A recent article in The Law Society Gazette has also brought this to light and the impact of Legal Aid cuts on families receiving legal advice early on. The article can be found here: Children waiting a year for legal decision on living arrangements | News | Law Gazette
We have recently had our Legal Aid audit. This has made us consider the funding in private law matters in particular. The Legal Aid funding for such matters under 'legal help' is quite often very knotty to deal with and to understand.
The article within 'The Gazette' deals with The Law Society's call on the Government to restore early legal advice in Family Law cases to help parents to better understand their rights and options for resolving issues involving children.
The Importance Of Early Advice in Family Law Matters
I have often dealt with cases in this area of work where parties do no have access to legal advice given the cost and their ineligibility for Legal Aid. This is sad and has led to cases where I have experienced a lay party reaching final hearing stage before actually having somebody ensure that they fully understood the concept of parental responsibility. That is a fundamental term which could and would have been explained by a family lawyer at the outset of the proceedings. Although the Family Courts do what they can to ensure parties without access to legal advice are understanding the process, they cannot provide advice.
In some cases, extended and prolonged proceedings could have been avoided if parties understood the basic legal principles and available options early on and in more detail. That is disappointing and clearly does impact children in the long term. It also impacts other cases where our system is full of very long running cases which may have had the capacity to have been settled earlier on.
How We Can Help
We are happy to provide advice at an initial stage and we offer initial appointments at a reduced rate so that we can give clients some initial advice and information which might assist going forward whether they decide to continue to instruct Solicitors or not.
If you would like any further advice in relation to the children matters, we would be happy to help. Please contact myself or any of the Family Law team on 01332 364436 or via email at legal@timms-law.com.
