Its the utter banality of this incident that is the point.

A father was travelling back from an activity with his toddler when she fell asleep in the car.  They were near the end of their due time together, so rather than drive home and have to set off almost immediately he rang his ex to ask to bring her back slightly early.  The little girl woke up grouchy, as they do.

This incident appeared in the statement the mother’s legally aided solicitor had prepared for court, in the form that if the toddler got into a bad mood, the father brought her back early.

The solicitor could have been on £200 per hour listening and writing it up. The judge would have been several times that  reading and considering, the CAFCASS officer will also have had to read.  All the details are now lost and some I never knew, including whether the father and/or his solicitor replied, which would have cost more, even whether it came up in submissions in court and cross examination taking up court time. Either in the form of the mother’s side wishing to press the matter or the father pointing out another view.  

With all the staff and infrastructure Courts cannot cost less than £1,000 an hour?

Highly unlikely that this would affect any court order, and I simply don’t know if the mother had wanted this in her statement, or her solicitor thought it was a blow against his opponent.

Probably the only result was worsening the relationship between the parents.

There are other things to say about legal aid, which will come in other posts, including the need to keep at least some where people are vulnerable or there is ‘inequality of arms’.  But its overall role is surely negative, as it may have been in this case.

 The withdrawal of it is a step towards reducing the damage done by the adversarial approach  to deciding child welfare issues.