At work with the principal family judges

District Judge Clive Million offers a look behind the doors of the Principal Registry of the Family Division

The Principal Registry of the Family Division (PRFD) is the largest specialist family law judicial centre in the country.

After 120 years at Somerset House, it moved in 1998 to First Avenue House in High Holborn.

We swapped a building with a river view, grand faade and posh address but poor facilities for a functional, air conditioned and modernised 1950s building with 20 courts and 19 permanent High Court (PRFD) district judges.

The present PRFD district judges have a variety of backgrounds: seven are solicitors, one is a former secretary of the Principal Registry, and 11 are barristers.

Eight are women, eleven are men.

This gives an invaluable breadth of outlook and experience.

We meet informally at lunchtime, which fosters a strong collegiate (but unstuffy) spirit and consistency of approach to cases.

We have a system of managed over-listing which results in a high volume of heavy cases.

In 2002, the number of new cases received or issued at the PRFD was: 1,207 children care cases, almost 2,800 private law children cases, 500 adoption applications, about 9,000 petitions for divorce (approximately 7% of the national total) and 2,346 applications for financial ancillary relief.

Interestingly, wardship applications have all but disappeared.

Their use is now almost entirely confined to free-standing applications under the inherent jurisdiction (for example, publicity injunctions and similar).

We are a specialist adoption centre, with an increasing number of cases because of recent practice changes.

Adoptions of children where there are foreign or immigration aspects are (and were, even before these changes) often transferred from county courts to the PRFD.

Confusingly for some, we have, as a Division of the High Court, both a High Court and county court jurisdiction in family and children matters.

The PRFD is treated as a divorce county court, and is also a care centre, a family hearing centre and a designated adoption centre at both High Court and county court levels.

But we are not a county court.

So, for example, we have no jurisdiction to deal with claims under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

However, we deal with hundreds of applications for injunctions under the Family Law Act 1996 for domestic violence (very few of which, incidentally, become contested).

Being part of the High Court, we also do deal with Inheritance Act claims, and claims under the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996.

Unlike a county court, we also deal with probate matters.

This is limited to non-contentious probate, for example, the grant of probate and letters of administration, estate accounts and enquiries, and the appointment or removal of executors.

Contentious probate actions, such as disputed wills or breach of trust, go to the Chancery Division.

The three main areas of the work of the PRFD are money claims after divorce, care cases for children and private law children cases.

For practical reasons, most of our cases originate from south-east England and Greater London.

However our role is more extensive.

Geographically, our jurisdiction spans the whole of England and Wales.

Because we are a specialist centre in the capital city, we draw a higher proportion of cases which have national or international aspects or attract national interest: celebrity divorces, and children disputes (both about money and questions of paternity, residence and contact) involving sports stars, pop idols and show business personalities.

We deal with many big-money claims following divorce or separation.

But not all of our work involves the rich or famous.

We are in the middle of a city with its share of poverty and deprivation.

As with all courts in such urban areas, we deal with the family consequences of the whole range of human endeavour, disadvantage and failure.

One major difference between county court and district registry district judges and ourselves is that we have a unique specialist jurisdiction in Children Act cases identical to that of nominated circuit judges.

We deal with substantial final hearings in both care cases and private law children cases at county court level.

Part of the role, therefore, of the PRFD district judges (together with two or three circuit judges at the Royal Courts of Justice) is in effect to act as the county court level care centre for the whole of the area inside the M25.

We hear and decide children care cases which, outside London, would be heard only by circuit judges.

Children conciliation hearings

In private law children cases, we have a unique form of conciliation appointment, which has been operating here for 20 years.

All private law residence and contact applications at the PRFD are referred to such an appointment in the first instance.

Conciliation appointments are confidential and are conducted as short (30 minute) informal mini-hearings.

Substantive orders are only made with the parties' agreement.

Lawyers usually attend, but as far as possible we get the parties to speak for themselves.

The district judge sits with a children and family reporter alongside on the bench rather in the role of an assessor.

Children of nine years and older (and sometimes younger siblings) must come to court and are seen by the reporter.

The views of the children are then discussed in court with the parents.

The parties are also encouraged to discuss matters at court outside the hearings.

Conciliation appointments are a form of early intervention hearing, and may be best understood as a type of in-court mediation.

But there are some differences.

The district judge and the reporter offer suggestions and firm predictive guidance to the couples as to the best way forward and the likely outcome of the applications.

Often a series of conciliation appointments are used to progress contact through a number of stages of developing contact, for example from a contact centre to staying contact.

Agreement is frequently reached in the end without the need for any final hearing or any written report.

If agreement is not reached, neither the district judges nor the reporter are involved in any later contested hearings between the same couple.

As far as I am aware, the Principal Registry scheme is the only one in the country where children routinely come to court to be spoken to by the officer from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS).

Also it is probably the only one where the officer sits alongside the district judge like an assessor and takes a significant role in the discussions during the hearing.

It is a model which might be tried elsewhere, but it does require facilities at court suitable for the children to be brought to.

It also needs some expertise and flexibility from the court and the commitment of manpower on the part of CAFCASS.

District Judge Clive Million sits at the PRFD