Family

Divorce applications submitted before they should have been and wrongly allowed to proceed due to an error in the courts’ IT system are voidable – but not void, the High Court has ruled.

An online service specialising in uncontested divorces has become an alternative business structure regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The largest family law firm in the country is to pilot an unbundled service and offer clients more holistic support as part of a move to widen the current offering, its executive chairman has revealed.

The largest family law firm in the country, Stowe Family Law, has been sold by its private equity owner to a global investment giant entering the legal market for the first time.

Artificial intelligence is being developed for “triage and work allocation” in law firms and particularly for conveyancing, a director of the SRA has said.

Legal regulators must warn lawyers that they will face action to stop them unethically taking advantage of vulnerable litigants, a charity has urged.

The SRA is to examine how family law and landlord and tenant law specialists maintain their competence amid increasing reports about their practices.

Financial remedy proceedings to which the Court of Appeal said a litigation funder could be a party so as to protect the £1m it was owed by the wife have now been dropped with the money still owing.

A solicitor who withdrew from a Family Court hearing over a fee dispute so late that he left his client no chance to find a replacement has been rebuked by the SRA.

There is currently “not a vision” for how people in the family justice system, clients and professionals, can “safely harness” the benefits of artificial intelligence, research has argued.

The High Court has used new powers to “encourage” the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in family proceedings in the absence of agreement between the parties.

A not-for-profit family law alternative business structure is looking at other sectors where it could help vulnerable and under-represented people are not eligible for legal aid.

A fault in the digital divorce system allowed 67 members of the public to apply for their divorces earlier than they were allowed to by law, it emerged last week.

Family legal aid is loss-making for almost half of providers, research has found, with those handling private, rather than public, law matters struggling the most.

The annual value of the family law market hit £2bn for the first time last year, as it rose by 4.5%, researchers have found, with ancillary services boosting the opportunities for firms.