It is great to see old favourites such as Family Lore, Pink Tape and The Magistrate’s Blog nominated. along with some newer discoveries including Travis the Trout and Pupillage And How To Get It.

This blog has been shortlisted in the Blawg of the Year category; the public voting is now in progress and you can vote for your favourites here.

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to attend a wedding and not go through all that rigmarole, to just relax all the way through?  Especially during the best part: when you see the bride come down the aisle to be given away by her parents, about to start a new life with her partner.

This Monday I “attended” just such a beautiful wedding and, I think, in the best possible way! Let me explain…

It was 6 pm and the sun was setting behind the pale honey walls of the Old City of Jerusalem as Mount Scopus lay in the distance. I was standing high up on the balcony of our hotel watching a wedding scene taking place on the terrace below.  I could see the hustle and bustle of lorries and cars still thronging up the hill beyond as they entered the Old City through the Jaffa Gate. Alongside the gate stands King David Tower and there were still lots of tourists walking around the old Roman walls during this cooler part of the day.  I could see churches, synagogues and mosques spread across the city on rolling hills. Somewhere in the distance out of view is the Western Wall, all that remains of the Jewish Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD and which stood on Temple Mount, the holiest place in Judaism. The wedding below me was taking place under a canopy facing towards the Western Wall.

This city of Jerusalem has seen its share of historical battles and invaders. With the Persians, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders and Turks all invading and laying claim to it at various times.  Sadly, as we know, conflict continues to this day and will do until all its peoples make peace. How wonderful would that be?

Archaeological digs keep revealing the fascinating history of the city. During the reign of King Herod a fortress was built alongside the Jewish temple on Temple Mount, which was itself built by King Solomon.

There is in fact a large-scale model of Jerusalem in Roman times, with the Temple still erect before its destruction, which stands in the grounds of the newly renovated Israel Museum. The museum is opposite the Israeli Parliament and the Supreme Court of Israel (below) and is where I had earlier spent most of the day. There is a beautiful Rose Garden separating the two.

The stunningly reconstructed buildings at the Museum are home to galleries full of European impressionist and modern art, including pieces by Renoir, Cezanne Pissarro, Gauguin, Modigliani, Chagall, Magritte and Dali. You could easily spend hours there taking them in, but there is much more to see.

There are 15th and 16th century paintings too and the collection includes two Rembrandts: one of St Peter in prison, the light framing his elderly face of resignation unaware that the prison shackles would soon fall away; the other of his wife Saskia. There is also a huge painting by Nicholas Poussin from 1625, presented to Cardinal Richelieu, which features the Roman destruction of the Temple. It is quite moving in that it magnificently depicts the battle and tragedy taking place.

There is also a large gallery of some of the first photographs ever taken and several galleries devoted to modern 21st Century Israeli art. Again you could spend hours here too.

But I suppose because I am Jewish, and a family lawyer, I was particularly taken by the collection called Rites of Passage, which included the clothing and religious artefacts of Jewish families from across the world and down the centuries. No matter how far apart and no matter how long ago, I could see how similar they all were.

The theme Rites of Passage centred on birth, marriage and death. Marriage within this context isn’t portrayed as the “gold standard” as opposed to cohabitation; rather, it is depicted as a deep-seated, spiritual and religious part of the circle of life for all those Jewish communities featured. Whether the bejewelled Yemeni bride, or the brides and grooms of Afghanistan, China, India and other remote regions on earth, all had similar Jewish marriage ceremonies, similar rituals at birth and on death and their communities managed to survive, somehow and in some form.

I then visited a building called the Shrine of the Book. This is a fabulous building, which stands in the grounds of the Israel Museum and houses the Dead Sea Scrolls. You don’t have to be religious to appreciate the Dead Sea Scrolls’ historical significance. Discovered in 1947 and preserved in jars in caves by the Dead Sea, they are now housed in this building. The white roof mimics the top of a jar; the bottom lies underground and is only accessible down some steps. Here you can view the entire scroll of Isaiah, which has been saved intact in a real jar.  You can also walk around and see other fragments of the bible, with all the documents found scientifically dated from 150BC to 70AD.

In the same building you can also see the Aleppo Codex, which is a bible written in Jerusalem in the 10th century and saved from destruction by the Crusaders. It was smuggled to Syria and then to Egypt, before being returned to Jerusalem in the 20th Century.

I was knocked out by the fight that Jewish people have had through the centuries: scattered throughout the world by the Roman destruction of Jerusalem – and yet, still managing to survive.

The central roles played by birth, marriage and death, and the power of the Rites of Passage to preserve a people and its beliefs stayed strong in my mind after I left the museum.

I returned to my hotel feeling dazed. There was so much to see, assimilate and think about. Things you take for granted in a material world.  On reflection I don’t think it matters what religion you may be, or even whether you are an atheist, an agnostic or nothing at all. Every one of us can always appreciate the beautiful things that life has to offer. Some lives have been filled with tragedy that at the time seemed to be meaningless sacrifice but, years later in retrospect, have played their part in the journey for survival.

But other lives are filled with joy and achievement too, whether it is spiritual, artistic or architectural and they survive the generations. The Rites of Passage all play their own part. The common feature of everything I saw was the desire, will and passion to survive and, above all, to preserve and hand down for future generations all the traditions, customs, art, music and spiritual values. Some of these are still being passed on 2,000 years later, while the 500-year-old artwork is relatively young!

I was standing on my balcony trying to take it all in, looking out over this fascinating city, the ancient and the modern, and drinking a quiet toast to the spirit of survival with a huge glass of chilled white wine when, unexpectedly, the music of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah began.

The melody was the same, but the words were different. It was the well-known Israeli singer Ohad Moskowitz singing Boi Kala, which translated means come my bride, come my beloved – and then I was really overcome after such a wondrous day.

And so I watched the bride walk with her father under the canopy. The Rites of Passage were continuing and so were my hopes for eternal peace in Jerusalem, the Eternal City.

PS. Congratulations to Judy, David and their families on their marriage at the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem on 23 August, 2010. I wish them every happiness in their life together.

Image credits: emileaguso, www.goisrael.com, emileguso.

I am pleased to learn that the Law Society, which represents the solicitors’ profession in England and Wales, has now notified the Legal Services Commission of its intention to seek judicial review of the family law tender process.

Linda Lee, president of the Law Society, has said: “As a profession, we accept and are proud of an ethical code that is higher than pure commercial considerations. We have a duty to protect the public interest. A reduction in access to justice cannot be in the public interest, particularly when it affects the most vulnerable people in society, those who are seeking to establish their basic rights”.

If an agreement with the Legal Services Commission and the Ministry of Justice cannot be reached, the Law Society will bring the proceedings before the High Court. Further details of the Law Society’s preparations can be found here.

Other developments:

• Law firms up and down the country are facing an anxious wait pending the results of their appeals against the LSC’s decisions. There are thought to be many appeals in progress: after all, the number of firms contracted to provide family law legal has been slashed from 2,400 to 1,300. According to the LSC’s website, the appeals are to be considered next month.
• It has emerged that one of the casualties of the cuts is Anne-Marie Hutchinson: a friend of mine, of whom I am extremely proud. Anne-Marie is a well-respected solicitor whose firm has rescued hundreds of women and girls from “honour killings” and violent forced marriages overseas. She is a fearless fighter and the Foreign Office nominated her for an OBE for her work – but now the LSC has decided that her firm no longer qualifies for funding. Apparently this is because her firm provides such a specialised service. One charity helping victims of forced marriages has described the decision as “bonkers”.
• Finally, in an earlier post I wrote about the impossible dilemma now faced by my husband Grahame Stowe and his firm, Grahame Stowe Bateson, which has five offices in Leeds and has donated more than £1 million in pro bono advice. His case has since been highlighted on the Guardian Leeds blog and elsewhere, and he has also written an editorial about the cuts for the Yorkshire Post. It has been the same in other parts of the country, with local solicitors ensuring that the media and the public are aware of this mess. It is heartening to note that the calls for action continue to gather pace.

Justices are fiddling with top-dollar divorces while normal families burn, says Marilyn Stowe

I have never known a summer like this one. For a family lawyer it is like standing in no man’s land, with the ‘haves’ on one side and the ‘have nots’ on the other. In more than 25 years I have never seen family law riven by such manifest inequality.

At the height of the holiday season, the Legal Services Commission (LSC) has slashed the number of firms offering family law legal aid by 46 per cent – from 2,400 to just 1,300. Pity the legal aid family lawyer now returning from a hard-earned summer break. The charter flight was probably delayed; the lawyer was probably laden down with kids and suitcases. They get up early to go into the office and face the correspondence that always arrives when you are away. But this time that correspondence is far, far worse: the lawyer has been thrown out of a job.

The LSC is putting lawyers out of business with the swing of an axe, while telling the media that it is “putting quality of services above cost”. I am pleased that the public is not buying this glib argument. The truth is that for clients, particularly those from less well off or disadvantaged backgrounds, justice has suddenly become less accessible than it was. Now it will be about having the means, while an already overloaded service collapses into meltdown. In the meantime, how many tragedies will there be?  Continue reading»

In summary, the number of firms able to offer family law legal aid as a service to their clients has been slashed from 2,400 to 1,300. This is a travesty that calls for judicial review.

At the beginning of my legal career I used to work voluntarily, giving legal advice at the Citizens Advice Bureau in a very rundown area of Leeds. I did it because I knew from my mum, who worked there as a volunteer adviser, of the desperate need for free legal advice  - particularly for abused women who had nowhere to go with their children after assaults by their partners.  By chance one evening, I met a very good-looking young lawyer doing exactly the same thing, because he cared too. And as the phrase goes: reader, I married him!

With another young lawyer, Arthur Bateson, Grahame had set up a legal aid law office in Leeds. After our marriage, which we dashed into within weeks because we had fallen head over heels for one another, the three of us joined forces and began setting up branch offices, always in the less affluent area and always to help the most socially disadvantaged. And we loved it.

I went on to found Stowe Family Law. However Grahame Stowe Bateson, or “GSB” as it is known, has continued to grow and has attracted good, decent lawyers. They aren’t in the profession to make a lot of money, but they are devoted to their work and they do it because they care.

In the late 1980s I had a trainee called Richard Howard and, although we joke that he couldn’t get away from me fast enough once he had qualified, he moved to another branch of GSB and is now a highly competent child care lawyer with higher rights of audience. I’m very proud that I had something to do with that!

Grahame now heads a firm of more than 70 people, in six offices around Leeds. Although he sits as a part-time judge, some of his clients even call him “Stowey”, because he hasn’t an arrogant bone in his body. He is well-liked and well-respected – but for Grahame, that isn’t enough! He had the idea of giving free legal advice to those who were in need of help. Every GSB office holds free advice clinics, and the firm has provided more than £1 million in pro bono advice since it was set up. When the firm passed the £1 million milestone last year, Grahame was praised by local MPs and also by the President of the Law Society, who noted that GSB “has shown a real commitment to providing access to justice, which is priceless to those who benefit from the advice provided”.

Grahame takes his turn doing the duty solicitor scheme, which, whenever he is telephoned in the early hours of the morning drives me bonkers as I hear him say for the umpteenth time, “Don’t say anything until we’re there!” He is unfailingly courteous to every client, whether they are sober or not.

After more than 25 years together, I know him quite well! He is an absolute credit to the legal profession and especially in his service to the socially disadvantaged.

So what work is done by legal aid family lawyers?

Legal aid family lawyers represent some of the poorest people in the country, the socially disadvantaged, young children who are abused and who cannot protect themselves and parents who are accused of abuse and who stand to lose their children forever.

Legal aid for family cases is divided into public law and private law cases.

Public law means child care, and cases in which local authorities are involved. Perhaps children have been removed from parents who are suspected of abuse, or the children are being adopted. It is tough, highly-skilled work, because the consequences of error can result in a lifelong tragedy.

Private law means issues arising within a family, such as divorce, finances and arrangements about children.

I can only surmise that the LSC was told by the Government that the cuts had to be swingeing, because it has axed the contracts to law firms by almost 50%. And this is where the injustice comes in…

Entire firms of lawyers now can no longer offer legal aid. In a city the size of Leeds (population: 771,000), we have been told that there are now only eight firms offering legal aid instead of 31. Of those 31 firms, 23 are no longer permitted to provide legal aid services.

Lawyers are being put out of business with the swing of an axe. It has been a cause of great concern that the criteria used by the LSC to dictate where the axe would fall were kept secret until almost the very last moment. This left firms with scant opportunity to ensure that they could meet them.

Ironically lawyers who specialise in family law have fared poorly, as opposed to general family lawyers, because their specialist expertise has been held against them. This makes no sense at all.

It means that some of the Law Society’s own family law assessors – many of them appointed by me when I was Chief Assessor and Chief Examiner of the Law Society’s Family Law Panel – are no longer permitted to provide legal aid. Significant swathes of the country will no longer have legal aid lawyers. Whole areas of cities will no longer be served by legal aid family lawyers.

At the time of writing the LSC is not answering telephone calls, letters or emails from desperate lawyers who are trying to make sense of the criteria and understand why they haven’t qualified.

And what of my husband’s firm, GSB?

Well, Grahame Stowe Bateson’s office in Harrogate has been awarded a family contract. Their Leeds offices have not. This means that none of the six Leeds offices can do legal aid family law work, not even in areas of Leeds where legal aid is most needed.

Grahame Stowe Bateson has been awarded a child care contract in Leeds. So its public child care work could continue.

But get this. The firm has been told to choose which one it wants. It can have one contract in Harrogate, or a child care contract in Leeds, but it can’t have both.

So, does Grahame Stowe Bateson keep its public law child care work or does every single GSB office in Leeds and Harrogate stop its private, legally aided family law work? If you were heading the firm and this senseless question had been put to you, what would you choose?

Grahame and his team have joined the swelling ranks of the lawyer-protestors, angry at the stupid, arbitrary swing of the axe.

My husband, who has uncomplainingly devoted his life to help others, now fights to continue serving the most disadvantaged in our society as he has served them all his professional life.

“If a husband leaves his bank statement lying around open in the matrimonial home, in the kitchen, living room or marital bedroom, it may well lose its confidential character as against his wife. The court may have to consider the nature of the relationship and the way the parties lived, and conducted their personal and business affairs. Thus, if the parties each had their own study, it would be less likely that the wife could copy the statement without infringing the husband’s confidence if it had been left by him in his study rather than in the marital bedroom, and the wife’s case would be weaker if the statement was kept in a drawer in his desk and weaker still if kept locked in his desk.”

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but my twenty-first century family home does not have a separate study for the master of the house, let alone two for both master and mistress.

Perhaps we would review our floorplan if we were both working from home  - after all, we have our separate offices outside the home  – but frankly, I doubt it. The idea that there could ever be a private room in our house, for one spouse only, from which others are barred except by invitation is wholly alien to me. I suspect that it is alien to all but a few of you too. We are married and we have agreed to share our lives. Everything is shared, including our day-to-day finances and the rooms in our house. In any case and as with millions of other families in this country, our budget doesn’t run to private rooms.

However it seems to me that in the Imerman judgement, the concepts of separate studies and separate finances are not regarded as anything out of the ordinary. That this should be so in a leading judgement delivered by the Master of the Rolls, a judgement that will lead to disastrous outcomes for so many divorcing couples in this country, concerns me greatly.

Can it be that the elevated lifestyles enjoyed by judges, particularly those at the top of the tree, may influence the way a case is approached and affect the decision?

The idea that our judiciary is “out of touch” with modern life is not a new one. We may have an image in our minds of a bewigged judge peering over his half-moon spectacles and asking, in confused tones, “Who are The Killers?” We sigh, especially those of us who enjoy the thumping  beat of The Killers’ music, and we take it in good humour.

At least, I did. Now I am not so sure. In 2009 statistics showed that only 19 per cent of judges were women, and only 4.5 per cent were from minority backgrounds. Earlier this year Lady Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls’ sister-in-law and a Liberal Democrat peer, chaired a government-commissioned report that made more than 50 recommendations to increase judicial diversity.

“We have talked to groups about what it feels like to be in a court which is not as reflective of society as it should be,” noted Lady Neuberger. “It is serious that for some people the bench should be so different from them.”

The Imerman case is an example of a judgement that is considered “proper” by a few decision-makers, with talk of private studies and so on, but is considered plainly and utterly wrong by just about everyone else. Is this judgement “as reflective of society as it should be”? I think not: as I have noted in a previous post, the Imerman case is “the most extreme case possible in terms of the vast wealth of the parties involved”, but the decision has horrifying implications for ordinary couples.

I have encountered a number of judges who sit on the High Court bench and higher. I admire many of them. However I do not think it is controversial or even daring to say that I have been struck by some of the similarities between them. They are almost always London-based barristers – there are rare nods to the provinces, and even rarer nods to solicitors – aged 60 and over, many of whom speak with cut-glass accents.

That our judges are all intellectually brilliant there is no doubt. But don’t judges need to be more than brilliant? Although it is unlikely that many of our judges will have experienced life on benefits, surely they need to have a good understanding of others, irrespective of their own backgrounds?

We do not have a codified system of law in England and Wales. This means that judges, at the head of the judiciary, have the power to make decisions that affect the lives of all of us. They have to make the right calls, and their decisions have to be the best ones. Otherwise, there opens a chasm dividing millions of ordinary working people from a few, cloistered individuals who sit in judgement and shape our law – albeit with the best of intentions.

A split hearing can be summarised as a hearing divided into two parts. During the first part the court makes findings of fact on issues identified by the parties or the court. During the second part the court, drawing upon the findings it has made, decides the case.

When a split hearing takes place, it is usually in the context of a contact or residence dispute between parents, with one party alleging domestic violence as a reason for refusing to allow contact with a child from the relationship.

Generally it has been the practice that the allegation must be dealt with, separately from the children matter, before the court can resume consideration of the contact or residence dispute. A split hearing can thus cause delay and expense for both parties – but change is in the air.

In one of his first announcements since becoming President of the Family Division in April 2010, Lord Justice Wall recently gave new practice guidance to judges and magistrates on the occasions when it is appropriate to direct a split hearing or conduct a finding of fact hearing in private and public law family proceedings.

(Sir Nicholas Wall’s appointment was shrouded in some controversy, as the then Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, had asked the appointments panel to review its nomination of the judge as Sir Mark Potter’s successor. Sir Nicholas had been outspoken in support of the family justice system in a talk he gave in November last year, when he warned that without proper funding, the family justice system “would implode and it is the children who will suffer most”. The panel did reconsider, but did not change their preferred candidate.)

In the introduction to his guidance, Sir Nicholas asserts that split hearings are:

1. Taking place when they need not do so.

2. Taking up a disproportionate amount of the court’s time and resources.

The guidance reminds the judiciary that the decision to direct a split hearing or to conduct a fact finding hearing is a judicial decision, not one for Cafcass or the parties.

Sir Nicholas goes on to say that a finding of fact hearing is a working tool designed to assist the judiciary to decide the case, and that it should only be ordered if the court takes the view that the case cannot properly be decided without such a hearing. He says that even when the court comes to the conclusion that a finding of fact hearing is necessary, it by no means follows that such a hearing needs to be conducted separately from the substantive (main) hearing.

He notes: “It is a rare case in which a separate fact finding hearing is necessary”.

Specific examples are given, such as cases in which domestic abuse is put forward by the residential parent of a child as a reason for denying the non-residential parent contact with the child. Sir Nicholas says that is not a reason for automatically conducting a split hearing.

Such situations are frequently encountered by family practitioners, so it is interesting to note that the guidance specifically highlights these cases for further consideration by the judiciary. The guidance refers to a 2009 practice direction: Residence and contact order: Domestic Violence and Harm [2009] 2 FLR 1400. It recalls that the court must consider the nature of any allegations, if admitted or proved, that “would be relevant in deciding whether to make an order about residence or contact and, if so, in what terms”. The court is instructed to “consider the likely impact of that issue (domestic abuse) on the outcome of the proceedings”. If the allegations are unlikely to have any effect on the court’s order, there is no need for a separate fact finding hearing.

Sir Nicholas Wall’s guidance is not binding on the judiciary, but it amounts to a clear recommendation as to what practice judges and magistrates should adopt in such cases.

Of course, the guidance should also be viewed in the context of the Chancellor’s plans to cut £325 million from the Ministry of Justice’s budget as part of the Government’s planned £6.2 billion spending cuts, to help reduce the budget deficit. It certainly seems designed to discourage split hearings that may have been taking place unnecessarily.

It remains to be seen how the judiciary interprets this guidance, but judges and magistrates may be less willing to direct a split hearing.

Practitioners will now need to show not only that allegations of domestic violence are relevant to the court’s decision about residence or contact, but also explain why they are relevant and how the court’s decision is likely to be affected as a result.

As for clients: Sir Nicholas’ guidance is likely to result in fewer costs being incurred. After all, having one hearing is going to be more cost-effective than having two. What is more, if the court does not need to make time for two hearings, proceedings may conclude at an earlier stage.

James Thornton is a partner at Stowe Family Law’s Harrogate office. With 14 years’ experience, James’ specialisms include dealing with the financial issues arising from divorce, particularly when substantial personal, business or pension assets are involved. His expertise also extends to cases involving children. A former member of the Law Society’s Family Panel, James is an Accredited Specialist member of lawyers’ organisation Resolution, sits on the North and West Yorkshire Resolution committee and is a member of the West Yorkshire Family Justice Council.