David Burrows laments the ruinous costs’ toll of family proceedings
'The ‘scandal’ of which Munby J complains is mostly of the lawyers’ doing: we must accept that and be ashamed'
In KSO v MJO and ors [2008] EWHC 3031 (Fam) a despairing Mr Justice Munby concluded his judgment by referring to “ancillary relief litigation conducted at ruinous expense to the parties” [75]. He went on, “something must be done…We simply cannot go on as we are” [81]; and aptly he quotes from Bleak House (Charles Dickens) Ch 65. Of Jarndyce v Jarndyce he includes Allan Vholes’s comment, that the estate has been entirely absorbed in costs, and “thus the suit lapses and melts away”.
And yes, something must be done: but by whom and to what agenda? The practising profession, bears a large proportion of blame; but what of the others involved: the judges, the civil servants, the politicians; and what of the procedures and formalities under which we have to operate and which engulf the unwitting family litigant?
Sloppy rule drafting
Many of us will remember 1 May 1997 as the election of the fi
