The 2002 International Family Law Conference

Within a few months of Cafcass setting up shop in 2001, it was clear that the FCWS blank would carry forwards indefinitely.

Nothing had been achieved by the FCWS’s disbandment. The paltry result was merely to rebadge the FCWS as Cafcass, with the original problem perpetuated.

But en route to this unhappy result, the unresolved problems with the FCWS/Cafcass had been so widely canvassed throughout the legal profession that the desired result (guidance) could be achieved another way.

How to Bypass Cafcass

There was no need for a ‘training manual’ to help Cafcass officers make best-interests recommendations to the judiciary; the same result (improved case outcomes) could equally be achieved by the the judiciary producing the guidance that Cafcass would not prepare - and (as soon as it was posted on a Court Notice Board) this same guidance could reach parents - months before Court. And, as the reason why people go to Court is to find out to what the court will order, most couples would not need to go to Court.

So now there was professional support for that kind of thinking, why not a fully-fledged conference? Why not find out what happened abroad?

The answer, as it turned out, was that a normative six-year case here would quite likely be settled in half-an-hour there - if it reached court at all.

England: decades behind in Family Law

The 2002 judically-chaired international conference at The Royal Society confirmed that the English jurisdiction was decades behind. In the chair, Dame Margaret Booth noted our besetting sin was the lack of authoritative guidance on quantum. A spread of professionals from foreign jurisdictions - judges, lawyers, academics and welfare officers - spelled out how guidance of this type - once it existed - directed potential litigants to best-interests settlements without a court-battle; and, the outcomes of contested court cases aligned more closely with the benefit of the child. 

Long-established examples of guidance from foreign jurisdictions were distributed. Their workings were discussed. The idea of a pilot to trial this approach in this jurisdiction was mooted. Three months after the conference, at a formal Lincoln’s Inn reception on 27 May 2002 to mark publication of the Conference Proceedings, Dame Margaret said,

“The Conference raised many questions. How do we take the new proposals forward with real commitment? If there are to be Pilot Projects, what should they pilot? And how are they to be evaluated? Our government rightly requires that any changes that may be mad not only work but also must be cost effective. All this opens up a wide range for discussion”

The next step was to devise and present a working model of an EI pilot for discussion and review, most likely in 2003.

To read the conference report in full, click here.