Judge pauses financial remedies application for a non-court dispute settlement resolution
As explained here in our post, the rules governing the family courts have recently been changed, encouraging couples to resolve their disputes out of court. We have now seen the first reported case of these new rules in action.
The case concerned a wife’s financial remedies application.
The application went before Mr Nicholas Allen KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, on the 23rd May. He explained that the facts of the case did not appear to be unusual, and that whilst it was seemingly a “big money” case, it did not appear to be unduly legally complex.
In the circumstances, he considered that this was a “paradigm case” for the court to exercise its new powers to encourage the parties to engage in non-court dispute resolution (‘NCDR’), such as mediation or arbitration. He said: “I consider NCDR to be appropriate and I wish to encourage the parties to engage in the same. This would be to their emotional and financial benefit as well as to the benefit of their children.”
The judgment indicates that there was some opposition to this from the wife’s counsel, who argued that the court should first order the parties to make full disclosure. But the judge pointed out that the court could exercise its powers under the new rules of its own initiative, and that in any event there was no need for financial disclosure to be given prior to parties engaging in NCDR, as NCDR will almost invariably provide for such disclosure to be given as part of the process.
The judge therefore gave the following directions:
1. That the wife’s financial remedies application be stayed (i.e. paused) with immediate effect;
2. That no further hearing was to be listed at the present time;
3. That the parties must tell the court by 4 pm on the 4th of July: (i) what engagement (if any) there has been with NCDR; (ii) whether any of the issues in the proceedings have been resolved; and (iii) in light of the foregoing their respective proposals for the way forward; and
4. That upon receipt of this letter the judge would decide the appropriate way forward.
Quite clearly, we can expect many more cases to be dealt with in this way in future.
You can read the full report of the case here.
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