Part 15: Judgments and Orders

142. Draft orders of Court 143. Extracting an order granted by consent 144. Unnecessary extraction of orders of Court 145. Order of Court for proceedings under the Mental Capacity Act 2008

Part 18, Rules 3(7) and (8) of the Family Justice (General) Rules 2024 place the burden of approving the drafts of judgments and orders on the solicitors themselves. The solicitors should therefore approve the drafts and not submit these drafts to the Registrar for approval.

The Registrar’s signature on a judgment or order is only for the purpose of validity and does not in any way affect the regularity or irregularity of the contents of any judgment or order.

Subject to sub-paragraph (4), parties in applications with notice should proceed to engross a final copy of the draft judgment or order for signature by the Registrar after agreeing on the draft. Draft orders for applications without notice may be submitted with the application without notice and the supporting affidavit when these are filed.

For draft orders in electronic form that are composed online through the Electronic Filing Service, the process for extracting judgments and orders is as follows:

Parties have the option of filing a system-generated order of Court through the Electronic Filing Service. (b) Before filing the system-generated order of Court, the party extracting the order must: (i) review and edit the order of Court electronic form to ensure that it accurately reflects the orders made by the Court; and (ii) obtain the approval of all other parties to the application and provide evidence of such approval when filing the draft order of Court, for example, a Portable Document Format (PDF) copy of a draft order of Court signed by the solicitors of all parties to the application. (c) The Registry will seal and issue an engrossed order of Court once its terms are approved.

Where there is a dispute on the terms of the draft order, the party who writes to the Court pursuant to Part 18, Rule 3(9) of the Family Justice (General) Rules 2024 is responsible for including in the letter all versions of the terms of the draft in dispute between the parties and all relevant correspondence.

Parties are not required to approve a further draft consent order after the hearing.

Solicitors need to file only the engrossed copy of the consent order after the draft consent order is granted.

To reduce unnecessary documentation and to expedite proceedings, solicitors are requested not to extract orders that need not be drawn up, as provided for in Part 18 Rule 3(2) of the Family Justice (General) Rules 2024.

Save for contested proceedings where Part 18, Rule 3(7) of the Family Justice (General) Rules 2024 applies, an order of Court shall be drawn up and filed within 7 days after the order is made.

An order of Court made under Part 5, Rule 8 of the Family Justice (General) Rules 2024 shall be in the form made available in the iFAMS and will be sent by the Court either by email or such other means as deemed appropriate by the Court.