The Standard Family Orders Handbook is the approved source of guidance to the official orders with a Foreword from the former president of the Family Division, Sir James Munby.
HHJ Edward Hess, Deputy National Lead Judge, Financial Remedies Courts, provides invaluable commentary on when and how to use each order, with a brief description of its purpose. The text of the orders is also interwoven with useful practice points from HHJ Hess where relevant.
In addition, the colour coding in the approved orders has been reproduced so that you can easily see what to amend when drafting your orders.
What's new in the 2nd edition?
The Standard Family Orders Handbook has already become a fixture on every family lawyer’s desk.
This second edition contains the latest version of each order, with all the revisions necessitated by the amended FPR 2010 Rule 9.27 (which significantly changed the way costs should be dealt with) and the new FPR Part 37 and PD 37A, together with fully updated commentary from HHJ Hess where relevant.
ISBN 978-1-85959-937-2 | Paperback | Published December 2020
The Standard Family Orders Handbook has the tremendous benefit for the practitioner not only of presenting full versions of all the orders in published book form for the first time, but also the very great assistance of the author's editorial comments, in which he uses his considerable experience as a barrister and judge in the family justice system to identify when particular orders, or particular parts of orders, might sensibly be used.
The first volume covers finance and enforcement including:
- Financial Proceedings Directions Orders
- Financial Remedy Final Orders
- Miscellaneous Interim Remedies Orders
- Enforcement Orders
- Committal Related Orders
- Arbitration Related Orders
As I said in my Practice Guidance of 30 November 2017, the use of standardised orders in the family courts will bring real and substantial benefit to the family justice system. I took the view that the time had now come when the financial and enforcement orders, drafted with great skill and care by Mostyn J and his supporting team, and which had been growing is use for some time, should be placed on a more formal footing, in part to promote national consistency and not least to avoid for the future, so far as possible, ambiguities in the meaning of the wording of an order. Hence the exhortation in my Guidance that these standard orders should "represent the starting point, and, I would hope and expect, usually the finishing point, of the drafting exercise".
The use of these orders will ordinarily, and, I hope, increasingly, be in the context of an electronic drafting process, which will be further assisted in due course by the digitisation of the family courts already in progress. However, it will be tremendously helpful to have an authoritative paper version of these orders available and not merely to family lawyers and judges but also to everyone else - litigants and mediators for example - involved in family court cases.
Accordingly, may I thoroughly commend this work produced by His Honour Judge Edward Hess. The Standard Family Orders Handbook has the tremendous benefit for the practitioner not only of presenting full versions of all the orders in published book form for the first time, but also the very great assistance of the author's editorial comments, in which he uses his considerable experience as a barrister and judge in the family justice system to identify when particular orders, or particular parts of orders, might sensibly be used. The utility of work is greatly enhanced by its colour coding, including, shown in blue, the editorial comments by Edward Hess.
I anticipate and predict that this book will find its place on the desks of most judges and practitioners working in this field.
Farewell to the world of the fountain pen and biro! Onwards to the age of digitisation!
Sir James Munby, Former President of the Family Division
Editors
