Good Divorce Week
Katherine Parker from Barker Gotelee is supporting Resolution’s Good Divorce Week which is highlighting why the Government must support better advice for separating families.
Exclusive research from Resolution shows the human suffering and cost caused by Family Court delays.
Resolution is a community of family justice professionals who work with families and individuals to resolve issues in a constructive way.
Here at Barker Gotelee our family team are supporting Good Divorce Week (28 Nov – 2 Dec), an annual awareness campaign run by Resolution, an organisation that represents over 6,500 family professionals, which helps people find a better way to divorce.
Divorces are on the increase: the most recent statistics show that there were 113,000 divorces in 2021. This is an increase of nearly 10% on the previous year and impacts wait times: on average it currently takes approximately 52 weeks to conclude divorce proceedings.
In addition, official figures show that while private children cases decreased by 7% during the last year, they are taking, on average, six weeks longer to reach a conclusion. Further, estimates suggest it takes nearly two years to resolve financial matters.
Unfortunately, that leaves many families in limbo for over a year. Consequently, it can have a knock-on effect on children’s schooling and family finances.
Resolution surveyed its members on the current Court backlogs and found:-
- 20% said Court delays caused clients to rely on benefits.
- 34% said they’d referred a client to a counsellor or therapist to help them cope with the stress of ongoing Court delays.
- 90% said Court backlogs were causing additional and unnecessary stress and pressure for clients.
Juliet Harvey, who is the national chair of Resolution, said: “Under resourcing the Family Courts system is a false economy inflicting unnecessary pressure on the public purse and unconscionable stress on families at an already stressful time in their lives. A study of the impact of funding legal advice in Scotland found that, every £1 spent by government on legal aid in family cases saw a return of around £5 elsewhere.
“If the government were to focus more on encouraging early advice for separating couples and including information about all out of Court options it could ease the pressure on Family Courts. Resolution members like Katherine Parker of Barker Gotelee are doing their best to help families achieve better outcomes and find long-lasting resolutions.”
If you are experiencing issues related to this topic or have any other queries around family law, please contact us.
Katherine Parker is a solicitor in the Family Department at Barker Gotelee Solicitors in Ipswich.
Suffolk Family Solicitors – for more information on our range of legal services, please call the team on 01473 611211 or email [email protected]
