Domestic abuse is always brought to our attention at Christmas time.
Christmas often intensifies existing relationship challenges, acting as a detonator for underlying tensions.
In the UK, heightened emotions and expectations during the festive period can worsen issues like unresolved conflicts, financial strain, and differing parenting approaches.
These problems, which may bubble along unnoticed throughout the year, often surface under the added pressures of the season. While the festive period doesn’t create these challenges, it can amplify them significantly.
The Guardian have previously reported that during Christmas, some charities have noted a 15% increase in domestic abuse-related calls to their helplines.
Domestic abuse isn’t isolated to this time of year. And often the abuse doesn’t just occur as the catalyst for divorce; but while separation or divorce proceedings are underway.
Many of us associate domestic abuse as physical, and while this can be one of the main causes for domestic disputes, it is not the only form of ‘abuse’ that one party can inflict on the other.
Domestic Abuse in Financial Remedy Proceedings
A report titled ‘Domestic abuse in financial remedy proceedings’, published on 8 October 2024, explores this intricate connection between domestic abuse and financial disputes during separation and divorce.
What are Financial Remedy Proceedings?
Financial remedy proceedings are a legal process that helps divorcing couples or civil partners divide their assets and other resources, the outcome being a court-approved financial remedy order that outlines how the couple's finances will be shared.
The 2024 report and study, conducted by Resolution—a community of family justice professionals dedicated to constructive conflict resolution—examines how domestic abuse can manifest in financial remedy cases. Key examples include tactics such as withholding funds, concealing assets, creating delays, bullying behaviour, and breaching court orders. The findings shed light on how these behaviours impact families navigating financial settlements during separation.
Resolution’s report reveals concerning statistics about the prevalence of domestic abuse in financial remedy proceedings. The study gathered 526 responses from a multi-disciplinary group, including family law professionals and domestic abuse charities.
What are the findings linking financial remedy cases involving domestic abuse?
Resolution identifies recurring patterns, including failures to provide full and frank financial disclosure, (now increasingly recognised as a form of economic abuse), non-compliance with court orders, and deliberate delaying tactics, such as refusing to engage with lenders or complete necessary steps for selling the family home. These behaviours highlight how perpetrators use financial systems to maintain control and prolong victims' hardship.
79.8% of professionals also believe the long-term impact of domestic abuse is not adequately addressed in financial proceedings, and 80.2% feel that economic abuse is similarly overlooked. These findings demonstrate a need for greater recognition and consideration of domestic abuse, particularly economic abuse, within financial remedy cases.
The report highlights a significant issue in financial remedy proceedings: the requirement to establish a causative link between domestic abuse and adverse financial consequences fails to account for research showing that a history of domestic abuse is strongly associated with poorer short-term and long-term financial outcomes for victims. The report raises concerns about existing case law, which concedes that such consequences may not always be “easily measurable,” creating challenges, as the full financial impact is often impossible to assess at the time of a final hearing.
What should be done to address these issues?
Resolution has proposed a series of recommendations to address the issues identified. These include (but are not limited to):
- Considering changes to be made to the Family Procedure Rules 2010 that should include amending the overriding objective, so that dealing with cases ‘justly’ includes ‘ensuring the parties are safeguarded from domestic abuse’.
- Addressing whether the court’s case management powers can be better used where a party fails to provide full and frank disclosure in pre-proceedings correspondence or Non-Court Dispute Resolution (NCDR).
- That it should be made clear as a matter of law that the duty of full and frank disclosure starts when parties start to engage in NCDR or negotiations i.e. that this duty will usually start before any court proceedings.
- Conducting every case management decision in financial remedy proceedings in a way that will safeguard the parties from domestic abuse.
- Amending the costs rules to try to and stop a party from using court proceedings as a way of perpetrating abuse.
- The Government should introduce, at the earliest opportunity, the Law Commission’s 2016 recommendations to extend existing methods of enforcement and introduce new types of enforcement orders reviewing legal aid thresholds and requirements to improve access for domestic abuse survivors. *
Implementing these recommendations would bring much-needed certainty, clarity, and support to victim-survivors, both in the short and long term, as they navigate financial challenges following separation. Additionally, it would facilitate the prompt resolution of financial matters, providing substantial relief and assistance to those affected.
For legal advice on domestic abuse, financial remedy cases or anything related, please contact a Family Lawyer at Coles Miller to discuss your situation.
* taken from the public report on https://resolution.org.uk/
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