For many long-practising family lawyers, a carefully constructed Calderbank offer is little more than a fond and distant memory. Younger practitioners may have little, if any, experience of costs orders in family proceedings.

While ‘no order as to costs’ remains the norm in family cases, family lawyers still need to know about costs orders. Costs in Family Proceedings is the first book to cover comprehensively every costs issue that a family lawyer is ever likely to come across.

It explains where Calderbank offers can still be made, where costs may still follow the event, non-party funding arrangements and the liabilities of non-parties. With family courts clogged with litigants in person, it covers how they may obtain costs orders.

 

Francis Wilkinson, Dr Sara Hunton

£75, Jordan

The book also addresses public funding, though the extent to which family law practitioners may need to refer to that chapter is regrettably becoming ever less frequent. The authors conclude with chapters on procedure on costs assessments and the enforcement of costs orders.

With a very good index and relevant sections of statute, rules and practice directions, finding an answer to any problem should take little time.

This book should be in any family lawyer’s library. Cost issues may not crop up on a daily basis, but they are likely to surface at least every few months. This book will provide the answer to almost any family costs question.

Philip Rutter is a partner at Bishop & Sewell, London

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