Court backlogs are ruining lives by leaving families in limbo as they try to sort out children arrangements and finances after divorce.
Resolution’s Good Divorce Week starts today and we’re raising awareness about the crisis in the family courts and what can be done about it.
Official figures show that private children cases are taking nearly a year to reach conclusion, six weeks longer than the previous year – with financial cases taking even longer.
This is having a huge impact – a survey of Resolution members found:
- 20% said court delays caused clients to rely on benefits
- 34% said they’d referred a client to a counsellor or therapist to help them cope with the stress of ongoing court delays
- 90% said court backlogs were causing additional and unnecessary stress and pressure for clients
To help you spread the word about Good Divorce Week we have created a template press release that you can adapt and send out to local media outlets.
Use our template press release
You can also download social media assets that highlight the findings from our member survey which have been designed for Twitter and LinkedIn.
Tomorrow, we’ll be in Parliament speaking to MPs and peers about the state of the courts as well as all the different options that are available to families to resolve disputes.
We know lots of members have arranged meetings with their local MPs this week and so we have produced a useful MP briefing for you in order to guide your conversation.
We’re looking forward to raising awareness about the benefits of early legal advice and information all this week. We want couples to know that achieving constructive resolutions doesn’t always have to involve going to court.
Thank you for getting involved in Good Divorce Week. Let us know of any media coverage you get.