Tag: family law

Pensions on divorce – research-based guidance to encourage fairer outcomes for divorcing couples

Posted on by foluke.adebisi

Beth Kirkland of Law for Life and Hilary Woodward, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, on behalf of the Pension Advisory Group

Back in 2014 the Nuffield Foundation funded the first empirical study of the use of pension sharing orders within divorce proceedings in England and Wales. The findings of that study were illuminating. The researchers found a widespread lack of confidence amongst practitioners on the issue of pensions on divorce. Close examination of a random selection of court files showed poor quality pension disclosure, unclear or inadequate valuations of the pensions that were disclosed, and a substantial proportion of potentially irrational or unfair outcomes. (more…)

The Practice of Pensions on Divorce: How to Make it Better

Posted on by foluke.adebisi

by Hilary Woodward, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University of Bristol School of Law

Research shows that pension wealth in the UK is very unevenly distributed. In about half of couples one partner holds 90% of the pension wealth, and median pension wealth for men aged 65 to 69 averages £212,000 compared with £35,000 for women. On divorce, one of the options available to couples is to share their pension(s) through a Pension Sharing Order (PSO). Despite the inequalities in pension accumulation, and the fact that the option of pension sharing has been available for more than 20 years, the most recent research shows that only 11% divorces include a PSO and their use remains limited. (more…)

Litigants In Person and Financial Remedies on Divorce

Posted on by foluke.adebisi

by the ‘Fair Shares’ Project Team: Emma Hitchings, Caroline Bryson, Gillian Douglas, Susan Purdon and Jenny Birchall

We know that a relatively small proportion (only around one-third) of divorcing couples goes to court to get any kind of order dealing with their financial arrangements, and of those, most will arrive with an agreed settlement that they want turned into a binding ‘consent order’ rather than have the judge decide for them. Even consent orders are subject to scrutiny by the court to ensure that their terms are fair and not contrary to public policy, but while this scrutiny should be more than a rubber stamp, the court is not ‘some kind of forensic ferret’, as Waite LJ put it in Pounds v Pounds ([1994] 1 FLR 775), burrowing into the minutiae of what the parties have agreed and querying every detail. Of course, where the couple haven’t reached a settlement and the judge has to decide the outcome of their case, he or she will have to look in depth at the parties’ circumstances and reach a decision based on the law set out in the relevant legislation and case law. (more…)

Capitalising spousal periodical payments on divorce: Is it time to include investment advice and ongoing costs?

Posted on by foluke.adebisi

Professor Emma Hitchings, University of Bristol Law School

from http://401kcalculator.org/

When making financial orders on divorce, the case of Duxbury v Duxbury ([1992] Fam 62n, CA) introduced a calculation which provided a means to achieve a lump sum as an alternative to ongoing periodical payments (maintenance) between ex-spouses. This calculation enables couples to achieve a clean break (i.e. no ongoing financial ties after divorce), so that a lump sum is invested to provide a continuing annual income. In my recent Child and Family Law Quarterly article, on which this blog is based (‘Reconsidering the Duxbury Default’ [2021] CFLQ 275), I explore the Duxbury calculation in greater depth, presenting findings from an analysis of reported cases over the past 10 years and exploring why the courts appear reluctant to move away from it. However, in this blog, I want to focus on a practical concern arising from the continued use of Duxbury – the failure to provide for any allowance for costs incurred in setting up and running the invested funds and why this is important for those individuals who are required to invest a Duxbury lump sum to provide for future income. 

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Maintaining a Former Spouse: Villiers v Villiers and family law in England, Wales & Scotland

Posted on by foluke.adebisi

By the ‘Fair Shares’ Project Team: Emma Hitchings, Caroline Bryson, Gillian Douglas, Susan Purdon and Donna Crowe-Urbaniak

 

Fair Shares – Sorting out money and property on divorce is a new study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, which will explore the arrangements couples reach relating to their finances and property when they divorce. Using a large-scale survey and in-depth interviews, it will examine what arrangements they make, how they arrive at them and how well they think they have met their expectations. The aim is to provide hard data for law reformers seeking to update the law, and insights for judges, practitioners and divorcing couples themselves on ‘what works’ best. (more…)

‘Abusers always work from home’

Posted on by foluke.adebisi

by Marilyn Howard, Honorary Research Associate with the University of Bristol Law School

Image credits: Wunderman Thompson for the National Centre for Domestic Abuse

This week the House of Commons considers amendments from the House of Lords to  the Domestic Abuse Bill 2019-2021. One amendment which was debated in the Lords, but not accepted, would have  required the new Domestic Abuse Commissioner to publish a report which investigates the impact of the Universal Credit single household payment on domestic abuse survivors, and to propose alternatives. (more…)

Fair Shares? Sorting out money and property on divorce – how do couples currently cope?

Posted on by foluke.adebisi

By the ‘Fair Shares’ Project Team: Emma Hitchings, Caroline Bryson, and Gillian Douglas

In more ‘normal times’, the start of each new year marks the arrival of media coverage of the ‘divorce season’. Newspapers publish feature articles reporting that the stresses of Christmas prompt many couples to decide that enough is enough, and to make a new year’s resolution to get out of their marriage. Family solicitors duly issue press releases to advertise their services to assist them, both with getting the divorce itself and with sorting out the financial, property and child arrangements that will need to be made to deal with life going forward. In reality, this New Year ‘spike’ in divorce applications may not be much more than an urban myth. The divorce statistics show that in the years from 2011 up to and including 2019, there have only been three years when the first quarter of the year – January to March – has recorded the highest number of petitions (applications for a divorce) filed across the year. Rather, there tends to be a consistent flow of petitions across the year.

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Who’s the Mummy (or Daddy… or Parent)? Trans parents: law, identity and birth registration in England and Wales

Posted on by foluke.adebisi

Liam Davis is a law PhD student at the University of Bristol. He tweets as @LiamJamesDavis.

With diverse formally formations increasing, it is arguable that the birth registration system is not fit for purpose because it is tethered to ‘traditional’ understandings of family life and cannot adequately account for ‘modern’ families. This post considers mismatches between law and identity within birth registration for trans parents.

This post is inspired by my article, “Deconstructing tradition: Trans reproduction and the need to reform birth registration in England and Wales”, published in the International Journal of Transgender Health. A limited amount of free copies are available direct from the publisher, here. Otherwise, you can request an Open Access copy through my university profile/emailing me, or by tweeting me.

Background

You would be forgiven for thinking that the term “male mother” is  an oxymoron, but this is the conclusion the Court of Appeal reached in R (McConnell) v The Registrar General for England and Wales [2020] EWCA Civ 559 regarding a trans man, Freddy McConnell, who gave birth and wanted to be registered as his child’s father (or parent) on the birth certificate. (more…)

‘Meal-tickets and gravy-trains’: countering the false narrative in the wake of Mills v Mills

Posted on by asanchezgraells

By Dr Emma Hitchings, Senior Lecturer in Law (University of Bristol Law School).

Mills v Mills [2018] UKSC 38 is an example of a rare ‘everyday’ financial remedies case on divorce that has been decided at the highest appellate level – the Supreme Court. It was handed down in the middle of July. Costs, time, energy and a host of other factors involved in taking a case to an adjudicated final hearing, mean that over 90% of financial remedies cases settle before reaching this stage (Family Court Statistics Quarterly, January – March 2018) and it is only a tiny minority that end up being appealed, let alone appealed to the highest level. That one of those rare appellate cases is an ‘everyday’ case where the assets and finances involved are pretty ordinary, is particularly note-worthy. The usual wealthy entrepreneurs or celebrities are absent, and instead, the Mills case involves a couple, who on divorce in 2002, agreed a capital settlement of £230,000 to the wife, £23,000 to the husband, and ongoing monthly spousal periodical payments of £1,100 a month from the husband to the wife. This is not a case about millionaires or billionaires, but an ‘everyday’ couple, where the financial needs of the parties dominate.

Guidance provided from the higher courts has, to date, focused on the larger-money case and the associated issues relevant to those wealthy individuals who can afford to litigate on issues such as the nature of their ‘special contribution’ and whether this should result in an unequal division of the family assets due to one spouse’s exceptional skill or acumen in the business or entrepreneurial world. It was therefore to be hoped that the Supreme Court would seize this rare opportunity and provide some much-needed broader guidance for family lawyers on ‘needs-based’ cases – the usual ‘run-of-the mill’ case, which although does not usually make headlines, takes up the vast majority of Family Court financial remedy business up and down the country. (more…)

Cowboys of the wild west? — Some context on the influence of fee-charging McKenzie Friends in family law

Posted on by legalresearch

By Dr Leanne Smith, Senior Lecturer in Law (School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University) and Dr Emma Hitchings, Senior Lecturer in Law (University of Bristol Law School).*

© Christopher Dombres

In mid June 2017, the report of our Bar Council commissioned research on fee-charging McKenzie Friends in private family law cases was published (the full report can be accessed here and an executive summary here).

One of the report’s key messages is that we found little evidence of McKenzie Friends seeking to exercise rights of audience on a regular basis and plenty of evidence that the bulk of the work done by McKenzie Friends is done outside of court. The work McKenzie Friends do in court, we said, is ‘the tip of the iceberg’. This was the finding that the Pink Tape blog outlining Lucy Reed’s perspective on the research focused on, indicating that it was not at all surprising. We hope we can be forgiven here for indulging in a few words in defence of the utility of the research.

We readily accept that many in the legal professions have been aware for some time that paid McKenzie Friends operate predominantly outside court, but research has an important role to play in interrogating anecdotal evidence and providing more systematically derived evidence in order to validate or debunk it.  This is no less true because perceived experience is validated by a set of results. In this instance, our hope is that the findings of the research will function as a turning point for discussion on the subject of fee-charging McKenzie Friends in a way that the observations of some professionals who encounter them has not. In addition there are, of course, some more granular observations that we consider important buried in our report, though we will resist spoilers for those who haven’t yet finished reading it…

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