Stuart Clark, associate solicitor at The International Family Law Group LLP, discusses the outcome in Villiers and the impact on divorce and financial proceedings taking place in England and Scotland .

On 17 May 2018, the Supreme Court (being the highest Court in England & Wales) is due consider the wife's appeal against the Court of Appeal judgment in the divorce case of Owens v Owens. The case made headline news last year as a result of both the High Court and the Court of Appeal refusing to grant Mrs Owens a divorce.

A family court can sentence someone to prison for contempt of court.  This can occur where there has been wilful disrespect of legal authorities or where a party has failed to comply with a court order.  Although family proceedings are in the family court and not in the criminal court, this does not absolve parties from criminal culpability and sanctions.

With online divorce being available for use by lawyers in only a matter of weeks, the consequences in practice will be more widely debated than just hitherto by a few of us family law geeks.  I am very grateful to Rob Glade Wright of The Family Law Book of Australia (https://thefamilylawbook.worldsecuresystems.com/) for bringing to my attention a recent decision where the family court procedure rules, as in Engl

As stated in a recent online article for a national newspaper ‘Statistics show that two thirds of cohabiting couples in England believe that they have automatic rights or the same rights as married couples/couples in a Civil Partnership, simply by virtue of the fact they live together.[1]’

In his latest view from the President’s Chambers Sir James Munby sets out his plans, following consultation, for specialised regional Financial Remedy Courts and for a proposed new Form A.

Divorce often brings out the defensive instinct. "It's mine, hands off!" is a common retort amongst parting spouses.

For the most part, it will be obvious that a particular asset belongs to one of the spouses: for example, the family home (in either party's or in joint names) will invariably form part of the family assets which a court may then be asked to divide between the parties.

But in the less public world of trust law, whether the monies held in a trust "belong" to a spouse can be the subject of fierce debate. Divorcing parties may hold entirely different views about how to treat trust funds: one party saying that the trust monies should be poured into the matrimonial pot for division, the other saying that the trust as a separate entity should remain untouched.

Many trusts contain considerable sums of money and so the way in which they are treated by the family courts and divorcing parties can significantly impact the level of resources potentially deemed available for division upon divorce.

In many instances when a marriage breaks down the spouses only have a connection with one country and the divorce and financial proceedings take place there.  But what happens when one or both people have a connection with more than one country? 

A European Court decision in mid-December 2017 in the context of a Islamic divorce pronounced in Syria was bound to create headlines.  Too often these were potentially misleading when the issue of law was a fairly narrow one and moderately legal technical.  Nevertheless, within that legal technical description covers a wider issue of the interrelationship of personal laws and national laws in the future of family laws across the world.  This article looks at the context and possible futur