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Top Matrimonial Lawyer Calls on Millions to Protect Children and Save Crumbling Family Justice System
08 April 2008
Surrey, 8th April 2008. One of Surrey’s most experienced matrimonial lawyers is calling on the government to spend millions to protect children in the spiralling number of divorce cases.
Sarah Cornes of howell jones solicitors says: “I totally agree with the senior High Court judge, Mr Justice Coleridge, who recently lambasted successive governments for neglecting the family justice system.
“From my own 20 years experience at the coalface, I can tell you that the system needs millions to protect children. They can wait for six months before a divorce case comes to court and the uncertainty and tension can have a terrible effect on them.
“At worst, delays may result in the risk of harm to the children involved, which is totally unacceptable.
“If family breakdown is not managed to minimise the impact upon children, those caught in the middle of separations today are more likely to be tomorrow’s binge drinkers, drug addicts and criminals.”
Sarah Cornes, who was one of the first solicitors in Surrey to train as a mediator, adds that millions of pounds are needed and she echoes Judge Coleridge, who last weekend urged the government to ‘stop chipping away at the family justice system and trying to have it on the cheap’.
One solution, says Sarah, herself a collaborative lawyer, is to make more money available to fund collaboration. This is an increasingly popular process where spouses meet with specially trained lawyers to discuss the terms of the separation, tailored to the priorities and needs of the family – and particularly the welfare of the children.
“Collaboration also involves a commitment not to go through the courts and speeds up the whole process. But it should be available to families at all income levels through a legal aid subsidy. After all it is saving the courts time and the taxpayer money.
“But, most crucially, it is saving the pain that many of our children are going through.”
Sarah Cornes is at sarah.cornes@howell-jones.com
