University:
University College London
Course:
LAWS0024 | Family Law
Academic year:

2024
Views:

420

Pages:

3
Author:

Namira A.

Family Law for Family Life: Rethinking the Boundaries and Modalities of Family Law Date: 19 October 2023 The Boundaries Of Family Law What Family Law Does? 1. Constitutive - which family relationships attract law's attention? 2. Expressive - setting expectations and norms for relationships 3. Remedial tools and process for dispute resolution 4. Protective John Dewar, The Normal Chaos of Family (1998) Family law... "radiates messages...the task of modem law is to set the tone for private ordering, or alternative dispute resolution, rather than to confer measurable entitlements that one might expect to see enforced in a court room" Family Law’s Norms 1. Effectively come to constitute the rules. 2. Family laws are changing. 3. Family laws are "chaotic" but "stabilized" through the interpretive practices of lawyers and judges (Dewar) 4. Family laws are contestable, often value-laden, and tools for power (Freeman, Reece, and others!) 5. Family laws are also important! Based onEekelaar, Family Law and Social Policy (1978)are: 1. Protect within relationships (power corrective). 2. Support family relationships 3. Facilitate adjustment when family relationships end Family law's norm-setting - or expressive -function potentially goes beyond its remedial dispute resolution one. LASPO LASPO, privatization and the diminishing of family law's relevance. Post LASPO Only 40% of those experiencing family justice issue obtain professional legal advice (You Gov Legal Needs Survey of Individuals in England and Wales: Technical Report 2019/20 (2020). Both parties are represented in fewer than 20% of private family law court hearings (Family Court Statistics Quarterly (Ministry of Justice, 2023). The reach of family law norms is diminishing: 1. "Such has been the dramatic withdrawal of 'law' from family dispute resolution, that serious questions are now raised about whether the state has abandoned its normative and regulatory aims within this sphere" - George, Thompson and Miles (2023) 2. "It might be argued that the extent of the laws' role is to proclaim the norms by which families should deal, by themselves, with the problems arising from the breakdown of the relationship the leave them or get on with it" - Gillian Douglas, Commitment and Obligation in Family Law (2019) Expanding the boundaries: family law for family life We can recapture the relevance of family law by making it for family life, not just for family conflict, and by modernizing the modalities through which it is expressed and practiced. The modalities of Family justice Current modalities of family justice: 1. Established a. Legal process b. Traditional (partisan) legal advice c. ADR, especially mediation d. Legal information resources 2. Emerging a. Two clients or one lawyer b. Divorce coaching New modalities of family justice?  Legal education (rather than legal information) resources  Family affairs health checks  Anticipatory or life event legal advice  Family conflict or crisis coaching