Hackshaw v Hackshaw
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 28 May 1999 |
| Date | 28 May 1999 |
| Court | Family Division |
Family Division.
Before Mr Justice Wilson
Matrimonial law - application to vary maintenance order - reasons prevent need for fresh hearing
Even though magistrates were not required to record or state reasons when refusing an application to vary a maintenance order, any appeal
from that decision could only be determined by reference to the reasoning behind the decision so that, in the absence of any such record, the case would have to be reheard.
Mr Justice Wilson so stated in the Family Division when allowing an appeal against the dismissal by Highgate Justices on March 10, 1998 of the application by Chieftan Clifford Hackshaw under section 4(2) of the Maintenance Orders Act 1958 to vary an order for periodical payments to his former wife, Dorrie Viola Hackshaw, and making an order under section 65(2)(d) of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980 that the matter should be treated as family proceedings and the case remitted to be reheard in the Haringey family proceedings court.
Miss Judith Spooner for Mr Hackshaw; Miss June Raybaud for Mrs Hackshaw.
MR JUSTICE WILSON said that on the dissolution of the parties' marriage in 1979 the husband had been ordered to make weekly periodical payments under an earnings attachment order to the wife during their joint lives until her marriage or further order.
When the husband took voluntary redundancy in 1993 he ceased making the payments believing that the obligation was extinguished once he stopped working.
The wife had taken no action until 1997 when she caused the order to be registered in the magistrates' court with a view to its enforcement there.
On the husband's application, the court remitted all arrears except for the preceding year but dismissed the application to vary the order downwards to a nominal sum without articulating any reasons, nor had written reasons been supplied at any time thereafter.
His Lordship said that the Family Proceedings Courts (Children Act 1989) Rules (SI 1991 No 1395 (L17)) and the Family Proceedings Courts (Matrimonial Proceedings etc) Rules (SI 1991 No 1991 (L32)), which obliged magistrates to give written reasons for their decisions, only applied to applications made under the Children Act 1989, the Domestic Proceedings and Magistrates' Courts Act 1978 or the Family Law Act 1996.
As the husband's application had...
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