Financial dispute resolution is an ‘integral part of the court process’ and a judge should not have dispensed with it, the High Court has found.

In financial remedy proceedings between a wife and husband, the unnamed judge had made a number of orders, one of which was to dispense with a financial dispute resolution (FDR) process and proceed to a final hearing. The reasons given for skipping the FDR were an ongoing factual dispute about the wife’s earning capacity and that the wife’s position ‘had not crystallised so as to enable the FDR process to be successful’.

Mr Justice Peel, in GH v GH, overturned the judge’s decision to forego the FDR procedure, finding its value was ‘proved time and time again’.

He added: ‘Anecdotally, it facilitates settlement in a significant number of cases. It is not only relatively straightforward cases which are susceptible to settlement at FDR. So, too, are complex cases. In my personal experience, even the most intractable case can yield to settlement at the FDR.’

The short judgment acknowledged an FDR judge’s indications and observations of a case can be of ‘greatest utility’ in ‘hard cases where one or other part appears utterly intransigent’.

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The judge said it was ‘very hard to envisage a situation where the FDR should be dispensed with’ and situations which may justify going to a final hearing without the FDR ‘will be very few and far between’.

He directed that the parties, which were anonymised in the judgment ‘because of the gravity of medical issues and consequential impact on wellbeing of one of the parties’, attend a court FDR.

Michael Glaser KC, instructed by Charles Russell Speechlys LLP, represented the appellant. Rosanne Godfrey-Lockwood, instructed by Clintons, appeared for the respondent.