within marriage – as a family lawyer, it is difficult not to be. I witness, at first hand, the consequences of family breakdown when the parents aren’t married.

My firm’s offices are consulted by an increasing number of cohabitees who are shocked to learn that the law can do relatively little for them following the breakdown of their relationships. Many are left in financially precarious positions.

Sir Paul’s achievements as a judge are respectable and he was an admirable Silk but you cannot criticise the unmarried
in a newspaper article one day and then sit in judgment on them the next.

I believe in marriage, but I am also a realist about the direction in which modern society is moving and I have repeatedly called, for example, for the introduction of cohabitation rights in England and Wales.

Sir Paul clearly has his own views and now that he is free
to devote all his energies to the Marriage Foundation, I am sure we will be hearing much
about them. SJ

Marilyn Stowe is senior partner at Stowe Family Law