Family Law Reform Now

The Family Law Reform Now project brings together academics, practising lawyers and policymakers, with the aim of identifying, and ultimately addressing, key areas of reform in the area of family law.

The initial phase of the project commenced in the summer of 2021, and was intended to shape the content and contours of the Law Commission’s 14^th Programme of Family Law Reform. The Law Commission is the premier body that keeps the law of England and Wales under review, and recommends change to the Government where necessary (helping to ensure that that law ‘keeps up’ with societal needs). Every 3-4 years, the Law Commission undertakes a consultation, seeking suggestions from the public around areas of the substantive law that require improvement or development. This is with a view to submitting to the Lord Chancellor a programme of law reform, which sets out the projects that the Commission intends to work on over the next few years. We sought to make the public consultation process easier for the Law Commission, in that we solicited, and collated, ten proposals from fellow family lawyers concerning how the law should be changed. These proposals formed the focus of a three-day conference, and are also due to be published by Hart in an edited collection in 2024.

• Listen to our participants discuss their proposals

For the next phase of the project, in the summer of 2022, we held a ‘pitching event’, for which we invited suggestions for areas of family law that we, as a network, might be able to make the most impact in. We selected three areas - one relating to cohabitation, one to the ‘voice of the child’ in private law children matters, and one public law children - within which our network will now be pursuing change.

• Cohabitation - Informing Policy, Reforming the Law and their 2023 conference Cohabitation Reform in England and Wales
• The Voice of the Child in Private Law Children Matters
• Supporting Families in Public Law Children Matters