On 1 December 2017, Sir James Mumby, President of the Family Division published the “President’s Circular: Financial Remedies Courts”.
Within that circular, it was confirmed that Financial Remedies Courts will be piloted in London, the West Midlands and South-East Wales hopefully from February 2018 onwards, with Sir Mumby envisaging that “ further pilots will follow quite shortly on a rolling programme”.
He explained that hearings will be conducted at the regional hub and also at a number of Financial Remedies Hearing Centres within the hub area.
It was said that there will be hub areas and each one must have a lead judge “with real experience/expertise in financial remedy work”.
Sir James Mumby went onto explain that initially the Financial Remedies Courts will deal with “ancillary relief cases” (financial remedy applications within divorce proceedings and the like) and that this “will be extended to all financial remedy cases dealt with in the Family Court or Family Division”.
He confirmed that the Financial Remedies Courts “will function quite separately from the Regional Divorce Centres: initially in accordance with the current principles regulating ‘administrative de-linking’, pending full ‘legal de-linking’”.
I previously wrote about the administrative de-linking of divorce proceedings and financial remedy proceedings and the blog can be found here.
If the Financial Remedies Courts are rolled out following the pilot this should benefit the parties by them being provided with a judge who has the requisite experience in the area, of financial remedy rather than instead the judge potentially having just general experience and it should also speed up the process, which can only be a good thing.