Legal proceedings are essential for victim-survivors to leave abusive partners and rebuild their lives independently.  

However, Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) has seen that the family court is an arena where economic abuse can be facilitated and perpetuated. 

This can happen in a variety of ways. 

• Lack of access to legal aid: This can leave victim-survivors struggling to represent themselves during legal proceedings as litigants in person. Many others get into large amounts of debt to fund legal costs.  
• Drawn out legal proceedings: Perpetrators often bring repeated and unnecessary applications as a means of exerting (further) control and depleting victim-survivors’ resources.  
• Unfair financial settlements: Perpetrators often fail to disclose assets in proceedings so that victim-survivors are left with financial settlements that unfairly disadvantage them.   

See the timeline below for how we have engaged with policy around the family justice system, including legal aid.  

• June 2022: SEA responded to the Ministry of Justice consultation on the legal aid means test review.
• October 2021: SEA launched a report ‘Denied justice: How the legal aid system prevents victim-survivors of domestic abuse accessing justice and rebuilding their lives’. The report outlines how the legal aid system in England and Wales is failing victim-survivors of domestic abuse because of the means test. We are calling for all victim-survivors of domestic abuse to be exempt from the means test to ensure they can access the legal support they need.  
• March 2021: SEA ran a webinar for the Family Law Bar Association on economic abuse and how it operates within the legal system, especially the family courts. 
• October 2021: SEA responded to the Justice Select Committee’s inquiry into the Future of Legal Aid. Out response was endorsed by several members of the National Economic Abuse Policy Group, which SEA co-chairs.  
• May 2020: We surveyed the Experts by Experience Group of survivors of economic abuse on their experiences of accessing legal aid. Their responses highlighted many of the ways that lack of access to legal aid is damaging for survivors.   
• May 2020: SEA provided a witness statement to support Public Law Project in a judicial review to challenge the operation of the legal aid means test for assessing capital of domestic abuse victim-survivors.  
• November 2019: SEA presented at a conference by Support Through Court on ‘Working together to improve our approach to domestic abuse in a post-LASPO world’. 
• August 2019: SEA responded to the Ministry of Justice consultation call for evidence on how allegations of domestic abuse are dealt with in private law children proceedings, now commonly known as the Harm Panel review.