LC to tidy law on financial provision

From today''s LSG -

The Law Commission is to bring ‘clarity and predictability’ to the law entitling married couples and civil partners to claim financial provision from one another upon divorce or dissolution of their partnership, it was announced this week.

The commission said that it aims to review two areas of the law that cause particular difficulties. These are the extent to which one party should be required to meet the other’s needs after the relationship has ended and how non-matrimonial property should be treated upon divorce or dissolution of a partnership.

Non-matrimonial property is property acquired by either party before the marriage or partnership, or property that either party received during the marriage or partnership as a gift or inheritance.

Family law commissioner Professor Elizabeth Cooke said: ‘This work will complement our current project on marital property agreements, in which we are considering whether a couple should be able to make a legally binding agreement before or during their marriage or civil partnership about the financial arrangement they will make if the relationship fails.

‘The project will raise technical legal questions that the Law Commission is well-placed to address. But any reform of the law must also be informed by wide-scale consultation with the legal profession and those of the wider public who are affected by the deficiencies in the current system.

‘We therefore aim to publish a detailed consultation paper later this year and final report during 2013.’

V interesting! Thanks Ruby

Non-matrimonial property is property acquired by either party before the marriage or partnership, or property that either party received during the marriage or partnership as a gift or inheritance.

erm.....this is already in place in Scots law

But not in England and Wales especially if there are children from the marriage.

That''s what I thought, Dukey - I''m unsure if the LC are proposing to classify non-matrimonial property as described in the para I quoted.

There all kinds of mad ideas being thrown out right now, even some from Ken Clarke`s report, the aim shock horror is to save money.

Small point though, do they intend to scrap MCA schedule 1 applications and forty years of case law to push them through?.

So one idea is to have the divorce application a bit like any .Gov application, problem what would you do with the section six reasons bit? how would they establish jurisdiction?, given judges will jump on any mistake as they should, how would you make what at the moment is an overly complicated form into one anyone could complete without question.

A great deal of time and money was wasted re-writing the forms last year, the outcome is most are more complicated than they were to start with.

If your bored have a look at the divorce application form D8and take a look at jurisdiction, does it make any sense to any of you lot?.

I would disagree that the para I quoted is a "mad idea" I would argue that its reasonable.

And the D8 jurisdiction part is complete gobbledygook, it confuses so many people.