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The Year in Review

The Year in Review

As 2024 comes to an end the “Year in Review” brings all the FRJ blogs from the year together in one place for a ‘real time’ review of what was important, when, and why over the last 12 months. Click below to download the PDF: FRJ Year in Review 2024frj-year-in-review-2024144293f0-b0c0-406a-91d0-14cee39c041a.

A Divorced Christmas Carol: A Story of Reflection and Change

A Divorced Christmas Carol: A Story of Reflection and Change

A reworking of a well-known classic Carol’s marriage was dead. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Carol’s marriage was as dead as a door-nail. Carol lay awake in bed alone on a chilly December night, staring up at the dark ceiling, feeling the weight of

Arbitrating Costs Provision Applications

Arbitrating Costs Provision Applications

There have been few seismic changes in family law that reshaped everything. Much as we would love suddenly to have a new landscape for our professional work, most of us can only hope to find small solutions that work for some small corner of one field. However, bit by bit

Avoiding the Bear Traps of Arbitration – Some Tips from the Coalface

Avoiding the Bear Traps of Arbitration – Some Tips from the Coalface

Arbitration is the form of ADR on everyone’s lips – even more so now with the new NCDR provisions that have come into force. Slow to get going, after its launch in 2012, and after Haley v Haley ironed out people’s concerns about routes to appeal, arbitration is sometimes

Child Maintenance and Mortgage Payments – New Guidance: LM v SSWP & NM [2024] UKUT 259 (AAC)

Child Maintenance and Mortgage Payments – New Guidance: LM v SSWP & NM [2024] UKUT 259 (AAC)

What happens if the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) has determined that a non-resident parent (NRP) is required to pay child maintenance to the parent-with-care (PWC), but payments are also being made towards the mortgage secured on the property in which PWC still lives with the qualifying child/children (QC)? Does

Delaying a Divorce Because of Financial Prejudice: The New No-fault Law and Practice

Delaying a Divorce Because of Financial Prejudice: The New No-fault Law and Practice

Executive summary There can be real loss and prejudice in some divorce cases if the final divorce order, previously the decree absolute, is granted before the final financial settlement and its implementation in circumstances when the paying party then dies. Automatic entitlement to pensions, the primary circumstance, but also insurance

Dame Jennifer Roberts: An Appreciation

Dame Jennifer Roberts: An Appreciation

On 13 June 2024 a packed Lady Chief Justice’s Court was the scene of affectionate tributes to Mrs Justice Roberts, known to all as Jenny, who died on 10 June 2024. The sadness evident on that occasion and in writing an obituary for Jenny is mingled with the pleasure