Star Wars. Bit of a busman’s holiday if you ask me. I get enough of dysfunctional warring families with a death wish in the day job…And the hairy overemotional inarticulate ones…. They don’t let the light sabers through the x-ray machine at the court security desk, and you have to take your scary black helmet off before they’ll let you through, but the personalities are much the same (cry if you can, squawk if you must).

Anyway, my out of office is on and the kiddies are off school and we’re all counting down until the fat man arrives…And I am a lady of leisure. Leisure time that is full so far of enforced christmas-card-writing-biscuit-making-injured-bird-rescuing-cinema-going-domino-playing-grandparent-visiting-all-round-entertainment…so I find I am just as cream crackered when I sit down to write a Sunday blog post as I usually am.

Surviving Safeguarding has written a moving and practical piece for those who maybe don’t have their children with them at Christmas, which is tough whatever the reason may be : Facing Festivities.

If anyone has any spare facts going, perhaps they could wrap them and send them to C Booker c/o The Telegraph. I’m pretty sure he’s on Santa’s naughty list, and he seems to have run clean out, the poor love. I would not want him to end up with nothing but coal in his stocking (it might send him on an environment rant). See his latest riff on evil family courts and evil social workers and the importance of a mothers’ bosoms, in which he says en passant that Lucy Allan MP had her child removed by evil family courts and evil social workers (*wrong klaxon*) when even the Daily Mail knows that ain’t so. Sometimes I think that it would be so easy to have fact checked the clangers in pieces like this that I wonder if it’s intentional…I feel a bit like this journalist for the Washington Post, who has realised life is too short to give a flying figgy pudding.

Anyway, for those of you masochists who want a busmans holiday, here are a couple of stocking fillers to store away :

New CPR 3.1A echoes to some extent s31G(6) Matrimonial & Family Proceedings Act 1986 (as amended by C&F Act 2014 to create the single Family Court in 2014), in that it empowers the court to put or cause to be put questions on behalf of a LiP :

3.1A

(1) This rule applies in any proceedings where at least one party is unrepresented.

(2) When the court is exercising any powers of case management, it must have regard to the fact that at least one party is unrepresented.

(3) Both the parties and the court must, when drafting case management directions in the multi-track and fast track, take as their starting point any relevant standard directions which can be found online at www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil and adapt them as appropriate to the circumstances of the case.

(4) The court must adopt such procedure at any hearing as it considers appropriate to further the overriding objective.

(5) At any hearing where the court is taking evidence this may include—

(a) ascertaining from an unrepresented party the matters about which the witness may be able to give evidence or on which the witness ought to be cross-examined; and

(b) putting, or causing to be put, to the witness such questions as may appear to the court to be proper.

But oddly, there is still no express exhortation in the Family Procedure rules to have regard to LiP status when making case management decisions. One might say it is so commonplace it is not necessary in the Family Court, but that would not be accurate in all types of family proceedings e.g. public law proceedings, and this new civil provision does leave an odd anomaly.

Next up, an observation about FPR : PD20A. Undertakings in damages required on ex parte non-mols. I don’t believe in Santa and I don’t believe anyone in the history of ever has had to give an undertaking in damages on an application for an ex parte non-mol. And yet, here it is :

Orders for injunctions

5.1

Any order for an injunction, unless the court orders otherwise, must contain –

(a) an undertaking by the applicant to the court to pay any damages which the respondent sustains which the court considers the applicant should pay;

(b) if the order is made without notice to any other party, an undertaking by the applicant to the court to serve on the respondent the application notice, evidence in support and any order made as soon as practicable;

(c) if the order is made without notice to any other party, a return date for a further hearing at which the other party can be present;

(d) if the order is made before filing the application notice, an undertaking to file and pay the appropriate fee on the same or next working day; and

(e) if the order is made before issue of an application in proceedings –

(i) an undertaking to issue and pay the appropriate fee on the same or next working day; or

(ii) directions for the commencement of the application.

And yes, I did check the part setting out the scope and it excludes emergency CA / FLA 1986 orders to locate and recover children but does NOT exclude FLA 1996 Pt IV orders. This is not new. But I bet you never knew it was there…

Yes, Pink Tape truly is the blog that keeps on giving…

May the force be with you this Christmas. And remember, don’t feel your presents, your mum will catch you.

Don’t work too hard this hol, folks. I won’t be.