Reimagining Family Law

Tackling misconceptions of divorce and financial settlement

There is a dominant narrative of lifelong ‘big money’ pay-outs from wealthy men to their ‘gold-digger’ ex-wives which pervades the popular consciousness and media coverage of high-profile divorce settlements – or financial remedies. This discourse is reflected in parliamentary activity. However, such ‘big money’ cases are rare and Professor Emma Hitchings’s research focuses on more ‘everyday’ financial remedies.

Impact: At-a-glance

  • Improved understanding and decision making on family law and family justice, with research used in high-profile debates, and in training and guidance for policy makers
  • Shaped a new national system of specialist financial remedy courts in England and Wales, with research used as the underpinning evidence
  • Influenced implementation for legal safeguards in pre-nuptial agreements, with research that shaped Law Commission recommendations

The work of Professor Emma Hitchings has challenged and shaped understanding of how the law on financial and property cases on divorce play out in practice.  Parliamentary activity has, however, reflected the media focus on the bigger money cases and the narrative of life-long maintenance for wives with Baroness Deech’s House of Lords’ Divorce (Financial Provision) Bill (2017-19) aiming to limit periodical payments to ex-partners to five years. However, such ‘big money’ and life-long maintenance cases are rare.

Hitchings’s research focuses on more ‘everyday’ financial remedy cases. Around 100,000 couples divorce each year in the UK (ONS figures for 2020). Nearly half of these couples have children under the age of 16 (ONS figures for 2013) and approximately one third of all divorcing couples (Family Court Statistics Quarterly, 2020) will also pursue financial remedy orders to determine how finances will be split between the partners.
 
Hitchings’s research (jointly undertaken with Joanna Miles at Cambridge University) provides a powerful and vital counterpoint to misleading stereotypes surrounding financial remedies and demonstrates why longer-term pay-outs can be essential in supporting families with young children. The research occurs in a context in which many women are less able than most men to deal alone with the economic shock of divorce.
 
Prior to the publication of Hitchings and Miles’ research, there was little empirical data on what actually happens in practice for most divorcing couples pursuing financial remedy orders. This hindered policymakers’ ability to make informed decisions about the current state of these substantive areas of family law and the family justice system.
 
Their research has not only produced a more informed awareness of the impact of financial remedy law by contributing to high-profile, influential debates and training sessions for the judiciary by countering damaging misconceptions surrounding financial remedy pay-outs, but it has also provided evidence towards the development of a new national system of specialist financial remedy courts in England and Wales.
 
Hitchings’s earlier work also influenced the Law Commission’s recommendations for law reform to safeguard individuals entering pre-nuptial agreements. Hitchings’s qualitative study identified the pressure placed on individuals by their partner to sign a pre-nuptial agreement and emphasised the need for legal safeguards in any law reform which would make pre-nuptial agreements legally binding. This research was used extensively by the Law Commission in their final report (2014).
 

Further information

Hitchings was an academic consultant for the successful appellant’s legal team in the Supreme Court case of Mills v Mills (2018); her work with Joanna Miles (Cambridge) providing much-needed data on the settlements reached in financial remedy cases was used at judicial training events (2014 and 2018) and she provided training for approximately 200 members of the judiciary in 2019-20.  Hitchings’ research on pre-nuptial agreements for the Law Commission (2011) was a strong influence on its final report (2014) and she was an invited member of the Commission’s Advisory Group between 2011-2014. She is currently leading the ‘Fair Shares’ research study which aims to provide the first detailed, representative picture of the use of different kinds of financial arrangements reached by divorcing couples in England and Wales.