Evidence, Practice and Procedure: Declarations in the family law context

CM v Exor of the Estate of EJ (deceased) and HM Coroner for the Southern District of London [2013] EWHC 1680 (Fam) Cobb J reminds family lawyers of the important remedy of declaration. Such applications in the family courts may have to be made by ‘originating summons' in family proceedings because of the insistence of the Family Procedure Rules Committee that all applications be shoe-horned into a particular statute-based format. Issue of family law proceedings has become a little like the medieval actions on the case: if you cannot find the form you have no remedy; rather than the remedy dictating the form (ubi lex ibi remedium). Whatever procedural form the rules committee insists upon as a remedy the declaration is as important in the family law as in any other context; and it is as available in private as in administrative law proceedings.

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