FAMILY LAW BIBLIOGRAPHY

Internet links to the main publishers are found at the bottom of this document. For other publishers and links see the links pages on our website.

MAIN LOOSELEAFS / ENCYCLOPAEDIAS

Butterworths Family Law Service (children & money)

(Butterworths, ISBN 0-406-04843-6)

Comprehensive but relatively expensive.  Price is available on application but was at £451 plus fee (up to £175 per update for up to six updates).

Children Law & Practice: Hershman McFarlane (children except re divorce and money)

(Jordan's Family Law, ISBN 0-85308-118-2)

The best. Cost is £425 and thereafter an annual subscription of £325. Free copy of Hershman & McFarlane Children Act Handbook Updated 3 times a year. Also available on CD via Famlex subscription service (contact 0117 918 1555 or see Jordan's website). The advantage of this is it is highly portable and you do not have to do the updating by hand. CD also has a copy of every FLR case referred to which you do not get with the hard copy. Drawback to CD is having to print off chunks if you want to take it to court with you but that may not be an issue if you have a laptop. Judgments are not in same format as printed copy.

Clarke Hall & Morrison on Children

(Butterworths,ISBN 0-406-99662-8)

Covers both family law and the criminal jurisdiction of the youth courts (£255). 5 loose leaf volumes - first year's updating included in purchase price - 3 service issues a year and annual charge for subsequent updating. Also available in CD-ROM as part of Butterworths Family & Child Law Library.

Duckworth\' Matrimonial Property and Finance

(Family Law, Jordan's), 2000, ISBN 0-85308-525-6)

Excellent and available as loose leaf and CD. Again relatively expensive - £360 (2 updates at £325 a year but essential if you are doing ancillary relief.

Financial Provision in Family Matters, Wildblood & Eaton

(Sweet & Maxwell, ISBN 0-421-63070-3)

Good but fairly expensive (£232). Loose leaf first published in 1998.

Rayden & Jackson's Law and Practice in Divorce & Family Matters, ed Wall J et al

Butterworths 18th Edition June 2005 ISBN 0-406-94823-6

Covers all sorts of obscure bits to do with divorce such as foreign divorces, marriages act, jurisdiction arguments, nullity petitions etc. Expensive at £535 but with a loose leaf updater. Also available online - see Butterworths' site.

Jackson's Matrimonial Finance and Taxation, Smith & Newton,

(Butterworths, 8th Edition, October 2008, ISBN 9-781-140-572-534-7)

Good on money matters, relatively expensive (£180), not so easy to find your way around as Duckworths and Butterworths. Suggests more questions than answers but this is a feature of the subject matter and very thought provoking.

Family Court Practice 2008 - The Red Book, Bracewell, Family Law

(Jordan's, April 2008 edition, ISBN 978-1-84661-105-6)

Costs £275 with free CD. Excellent. If you buy one book it should probably be this one.

Generally with the above books there is an initial purchase charge and an annual updating amount.

ESSENTIAL BACKGROUND BOOKS

A decent medical dictionary

Clinical Medicine by Kumar & Clark (£44.99, Saunders, 6th edition, 2005, ISBN 0702027634).

Children Act In Practice, White, Carr and Lowe (Butterworths, 3rd edition, 2002, ISBN 0406940037)

Excellent and not terribly expensive (£38). Contains a commentary, the Act and the Regulations (FPR) relevant to children.  4th edition due September 2008 and can be pre-ordered from Wildys

Ancillary Relief Handbook - Roger Bird, (6th edition, Family Law (Jordan's), 2007, ISBN 978-1-84661-073-8)

£59.00. Easy to understand and contains all the basics.

Ancillary Relief: The New Rules - Burrows, Family Law, 1st edition, 2000, ISBN 0-85308-625-7

Again good introduction and reasonable cost (£30).

At A Glance - FLBA (2007/2008 16th Edition)

About £40 available through FLBA but also in law bookshops. Very handy tables and very portable and now with disk. Published annually.

Resolution (formally SFLA) Precedents for Consent Orders

Available as a book and CD or disc (CD cannot be purchased without the book). £105 for non-members. ISBN 978-0-9526809-4-9

CPAG Welfare Benefits and Tax Credits Handbook (Carolyn George, CPAG, 10th edition 2008/2009, ISBN 1-906076-12-2)

Published annually. Costs £36. Other books in series cover various aspects of benefits.
There is also a CPAG book on Child Support which can be helpful. It is often important to be able to tell the court what the CSA assessment is likely to be.

Domestic Violence:  Law and Practice by Roger Bird, 5th edition, 2006, Family Law (Jordan's), ISBN 0 85308 9742)

Essential and extremely useful handbook (£45).

Children Act Handbook: Hershman / McFarlane, Family Law (Jordan's), 2008/2009, ISBN 978-1-84661-125-4

Very, very portable - contains Children Act, rules and key practice directions. £45. Published annually.

Suggested background reading on Domestic Violence

·Advisory Committee Report on Domestic Violence and the research which lead to the latest policy review;
· Children Living with Domestic Violence: Putting Men's Abuse of Women on the Child Care Agenda by Mullender & Morley (Whiting & Birch, 1994, ISBN 1-871177-72-3)
· Case of Re L, V etc on domestic violence ([2000] 2 FLR 334)
· Amicus report of Claire Sturge and Danya Glaser (Family Law, September 2000, Vol 30, pp 615-629).

Risk Assessment in Psychiatry: A Guide for Lawyers by Dr Bala Mahendra, (March 2008), ISBN 978-1-84661-1094, Jordans - Family Law £55.00

Civil Partnership: The New Law by Harper, Downes, Landells and Wilson (2005) £39.00 ISBN 978 0 85308 933 9 (Jordans New Law Series)

International Movement of Children: Law, Practice and Procedure by Nigel Lowe et al, 2004 £95.00 Family Law ISBN 0-85308-725-3

Authoritative and comprehensive text including precedents and legislation

The New Brussels II Regulation: A Supplement to International Movement of Children by Nigel Lowe 2005, Family Law, £35.00, ISBN 1846610044

A companion to the above main text and an essential guide to finding the way through Brussels II R.

GENERAL BOOKS ON ADVOCACY


Basic Practice in Court and Tribunals by Nicholas Fridd (Sweet & Maxwell, 3rd edition, 2000, ISBN 0-421-68480-1): absolutely brilliant (£65)

Guide to Civil Advocacy by Charles Foster, Jacqui Gilliatt, Charles Bourne, Prashant Popat (2nd edition, Cavendish, 2001, ISBN 1-85941-562-8) (£29.95)

Advocacy in Family Proceedings: A Practical Guide - by David Bedingfield (Jordan's Family Law, 1st edition, March 2005, ISBN 085308873X(£35)) - invaluable and extremely portable.

OTHER BOOKS OF INTEREST


Cohabitation Law & Precedents by Wood, Lush & Bishop, (3rd edition, Family Law (Jordan's), 2005, ISBN 085308-962-0)

Excellent book and though expensive (£75) good value for money as the precedents are all on disk.

Cohabitants and the Law by Anne Barlow, 3rd edition, 2001, Butterworths, ISBN 0 406 94151 3 (sold to Tottel Publishing) £54.00

A very good summary of the law affecting cohabiting couples in terms of both property and children.


Department of Health  booklets on Children Act

There are a number of official publications explaining the policy thinking behind the Act. Not necessarily recommended for purchase- each one is quite cheap (£10) but there are about 10 of them. The two most useful are what used to be called the Orange Book (now purple / lilac) and sets out how social workers are supposed to do assessments of families (Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families). The 2006 version of Working Together is available on the internet at the DfCSF.

Research outcomes

Various people including HMSO publish research reports.

See our links pages at for other interesting website links for social research.

The three main books are:

Making Decisions about Children by Schaffer (2nd edn, (Blackwells, 1998, ISBN 0-631-20259-9) (£18.99),

Child Protection: Messages from Research (HMSO,1995, ISBN 0-11-321781-1) (£14),

The Children Act Now: Messages from Research, DoH, 2001 (ISBN 0 11 322263 7) (£14.95). This is downloadable as a pdf file from the Department of Health.

See also:-

Parental Perspectives on Care Proceedings by Freeman & Hunt (£16.50, Nov 2000, ISBN 0113221207)

Expert Evidence in Child Protection Litigation by Julia Brophy (HMSO, 1999, ISBN 0-11-322251-3) (£17.50)

Child Sexual Abuse: Responding to the Experience by Parton & Wattan (Wiley / NSPCC, 1999, ISBN 0-471-98334-9) (£32.50): interesting perspectives on how Guardians and barristers are perceived by children.

Rooted Sorrows: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Child Protection, Assessment, Therapy and Treatment (ed Wall J, Family Law 1997, ISBN 0-85308-396-7) (£17.50) - collected papers of the 1995 Dartington Hall Conference to assess the role, impact and importance of child psychology and psychoanalysis on the outcome of child protection cases. This is currently out of print but may be available secondhand.

The Best-Laid Plans: Outcomes of Judicial Decisions in Child Protection Proceedings by Hunt & Macleod (HMSO, 1999, ISBN 0-11-322260-2, £25).  This is out of print but may be available secondhand.

The Child in Mind: A Child Protection Handbook by Judy Barker & Deborah Hodes (Routledge, 2008, ISBN 0415321754 £15.99) - a book directed at health care professionals but containing useful information about the child protection system and information about aspects of child abuse including failure to thrive, sexual abuse, physical abuse and paediatric assessment.

MEDICAL BOOKS


Physical Signs of Sexual Abuse in Children, Royal College of Physicians (RCP, March 2008 (£25) New Ed.

Medical Records for Lawyers by Ali Malsher, EMIS Professional Publishing, 2002, ISBN I 858II 259 I)
A very handy guide to many medical acronyms and hieroglyphics together with an explanation of the significance of test results (£44).


PARENTING


Who's Fit to Be a Parent? written by a journalist called Mukti Jain Campion (Routledge, 1995, ISBN 0-415-06683-9) (£28.99).

What is a Parent?: A Socio-Legal Analysis ed by Bainham et al (Hart Publishing, 1999, ISBN 1-84113-043-5) (£26.00 pbk.).


And if you have more time on your hands

Paedophiles & Sexual Offences against Children by Howitt (Wiley,1995, ISBN 0-471-95591-4) (25) (not in publication but may be available second hand)

Child Psychiatry & the Law ed by Dora Black et al (Gaskell, 3rd edition, 1998, ISBN 1-901242-14-5)

£20 from the Royal College of Psychiatrists

Preparing & Presenting Expert Testimony in Child Abuse Litigation: A Guide for Expert Witnesses & Attorneys by Paul Stern (Sage Publications, 1997, ISBN 0-7619-0013-6)

Children & Housing by Henderson (Lernos & Crane, 2000, ISBN 1-898001-20-0) this is an article


BACKGROUND TOPICS


Re Children

Attachment theory

DNA testing 

mental illness, learning disability, parental alienation, mediation, counselling & therapy, housing, physical disability, statements of special educational needs (see my links pages for sources of information on these topics),

centile charts (measure a child's height and weight

 the mechanics of placing children and timetabling including for advertising at national level (there are various panels that have to be convened by the local authority to approve adopters, foster carers, family foster carers, best interests, matching) (see Commission for Social Care Inspection website at http://www.csi.org.uk).

Re money

Family Partnerships and companies, valuing companies, accounts, tax implications of divorce and selling assets, property valuation.

JOURNALS & LAW REPORTS


Family Law Journal (monthly, £135 pa, Jordan's Family Law - also available online).

Family Law Reports (Jordan's, £295 pa paper or online subscription)

Family Court Reports (Butterworths, £241 pa).

PRACTICE DIREC TIONS

Apart from hard copy publications some of the Practice Directions relevant to family law are published on the Court service website.

See our links to Protocols & Practice Directions .

PUBLISHERS ON THE INTERNET

Amazon
Butterworths
Child Poverty Action Group
Jordan's Family Law
Legal Action Group
The Stationery Office
http://www.opsi.gov..uk/

Thomson Sweet & Maxwell
Tottel Publishing
 

01.07.08