Further to my recent blog post, it is not mandatory for litigants in person to upload documents to the Financial Remedies Family Court Portal. It is not mandatory for them to email the documents to a central administrative hub to upload to the Portal. I have been in email exchange with the Financial Remedies Centre at the Central Court in London.
Litigants in Person can still email documents to the Court and can send paper documents by post. I imagine most people will wish to email documents. However, for those attending in person hearings they may wish to send paper court bundles to the court as they do not have the time or capacity to prepare a court compliant pdf bundle to send by email.
I suggest that, for the immediate future, until the mandatory requirement for legal professionals using the new portal has settled in, to take a belt and braces approach.
1. Ensure that you put in the subject heading of your email, the court hearing centre, name of the case, case number and hearing date and if it is urgent, write this in the subject header.
2. Before writing your email, write something along the lines of: "I am acting as a litigant in person and I have no access to the Portal as I am not legally represented"
3. To send your documents to both the Financial Remedies hearing centre and the Regional Financial Remedies Hearing Centre either by post or by email.
Good luck and, as always, if you have any questions please contact me.