Lady Hale calls for online one-stop shop for divorce

The President of the Supreme Court, Lady Hale, has said her preference would be to introduce an online ‘one-stop shop’ in family cases where – instead of having to navigate possibly five different processes – a separating party could file one form telling one story and asking for whichever relief they wanted at the time. This was one of several topics she spoke of in her keynote speech at Resolution’s 30th national conference in Bristol.

In her well-received speech Lady Hale highlighted the fact that four of the 12 current Supreme Court Justices began their full time judicial life in the Family Division, commenting:

'The down side is that I can’t get my own way as easily as I could when I was the only one. You may think that the up side is that I can’t get my own way as easily as once I could. But that we have so many is a great tribute to the intellectual quality of the family judiciary and to the other qualities required of family lawyers – amongst which I would count empathy and social awareness.'

Lady Hale also discussed no fault divorce; extending civil partnerships to opposite sex couples; remedies for unmarried couples; and marital agreements.

Read the speech in full here.