Guidance

Practice Direction update 108: guardianship orders

Practice Direction update to the Civil Procedure Rules relating to a new legal provision enabling families and friends of missing people to look after their property and finances.

• From: Civil Procedure Rule Committee and Ministry of Justice
• Published: 26 June 2019

Applies to England and Wales

Documents

Practice Direction update 108

PDF, 419 KB, 12 pages

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Details

The 108th Practice Direction update provides for a new legal provision, enabling families and friends of missing people to look after their property and financial affairs. It is effective from 31 July 2019.

Proceedings for guardianship will be regulated by the Civil Procedure Rules and Practice Direction 57C.

The Practice Direction, supplements the Rules of Court, by providing additional information and instructions, setting out in more detail the specific procedure to be followed by the court for the appointment of a guardian (“guardianship orders”), the variation of a guardianship order (“variation orders”) and the revocation of a guardianship order (“revocation orders”). One example would be providing more details for applicants on the material they should be including in their witness statement in support of their application for guardianship.

A Code of Practice will also be published to provide further advice on both the application process and also for those appointed guardian or working with them.

Please also note that the associated SI can be downloaded from legislation.gov.uk and is subject to Parliamentary approval.

This legislation is in addition to the usual twice-yearly CPR updates, specifically in order to regulate proceedings under the Guardianship (Missing Persons) Act 2017 and is anticipated to be effective from 31 July 2019.

There are no new or amended forms associated with this update.

Take notice and looking ahead

Please note that a series of further PD Updates are anticipated, from now on, as and when additional functionalities and progressive adaptions are made to the Online Civil Money Claims (OCMC) scheme. These bespoke PD updates will be issued outside the routine twice yearly SI and PD updates which cover changes across the CPR. Where the OCMC related modifications are significant, notice periods will be maximised wherever possible.

The next routine CPRC Statutory Instrument (SI) is due to come into force on 1 October 2019. The SI can be viewed on legislation.gov.uk.

Published 26 June 2019