Financial Remedies Conference 2025

Financial Remedies Conference 2025

Aysen, Patricia and I recently attended the Financial Remedies Conference on 16 October 2025 – it is an annual event shining a spotlight on essential legal and practice developments in Financial Remedies work, and is always well attended by judges, barristers and solicitors undertaking this area of work.

This year it was introduced and hosted by the Chair, Mr Justice Peel, with a Keynote Speech by Sir Nicholas Mostyn (retired High Court Family Judge) and an update on the Financial Remedies Court by its London Lead His Honour Judge Hess.

As to be expected, the day followed a swift agenda covering a wide range of topics with key financial case law updates (including the relevance  and risks of AI), Duxbury case tables and the move away from joint lives maintenance, Non-Court Dispute Resolution processes, the Supreme Court decision of Standish (a discretionary or evaluative exercise?), some fascinating statistics on the efficiency of the Financial Remedies Court, and the ever ongoing debate on conduct in the context of domestic abuse and its relevance in financial proceedings.

What a feast for financial remedy practitioners!

Particular highlights:

- Sir Nicholas Mostyn’s entertaining Keynote Speech “Taking Cinderella to the Ball - Why FR work should be better recognised”  kicked the day off – this was a fascinating whistlestop tour of divorce and matrimonial law, with a particular slant on its gendered development in favour of men. He highlighted the ongoing lack of judicial recognition as to conduct in financial remedies work, when dealing with domestic abuse and he was frank in his view that the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 is in need of an update!

- This led very neatly into Anita Mehta’s passionate and articulate address in the afternoon on “Conduct: does it need a re-set?”. Anita has been vocal in leading the debate in the family law world on the treatment of domestic abuse in financial remedy cases. Needless to say,  Sir Mostyn’s support on this thorny issue was welcome indeed! Anita was the co-chair of the Resolution’s working party into Domestic Abuse in Financial Remedy and she took us through the many reports which have been undertaken around this, her Resolution report, (which has been referenced by both the Law Commission’s scoping report) can be found here. Anita articulately took us to the case-law and highlighted the ongoing reluctance within the judiciary to apply “conduct” arguments to domestic abuse cases. She finished, with a poll on the audience as to whether conduct should be applied in a financial remedy case presenting facts akin to the French case ‘Pelicot’ – an overwhelming 91 % of the audience agreed conduct arguments should apply. Watch this space! Mr Justice Peel addressed us with his thoughts that this is going to have to be an issue scrutinised by either the Supreme Court or Parliament.

- Standish- discretion more or less? was led by James Ewin KC who made us all put our thinking caps on post lunch and consider common financial applications and whether the court is undertaking a fact-finding, discretionary or evaluative exercise. In many cases, at least two if not all three of these approaches apply. The conclusion, Standish is going to keep the family lawyers debating for some time to come!

- Finally, HHJ Hess, won us over with some statistics on the Financial Remedies Court, which has seen very positive developments during his tenure, as he has worked tirelessly towards improving its efficiency. To quote:

1)Consent Orders on the Consent Portal:
32,582 applications made, with 77% approved first time and an average of 45 days from issue to an order being made

2)Contested application on the Court Portal
12,474 contested applications made, with 1838 being in London and an average time to First Appointment being 17 weeks

70% of cases settled without going to final hearing but for those which did, the average length of time was 74.6 weeks.

Needless to say, the favoured and far swifter approach to determining matrimonial finance disputes, is of course settling by consent, rather than engaging in lengthy and costly contested proceedings.

HHJ Hess and others discussed the important data to be found within these financial consent orders and noted that there is government interest in harvesting some of this, with the assistance of course, of AI, so as to provide a better understanding as to the terms on which divorcing couples are settling their financial cases.

Given the discretionary nature of matrimonial finance law, this harvesting of data could well assist practitioners, judiciary and the public in achieving outcomes in financial remedy proceedings, particularly in needs- based cases.

‍