Family Law Precedents Service provides family and child law practitioners with a comprehensive library of reliable and practical precedents designed to meet all your day-to-day needs, at every stage.

An exhaustive collection of precedents for applications and orders in respect of the most common – and many not so common – family proceedings is provided, together with a range of additional documents such as client care letters, declarations of trust and cohabitation agreements.

Each precedent is generously annotated and well presented with drafting advice and procedural guides so that its form of words can be understood in the context of the law that governs it. The loose-leaf format ensures that you keep abreast with the developments in practice and procedure, and includes precedents on the accompanying CD-ROM for you to use and adapt.

Family Law Precedents Service provides:

• over 500 precedents for applications, statements, orders and letters
• excellent value for money
• authoritative, concise commentary
• over 30 procedural checklists which ensure nothing is missed
• free CD-ROM containing fillable Word documents of precedents

This major work offers authoritative guidance and excellent value for money in a single volume and is a must for any practitioner carrying out children or financial remedies work.

2013 SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

Loose-leaf + CD-ROM*
£410.00 mainwork inc mainland UK p&p
3 updates per year (approx £131.00 each)

ALSO AVAILABLE ONLINE

For further information or to request a FREE 14-day online trial call 0117 918 1555 or click here.
Visit the online services page

*This CD-ROM is designed to run on Windows based systems. To check your system compatibility please contact our helpdesk on 01179 181496 

Founding Editor

Roger Bird Former District Judge, Bristol County Court

General Editor

David Salter Joint National Head of Family Law, Mills & Reeve, Leeds, Manchester, Cambridge, Norwich, Birmingham and London

Contributors

Michael Keehan QC St Ives Chambers
District Judge Jonathan Whybrow
Charles Prest Barrister, No 6 Chambers

• Procedural Guides and Precedents
• Petitions and Answers in the Main Suit
• Further Pleadings and Applications in the Main Suit
• Financial Remedies
• Originating Applications
• Children
• Inheritance
• Injunctions
• Trusts of Land
• Cohabitation
• Experts
• Enforcement
• Appeals
• Costs

Update 25 (March 2013)

This update contains amendments to Divisions General; D (Miscellaneous Applications); E (Children); G (Injunctions); J (Experts); K (Enforcement); L (Appeals); and M (Costs).
Divisions D and J have been revised in their entirety and are released in full.

"An essential tool for all family practitioners"
Childright

"Its first main and obvious benefit is that it deals exclusively with family law. This makes it refreshingly simple to navigate ... the comprehensive section on enforcement is a gem"
Family Law

Foreword

Practitioners are always grateful for coherent and practical resources to aid them in the demanding world of litigation. Whilst every careful practitioner avoids following precedents blindly, practical guidance is invaluable.

The Family Law Precedents Service provides a comprehensive source of precedents, which will be invaluable for practitioners of all levels of experience. It is up to date, and its loose-leaf format makes it highly adaptable and ensures that practitioners are kept informed of recent trends and current requirements in family proceedings.

The breadth of material covered by this service is impressive. The first Divisions of this work provide a range of precedents for petitions, answers and pleadings in main suits. The subsequent Divisions relate to financial ancillary relief and other financial applications, and children proceedings. There then follows a series of Divisions covering a broad range of topics, from claims under the Inheritance (Provisions for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, to injunctions, trusts of land, cohabitation, appointment of experts, enforcement proceedings, appeals, and finally, costs.

District Judge Roger Bird and David Salter are to be congratulated for making available a major new service to family practitioners.

DAME ELIZABETH BUTLER-SLOSS
President of the Family Division
May 2002

-----------------------------

Preface

Words and forms of words are the lawyer’s tools for expressing what a client seeks and wants to say, and the court’s tools for expressing what must happen. Clarity and concision are qualities to be encouraged and, when found, cherished, and it is hoped that this book will help practitioners of all descriptions to achieve them.

It is hoped that the book is as comprehensive as possible. In the early editions, for reasons of policy it was decided not to include the forms of application and orders in public law children cases; the reason for this was that such applications always begin in a family proceedings court, but also, more significantly, that the legal departments of local authorities, who initiate all such proceedings, had well-settled procedures and forms available to them and it was thought unlikely that they need assistance. This has proved to be only partially true and it has been brought to our attention that there is, in fact, a lively demand for such material. We are pleased to meet this need and there is now a new section, by an expert author, on this topic.

This is a loose-leaf service and will be updated at least annually. Readers who note the absence of any precedent which they think should be included are encouraged to contact the publishers; all suggestions will be gratefully received.

I am very grateful to David Salter for kindly agreeing to be consultant editor. His advice and contributions have been invaluable. As will be seen, since the first edition the precedents have grown and it has proved impossible for David and myself to continue to provide all the precedents required. We are therefore delighted that we have been joined by a truly expert band of co-authors; Michael Keehan QC, Andy King and Charles Prest have added much to the authority and expertise of this work and we hope that ours will be a long and profitable association.

Finally, we are honoured that the President agreed to write a foreword to the first edition, and are most grateful to her for her encouragement.

ROGER BIRD
5 September 2008

-----------------------------

Extract from H2

Inspection
Any request for inspection copies of the disclosed documents shall be made within 14 days after service of the list.
Specific disclosure: property documents
The [Claimant]/[Defendant]/[parties] shall [jointly] use [his]/[her]/[their] best endeavours to obtain and disclose:
(a) the file held by the conveyancer who acted in the purchase of [address] (‘the Property’) including any deed of declaration of trust (whether or not completed);
(b) the mortgage application to [name of mortgagee] and mortgage offer in relation to the Property;
(c) any notice of severance served by either party on the other in relation to the

Property
Office copies of registered title
The party in whose name the title to the Property is registered shall file and serve office copies of the entries in the Register at HM Land Registry by 4 pm on [  ] 20[  ].

Witness statements
The Claimant shall file and serve any amended or additional witness statements in support of the claim and any notices of intention to rely on hearsay evidence by 4 pm on [  ] 20[  ].
The Defendant shall file and serve any amended or additional witness statements in defence of the claim and any notices of intention to rely on hearsay evidence by 4 pm on [  ] 20[  ]

Video link evidence
The evidence of [ witness ] shall be given by video link and the [Claimant]/[Defendant] shall by 4 pm on [ date ] make the necessary arrangements with the Diary Manager. The cost of the video link shall [be borne by the [Claimant]/[Defendant]/[the parties equally]]/[be costs in the case].

How to use this work

Looseleaf updating
The looseleaf arrangement of the Family Law Precedents Service enables the book to be updated by the removal and insertion of replacement pages, which will be supplied in the form of Updates. Each Update will be accompanied by filing instructions which should be followed carefully to ensure that your book is fully and correctly updated. At the end of the Binder, you will find a Filing Record card which should be filled in each time an Update has been filed. A Checklist of Pages is sent with each updating issue, to be filed at the back of the Binder. You should use this to check that your copy of the Family Law Precedents Service has been correctly updated.

Structure of the book
The binder is divided into 14 Divisions labelled General and A–M, which are separated by red plastic divider cards. The General Division contains headings and opening and closing parts which are in common use for many family law applications, and some precedents relating to minors and parties under a disability. Detailed contents lists are given at the beginning of each Division.
In most Divisions, the precedents are followed by relevant procedural guides. Precedents and procedural guides are sequentially numbered throughout each Division, eg Precedent F1 et seq; Procedural Guide F1(PG) et seq.

Page numbering
The page number is at the foot of each page and includes the Division letter and the page number, eg A–31.

How to use the precedents
The precedents in this book are model documents which are intended to be adapted for use as working documents. Most of these are available on the accompanying CD-ROM, in word-processing format. Further details concerning the use of the CD-ROM and its contents are available in the file readme.doc.
Within the model documents, text in square brackets in italics gives instructions; text in square brackets in roman is suggested text or alternative wordings. Alternative provisions are introduced by EITHER [alternative A] OR [alternative B], etc. Once the document has been modified and completed to suit individual needs, the square brackets, instructions, alternative text and any clauses which are not required should be deleted. Any text in round brackets should remain.

Tables and index
The book contains tables of cases, statutes, statutory instruments and practice directions. These are located behind the plastic divider card marked ‘Tables’.
A subject index appears at the end of the binder.
The tables and index will be updated along with the rest of the book.

Family Law Precedents Service Online offers:

• Rapid updating – no filing of updates, no installing of disks onto your system. You also receive more regular updates
• Hyper-text links to Family Law Reports cases
• Over 500 precedents at your finger tips - save all precedents in word format and tailor them to your needs

Family Law Precedents Service Online is now on the new enhanced platform, the new features include:

• Compatible with mobile devices - view the online service on your iPad/tablet device
• Create PDFs - Have the content that is on your screen offline when you are out of the office
• Faster searching facility - Indexing, hyperlinks and search filters to get you to the information you need quicker than ever before
• Customise your service - Mix and match Family Law modules (journals, reports and major works) or subscribe to the entire service ... it’s up to you!

For further information or for your FREE 14 day trial click here or call 0117 918 1555

Visit the online services page