Looking back at the Ancillary Relief Scheme & how it inspired the Quantum software | Part 9 - Norman Taylor

NORMAN TAYLOR

Then: a partner at Zermansky & Partners

now: consultant at Jones Myers since December 2009, retiring October 2021

The Pilot Scheme, and all that followed from it, marked a seismic shift in the way we practised in the field of family finance. Before the structured approach that the scheme provided, dealing with financial applications was akin to the Wild West. Affidavits of means were long winded, and often contained largely irrelevant “information”. More was put in than might have been required because you were worried about leaving something out. The Pilot Scheme, with Form E as its flagship document combined with a precise process, brought order where there had been chaos. For those of us who need structure and focus, it was manna from heaven. From that era came ground-breaking authorities providing guidance (not a formula of course) as to how financial applications should be resolved. Quantum was created and developed to reflect the gathering and dissemination of the information that was required to comply with the rules, and to provide much-needed support to practitioners enabling them to see, in every case, in court or not, the wood from the trees. By discouraging/preventing paragraphs of disparaging comments, and focusing on the resources that are available primarily to meet the respective needs of the parties, but in the first instance those of the children, the approach of family lawyers became less litigation orientated and more solution driven. It is no coincidence that not long after the Pilot Scheme became universal, non-court dispute resolution processes came to the fore, to the great benefit of both families and practitioners.