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Some good ideas contained in pending family law Bills

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The other day the excellent website Family Law Week published a list of family law Bills before Parliament. I was aware, dimly or otherwise, of most of the Bills they list, but a couple of them had slipped under my radar. I was also surprised just how many such Bills there are currently trudging their way through the arcane processes of Parliament (twelve are listed), having not previously stopped to add them up. We shouldn’t get too excited, however, as  only one is a government bill and therefore likely to be passed (although another is supported by the government). The others are private members’ bills, most of which fall at one of the many hurdles they have to jump before they pass the Royal Assent finishing line.

At least two of the Bills I’ve written about here previously: Baroness Deech’s Divorce (Financial Provision) Bill, which aims to amend the law relating to financial settlements following divorce, and the Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc) Bill, which aims to give heterosexual couples the right to enter civil partnerships (I’m not sure I realised that there are, in fact, two Bills with this aim, the other being Baroness Burt of Solihull’s rather more informatively-titled Civil Partnership Act 2004 (Amendment) (Mixed Sex Couples) Bill). There is also yet another Bill relating to civil partnerships: the Civil Partnership Act 2004 (Amendment) (Sibling Couples) Bill which, as you may guess, aims to extend civil partnerships to sibling couples who make a home together, an idea that was rejected when the original Civil Partnership Act was debated.

Two other Bills that I was certainly aware of and that I may have mentioned here before are the Child Maintenance (Assessment of Parents’ Income) Bill and the Cohabitation Rights Bill. The former intends “to equalise the assessment and enforcement of child maintenance arrangements of children of self-employed parents with those of children of other employed parents” (good luck with that), and the latter intends to give basic property rights to cohabitees, a matter close to my heart.

And then there are the two Bills that I wanted to concentrate on in this post.

Firstly, the Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill. This is the government Bill I referred to above. It aims to bring in a small but very sensible reform, which could be of great significance to certain victims of domestic violence and abuse. To explain it fully I would need to go into the detail of the relevant landlord and tenant law, something that I have not really studied since I was at Law College. Suffice to say that some council tenants have lifetime (‘secure’) tenancies, meaning that they can remain in the property as long as they wish, usually unless they are at fault in some way, such as not paying their rent or causing a nuisance. Such tenancies are no longer usually granted. This means that if a person has to leave a property subject to a secure tenancy in order to escape domestic abuse then, as things stand, any new tenancy they are granted will be less secure. The Bill aims to do away with this disadvantage by stating that any new tenancy should be a secure lifetime tenancy.

The other Bill I wanted to discuss in a little more detail is the Courts (Abuse of Process) Bill, which was introduced by Plaid Cymru MP Liz Saville Roberts. The Bill aims “to prevent abuse of process in civil and family courts”, including creating “offences when certain civil and family court orders are breached”, and amending “the rights and duties of certain parties to prevent abuse of process in civil and family court”. Unfortunately, the Bill is still being prepared for publication, so the only details available are what Ms Roberts said in Parliament last December when she presented the Bill. As she explained:

“The purpose of this Bill is to limit the ability of perpetrators of primarily domestic abuse, stalking and harassment to use—indeed, to misuse or abuse—family and civil courts as a cynical and calculated method of causing further distress and exercising deliberate control over the actions of their victims.”

Ms Roberts said that research showed that in a survey of 122 victims of stalking and domestic abuse, 55% of the victims had court proceedings taken out against them by their abusers, making vexatious and baseless claims against them and causing the victims further distress and expense. The Bill will give the court the power to dismiss any meritless applications where it is apparent that their purpose is to harass or distress victims. It will also ‘beef up’ the sanctions available for a breach of a restraining order, including introducing a presumption of custody in the event of multiple breaches.  It will be interesting to see the detail of this Bill when it is published.

As I indicated at the outset, many of these bills will fall by the wayside. However, hopefully some of the better ideas will be passed, even if they are contained within later government bills, rather than in their present form – very often, private members’ bills can be a good way of bringing ideas to the attention of government, even if they have no hope of being passed themselves. Whatever, it is good to know that there are a number of our representatives in Parliament who are taking a serious interest in the reform of family law.

The blog team at Stowe is a group of writers based across our family law offices who share their advice on the wellbeing and emotional aspects of divorce or separation from personal experience. As well as pieces from our family law solicitors, guest contributors also regularly contribute to share their knowledge.

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Comment(1)

  1. Andrew says:

    A few thoughts. I feel like the Alternative Voice here.
    .
    Baroness Deech has it right but she is spitting – euphemism – into the wind.
    .
    The Registration Bill (the Commons one) is a handout Bill – nominally a Private Member’s Bill but really a Government Bill for which the Government had not enough time. It will go through like a dose of salt; its principal purpose being to modernise the whole registration system.
    .
    Among other things it will allow the names of the parties’ mothers to be included on marriage certificates (prospectively) as they have been in Scotland, I believe, since the pipes started skirling.
    .
    The Child Maintenance Bill? It will probably never even be printed, being no more than a pious wish. But there is a point of principle here. Many non-paying NRPs are multiple debtors and if they paid their CM they would be robbing Peter to pay Paul. What makes this debt special when there is other judgment debt? If parents are together and either pays a judgment debt that can impact on the standard of living of the children, but nobody seems to suggest that if you have children you should be excused your debts; why should it be different for the children of separated parents? I make no bones about my opinion that spousal maintenance (not CM) should be behind all other debt; marriage is a partnership and you pay the outside creditors before you pay your (ex-)partner whether of the matrimonial or of the common or garden business sort. I take a similar view when the ex-wife and the trustee in bankruptcy or a creditor with a charging order are in conflict; she should always come second.
    .
    The Secure Tenancies Bill sounds good, but good for whom and bad for whom? Secure social housing tenancies are not a good idea; they can leave homes occupied by people who no longer need them to the disadvantage of people who need them more. It is right that they are no longer granted and – I would say – wrong to start granting them again to anybody. Good for the new social tenant: bad for somebody else down the line with a better claim to social housing who can’t get it.
    .
    Ah yes, and then the Abuse of Process Bill. 55% of 122 victims said that they had had vexatious and baseless claims made against them; that makes 66 people; a small and (probably) self-selected sample. The courts have adequate powers (section 91(14), CRO, section 42 of the SCA) to deal with the problem; no doubt the Member wants to make those powers “tougher” – i.e. further to restrict access to the courts to people who might want to bring a claim. Good luck; just don’t forget Article 6. And I hope the Bill will also provide for tougher penalties for disobedience to contact orders: as in non-mols, a suspended sentence the first time, activated the second time, with a penal notice on every order.
    .
    If I am wrong I would like to know why!

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