ABSTRACT
The discrete topic of ancillary relief has in recent times become, like the law of divorce itself, an area of law which is impossible to understand fully without substantial knowledge of procedure. Whereas in the past an award of ancillary relief was rather a ‘hit and miss’ affair-whether a settlement was negotiated or whether the matter was fought out to the bitter end at the hearing, and possibly ultimately on appeal. New arrangements replicating for ancillary relief the spirit and to some extent the letter of the Woolf reforms in civil justice mean that there is now a structure which most cases will have to respect. Thus, whereas in the past it was not uncommon for ancillary relief so much to lack focus and reasonable deployment of resources as to drag on long after the decree nisi and indeed often after decree absolute-sometimes surviving a party’s subsequent marriage and the breakdown of that-ancillary relief is now:
(a) generally resolved within a reasonable time; and (b) conducted in a more structured manner.
