For approaching two decades, family courts have been accused of making life changing decisions about children and who they live with made in secret, away from the scrutiny of the public gaze. Recognising the force of these accusations, senior family courts judges have, over that time, implemented a raft of rule changes, pilot projects and judicial guidance aimed at making the family justice more accountable and transparent. But has any progress been made? Are there still suspicions that family judges make irrevocable, unaccountable decisions in private hearings? And if so, are those suspicions justified and what can be done to dispel them? In this important and timely new book, Clifford Bellamy, a recently retired family judge who has been at the sharp end of family justice during all these changes, attempts to answer those questions and more. He has spoken to leading journalists, judges and academic researchers to find out what the obstacles to open reporting are – be they legal, economic or cultural - and interweaves their insights with informed analysis on how the laws regulating family court reporting operate. Along the way he provides a comprehensive review of the raft of initiatives he has seen come and go, summarises the position now and uses this experience to suggest how this fundamental aspect of our justice system could adapt in the face of this criticism. Every professional working in the family justice system – lawyers, social workers, court staff and judges - as well as those who job it is to report on legal affairs, should read this informative, nuanced exposition of what open justice means and why it matters so much to those whose lives are upended by the family justice system.

'Bromley's Family Law' is a well-established and popular textbook with students and practitioners alike. This edition has been updated to take into account recent developments in family law.

TV presenter, bestselling author and psychologist Nigel Latta gives common-sense and amusing answers to the complex issues surrounding today's family in its many and varied forms. Utilising both the best current research about stepfamilies and over two decades of clinical experience, Nigel traverses the dilemmas and questions that modern family life presents. The shape of the modern family has changed hugely in the last twenty years. Once upon a time mum, dad, and a three or four kids used to be the norm, but that type of family is almost an anomaly now. Stepfamilies, separated families, single parents, grandparents raising their children’s children, bitter family court battles, and complicated access arrangements . . . it’s a new world full of complicated family arrangements and conundrums. The Modern Family Survival Guide covers many key topics such as separation and divorce; surviving family court; sharing custody; co-parenting when your ex is difficult; step parenting; adoption issues; parenting the ‘only child’; gay and lesbian parents; grandparents raising grandchildren, and much more.

THE TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A powerful polemic' Sunday Times 'A compelling, eye-opening read' Daily Express – Did an illegal immigrant avoid deportation because he had a cat? – Is the law on the side of the burglar who enters your home? – Are unelected judges ‘enemies of the people’? Most of us think the law is only relevant to criminals, if we even think of it at all. But the law touches every area of our lives: from intimate family matters to the biggest issues in our society. Our unfamiliarity is dangerous because it makes us vulnerable to media spin, political lies and the kind of misinformation that frequently comes from loud-mouthed amateurs and those with vested interests. This 'fake law' allows the powerful and the ignorant to corrupt justice without our knowledge – worse, we risk letting them make us complicit. Thankfully, the Secret Barrister is back to reveal the stupidity, malice and incompetence behind many of the biggest legal stories of recent years. In Fake Law, the Secret Barrister debunks the lies and builds a defence against the abuse of our law, our rights and our democracy that is as entertaining as it is vital.

Forensic Mental Health Professionals have entered the fray of child custody litigation in ways that could not have been predicted even a decade ago. Traditionally engaged as neutral court appointed evaluators or mediators, or as treatment providers for children, parents or families, FMHPs are assuming a range of consulting functions. Services span a wide range, including providing expert testimony on specific content areas; reviewing and critiquing colleague’s work product; providing behind the scenes consultation to attorneys, and even help attorneys manage difficult cases and clients. These more recent services raise questions about sound professional practice. This volume tackles these thorny issues head on, and discusses questions how consultants can work creatively and ethically to make a positive contribution in the challenging world of family law. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Child Custody.

Why were the Victorians more fascinated with secrecy than people of other periods? What is the function of secrets in Victorian fiction and in the society depicted, how does it differ from that of other periods, and how did readers of Victorian fiction respond to the secrecy they encountered? These are some of the questions Leila May poses in her study of the dynamics of secrecy and disclosure in fiction from Queen Victoria's coronation to the century's end. May argues that the works of writers such as Charlotte Brontë, William Makepeace Thackeray, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and Arthur Conan Doyle reflect a distinctly Victorian obsession with the veiling and unveiling of information. She argues that there are two opposing vectors in Victorian culture concerning secrecy and subjectivity, one presupposing a form of radical Cartesian selfhood always remaining a secret to other selves and another showing that nothing can be hidden from the trained eye. (May calls the relation between these clashing tendencies the "dialectics" of secrecy and disclosure.) May's theories of secrecy and disclosure are informed by the work of twentieth-century social scientists. She emphasizes Georg Simmel's thesis that sociality and subjectivity are impossible without secrecy and Erving Goffman's claim that sociality can be understood in terms of performativity, "the presentation of the self in everyday life," and his revelation that performance always involves disguise, hence secrecy. May's study offers convincing evidence that secrecy and duplicity, in contrast to the Victorian period's emphasis on honesty and earnestness, emerged in response to the social pressures of class, gender, monarchy, and empire, and were key factors in producing both the subjectivity and the sociality that we now recognize as Victorian.

The Victorian Novel On File argues that the nineteenth-century information explosion shapes the novel form. In a world teeming with data, the novel is a storage medium, cluttered with detail and accumulating more than it can use. The fictional things that have been read as insignificant should be seen instead as vessels of information, embedding the text with potential. This study weaves together a formal account of the novel with media and information studies as well as new materialist approaches to objects. Information took material form in the nineteenth century: in Victorian literature, data can be located in bric-a-brac, folded-up papers, semi-precious stones, and rubbish heaps. Yet this information may never be transmitted as knowledge. Instead, the novel offers indefinite storage, gesturing toward the future while holding action and accountability in abeyance. Fallen by the wayside of plot are documents left on file, containers left unopened, stock left on the shelf, and secrets left untold-enacting, this study argues, the Victorian novel's aesthetics of deferral. In readings of works by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins, and Rudyard Kipling, this study illustrates the formal effects of cultural questions about value and meaning, longevity and history, abundance and overwhelm, and keeping and discarding. It closes by showing how these same questions animate the twenty-first century's information culture as well.

Forced Adoption is a book on sale at cost price that exposes the secret family courts, the gagging of parents and worse still the forced adoption of their children for such trivial reasons as 'risk of emotional abuse'. All conclusions are sourced from Parliamentary Questions, the BBC, ITV and reputable newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. I did not believe that secret courts and forced adoptions in a money-driven industry could exist until I verified actual cases. Free legal advice and help is offered to all parents who are victims of this iniquitous system.