NLJ this week: Two’s company, but three’s a crowd in financial provision cases

Burrows looks at recent caselaw, including the February appeal decision of Ms Justice Henke in Archer v Archer (now sent back to the family court for rehearing of facts) as well as older decisions. Archer involved a divorcing couple who owned a farm on which the husband’s parents claimed a beneficial interest in a barn.

But when is it inevitable or even desirable to add a third party (a joinder or intervener) to what must surely already be fairly fraught financial provision proceedings? Burrows writes: ‘Adding a non-party to family property proceedings may not always be the most cost-effective way of dealing with property issues, as Archer, perhaps, shows.’