Telephone Hearings

Can anybody come up with a concrete answer on the question I asked previously to this regarding telephone hearings.

I cannot find any information to the contrary regarding the information listed about telephone hearings on the official Justice website. It is Practice Direction 23.

It is dated 14th April 2014. I have been trying to find out if there are any changes to those rules...as we are now 1 year on and in 2015.... or if they are still exactly the same.

If they are... I have a case for Appeoal I believe. I was not given adequate time to prepare and get the paperwork to the Judge 50 miles away. He therefore did not have all my evidence to support my side of things.

I also lodged my complaint about the fact that a telephone hearing was not appropiate, but that was ignored also.

It says in the Justice info that if one person objects, then a telephone hearing cannot take place. It still did, today!

Any concrete solutions to my problem?

Practice Direction 18A of the Family Procedure Rules (www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rule...pd_part_18a#IDA2JSIC) sets out the process for telephone hearings.

Paragraph 8.1 gives the court the power to deal with a hearing by telephone.

Paragraph 8.3 that a direction for a telephone call "will not normally be made unless every party entitled to be given notice of the application".

In your case the court went with 8.1 which is within the judge''s power.

You must also understand that the practice Directions give guidance upon how the law is to be operated - it is like a set of instructions for a piece of equipment. It is not law therefore the judge could ignore it in practice as long as the law is done.

In this case the judge did not ignore the practice direction.

Your reference to practice directions 23 relates to the civil procedure rules rather than the family procedure rules. The former would apply if you were cohabitees rather than spouses.

Charles

O.K. Thanks for that. I''ll read up about it in that section then.

I just wish I had a majic wand... 6 years and 17 hearings has worn me down so much.

My ex just continually puts in new applications, ignores any Directions he doesn''t want to comply with and plays dirty trick after dirty trick to make life as unbearable as possible... and he succeeds!

Thanks again. Onwards and upwards!