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03 March 2023 / David Burrows
Issue: 8015 / Categories: Features , Family , CPR , Procedure & practice
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Civil & family proceedings: where do the twain meet?

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David Burrows delves into the origins of the Family Procedure Rules 2010: how do they overlap with their civil counterparts?
  • Key examples of crossover between the Family Procedure Rules 2010 and the Civil Procedure Rules 1998.

Parts of the Family Procedure Rules 2010 (FPR 2010) cannot be understood without reference to their parallel progenitors in the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 (CPR 1998). Examples of this crossover between sets of rules follow; but first, a little history. For reasons which remain mystifying, the committee that set up CPR 1998 decreed that they should not apply to family proceedings (CPR 2.1(2)). Family proceedings were ghettoised and got their own rules 12 years later, namely FPR 2010. Between 1999 and 2011, parties to family proceedings had to continue with the older civil rules (ie Rules of Supreme Court 1965 etc). Yet, both sets of rules regulate the same statute and common law in civil and family proceedings, though in different factual contexts

Many of the CPR 1998

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