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The Gazette’s family law specialist Gillian Rivers takes a critical look at new books on family law and children’s cases that offer welcome and informative guidance
Clive Million’s Family Law: Tips & Traps is based on notes given to district judges sitting at the Principal Registry of the Family Division in London.
When it was first published the information set out common practice and procedural points that arise for judges.
But it has now been reconstructed into a ‘what-the-butler-saw’ glimpse at information supplied to judges rather than a book directly aimed at family law practitioners.
The audience may have varied, but the notes have not. It is a useful reference guide and contains some specimen forms. The book will assist in preventing common errors in applications, and will also offer an insight into practice errors and technical problems encountered by courts.
This guide is intended to have universal appeal in all county courts, but it is likely to be of more assistance in the Registry than elsewhere.
This book has been written to help the busy family law specialist quickly find and use classic statements of law and leading authorities. It sets out extracts from key judgments which are most often applied, whether explicitly or not, by courts in England and Wales. The book presents these extracts within a schematic structure, aiming to be a digest of the Family Law Reports.
The foreword, written by Sir Mark Potter, president of the Family Division, aptly describes the editors’ work as producing a ‘handy, logical and well-presented case library, as welcome on the judicial bookshelf as in the practitioner’s toolkit’. The book also includes a free CD of all case extracts found in the book to ease the preparation of court documents. An eye would need to be kept on any changes in the law post-November 2008, however.
In the face of strident efforts by the legal profession to restore to courts the power to deal with child support – both consensually and non-consensually – the government has so far presented a deaf ear. The consequence is that administrative assessment within the Child Support Agency will remain, but will be carried out under a revised 2008 regime.
In June 2008, the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act became law, and Bird and Burrows examine in detailed and helpful text the background and general principles of the new law and the procedure covering all relevant issues, such as obtaining maintenance calculations, how child support is calculated and special cases and variations.
This is the fifth edition of Bird’s book and he has been ably joined by Burrows, who has contributed to the chapters on revisions and supersessions, enforcement and appeals. The book is divided in equal measure to text and statute, including schedule 1 to the Children Act 1989, to which the title refers. The book would be a useful addition to any family law library shelf.
This book does not represent itself as a competitor or substitute for other textbooks or procedural guides – it holds itself out as a new handbook for the busy practitioner and judge, designed to provide core skeleton arguments for the most common – and some less common – children applications.
It provides a comprehensive understanding and explanation of all issues that concern applications for both public law and private law Children Act matters, including public funding.
It contains extensive information on public law applications, and it sets out the provisions and applications under Special Guardianship Orders and child abduction, emergency protection and adoption.
Overall, the book succeeds in its own description as a valuable source to refresh the memory or inform the reader, identifying essential legal questions so that they can be applied to an analysis of facts and lead to the identification for the court of the key issues on which a decision is needed.
Gillian Rivers is a partner at Collyer Bristow in London
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