Barder: Where are we now?

Few would have thought back on 1 March 2020 that we would some 12 months later be facing the first birthday of the strictest restrictions on personal freedoms in living memory.  As we approach the anniversary of the first lockdown on 23 March 2020 it seems appropriate that we reconsider one of key questions of family lawyers back in Spring 2020 that of whether the pandemic was likely to satisfy the principles set down in the 1987 case of Barder v Barder [1987] 2 FLR 480.  Unprecedented times there is no doubt but unprecedented enough to constitute a Barder event?

As we all know although final financial orders in relation to income (maintenance orders) are inherently variable a capital order of the Court is generally binding save for in very narrowly prescribed circumstances which are beyond the scope of this article.

• By way of reminder…the Barder principle stems from the 1987 case which involved a tragic set of circumstances where the wife killed the children of the family and then committed suicide five weeks after the Court...

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