New President takes over a changed, and changing, family justice system
Lord Justice Cobb has been appointed the new President of the Family Division, following the retirement of Sir Andrew McFarlane.
Lord Justice Cobb has been a judge since 2004, was appointed to the Family Division of the High Court in 2013, and to the Court of Appeal in 2024.
He has also held other positions during his judicial career, including chairing the Private Law Working Group, which works to review and improve the system for private law children disputes between parents, and supporting the judiciary in the implementation the recent digital transformation of the justice system.
As the Head of Family Justice, the President oversees changes in the family justice system.
The system went through enormous changes during Sir Andrew McFarlane’s tenure (since 2018), including the introduction of no-fault divorce in 2022, the widespread use of remote court hearing in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the switch from paper to digital court proceedings, the introduction of specialist financial remedy courts, and the introduction of child focused courts to deal with disputes between parents over arrangements for their children (as we explained recently here in this post).
Lord Justice Cobb is 64. He will have to retire when he is 75, and he could therefore potentially be President until 2037. Quite what the family justice system will look like then is anyone’s guess, but we do know of a number of changes that he is likely to oversee in the early years of his tenure.
For a start, he will oversee the full rollout of child focused courts across the country. The courts currently only operate in a few court areas, but will be extended across England and Wales over the next three years.
And this spring the government is due to publish an important consultation on the reform of the law on financial remedies, cohabitation rights and pre-nuptial agreements.
We will obviously have to wait and see exactly what the consultation recommends, but it could include changes to the way that financial claims on divorce are decided, by making the law clearer, so that it is easier to predict the outcome.
Another change could be to make pre-nuptial agreements biding, bringing the law into line with many other countries (at present, the court can decide not to follow the terms of an agreement if it believes that they are unfair).
And the consultation could recommend that, for the first time, cohabitees are given basic property rights should their relationship break down. This would mark a major change in family law in England and Wales, which until now has basically treated cohabitees the same way as any other unconnected persons.
Whatever the future holds, it seems clear that the pace of change in the family justice system is unlikely to slow any time soon.
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