How will Family Law change in 2021?

In this blog one of George Green’s Family Law solicitors, Aimee Stokes, predicts how family law might change in the upcoming year.  Family law is a wide area of the law that covers divorce, division of assets, children contact disputes and domestic violence injunctions, amongst many other aspects of people’s private lives.  

One of the biggest areas of reform due to come into effect in 2021 is the introduction of “no fault divorces”.  Members of the family law profession have been campaigning for a long time to remove the element of “blame” from the divorce procedure to make the process less painful for parties involved. No fault divorce is due to come into effect from Autumn 2021 following the introduction of the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020.

Another anticipated change will come into effect after Brexit transition period has come into effect, currently scheduled to be from the 1^st January 2021. This will mainly affect cases that have an international element and to which the Brussels II Agreement applied to.  As the Brussels II agreement is a European law, it will be revoked. However it is anticipated that similar provisions will be enacted into UK Law that will mirror the previous terms of Brussels II. 

Finally it is anticipated that more of the Family Courts’ functions will move onto an online system to speed up the court process.  George Green have already been utilising the courts online system for divorce proceedings which has proved to be fast and efficient, and George Green have also been filing agreed consent orders online to reduce delay. It is hoped that in 2021 more functions will move online including applications for child arrangement orders and also the commencement of contested financial proceedings too.  We have found online proceedings to be much quicker and reduce delay for our clients.

Contact us

Our expert Family Lawyers have offices based in Wolverhampton and Cradley Heath and serve clients across the West Midlands and Black Country including Stourbridge, Wolverhampton, Halesowen, Birmingham and beyond. 

If you complete our online enquiry form, a member of our team will contact you for an initial discussion. You can also call Aimee Stokes directly on 01902 328 355. Aimee is a family law solicitor based in our Wolverhampton office.