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05 February 2020 / David Burrows
Issue: 7873 / Categories: Features
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Family fortunes

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David Burrows identifies some familiar hot topics ripe for reform in 2020
  • Clarity of law and legal aid helps to approach a fair trial.
  • Secrecy: still a question in the family courts.

Around the turn of 2018–19 I speculated on what I would do if I ruled the family law world. I started from recognition that opaque—or badly drafted—law is injustice in itself, and ended with a plea for legal aid (see ‘Fixing family law: a wish list’, 169 NLJ 7823, p7). I identified eight further topics alongside these two. Family law reform should include, I suggested:

  • Clarity of law, for lack of clarity in law denies a fair trial.
  • Marriage laws: divorce law reform is important; but so too is the need for the law of marriage to be defined to fit 21st century secular and mixed religion society.
  • Child law procedure: how can a child know what rights he or she has when child law procedure is so complex?
  • Child Support Act 1991 with all its amendments
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