I am a High Court judge sitting in the family division
- the senior family court. It deals with all the most
complex cases involving disputes about children, their parents, and
money. I also deal with the most complex care cases - for instance,
cases where the local authority is seeking a care order or adoption
order.
"Mr Justice" signifies that you are High Court
judge, as opposed to a circuit judge, which is the next
tier down.
I've always worked in family law, since 1971. I
didn't choose it: it chose me. I started by doing everything, and
gradually specialised in family law.
I find it extremely interesting because of the different
ways people live their private lives. Even the most
successful person can have a chaotic family life. Over the years, I
have become more and more interested in the children side of the
work, because of the impact that a judicial decision can make on a
child's life.
If you make a decision about where the children will
live for the rest of their minority, that's obviously going to be
crucial for them. If you're dividing people's wealth, if
they have plenty of it anyway, really it doesn't make much
difference. When children are involved, it's more important, more
difficult, and it's not just about law, but also needs particular
skills and instincts.
I began to talk of the enormity and extent of marriage
breakdown in 2008, and was struck by the extraordinary
response it generated in the press, and in the people who wrote to
me. If you deal with it every day, you tend to take it for granted
and don't appreciate the extent, in macro terms, of how concerned
people are.
I had actually set out to talk about the problems that
courts have when the Government cuts money for legal
services; but I found that the public was more interested
in talking about family breakdown than courts' problems.
It was time to stop talking and do something.
Governments won't touch it, for fear of being regarded as
judgemental. They say all family arrangements are fine. They are
not, actually.
It came to me more and more that one of the biggest
holes in the dyke is the reduction of marriage rates, and
the increase in divorce rates. Divorce rates have levelled out, but
at a very high level. People say: "Well, you should talk about the
whole business in a broader way." I don't agree. We must target the
biggest part of the problem. People think cohabiting is fine, and
just as good, but the rate of cohabitation breakdown is
staggeringly higher than divorce.
We need to talk about marriage loudly and
often. The Marriage Foundation's name is a double
entendre: it's both about trust and the foundation of society.
When people misrepresent what the Marriage Foundation is
about, I want to scream. People think you want to talk
about marriage in a loose and general way, and particularly want to
involve us in the redefinition debate. We've always deliberately
taken the strategic position not to get involved. That doesn't stop
people saying we're just being coy, and do have a position, but
we're very small, and just starting, and don't want our favourable
publicity to get mixed up in a heated debate where both sides have
put their cases very clearly anyway.
If we can help people to understand and appreciate the
nature of long-term and committed relationships, both for
themselves and their children, we will have done a good job; also,
the huge benefit to them and their families in striving to make the
relationship work.
We're not intending to interfere in any way with the
work of other agencies, all of which are doing excellent
work. We would like, perhaps, to provide an overall umbrella under
which they could be associated, with a common overall aim. The sum
of the parts would pack a bigger punch in public debate.
Relationship education is the key, I believe.
Mediators and other divorce professionals can help to explain to
people the real price of divorce, and so encourage a last try, but
I doubt that this will really impact on the figures much.
The Church has a tradition of helping people to cope
with marriage breakdown. I think it could have a huge part
to play, as people still associate it with marriages and weddings.
Running serious marriage- preparation courses is a mission they all
should regard as a priority, I consider. All the best and most
active churches do, nowadays.
I was born and raised in London. I had two
powerful and outspoken parents and have two sisters. I have been
married for 39 years, and have three married children and three
brilliant grandchildren. I shall be surprised if there are not more
in due course.
Favourite sound? The chatter from my grandson,
aged two-and-a-half.
The most important choice I made was coming back to the
Bar after I had left it for four years in the mid-1980s. I
almost didn't. In 1985, one of my clients, who was divorcing his
fourth wife, asked me to go and work for him on particular projects
invol-ving his immense and wonderful art collection. Afterwards, I
wondered what to do next. I might well have gone into commerce, but
I was persuaded to go back by my old chambers, and that's what I
decided to do.
It enormously stimulated my interest in the visual
arts. I love so many painters, ancient and modern, I don't
know where to start. I used to do some watercolours. I should
probably take it up again.
I have achieved much more than I would have thought
possible when I was a recalcitrant teenager; so I have
almost no regrets. There are journeys I have not made and would
like to have done, but there isn't time now to do them all. As a
child, I wanted to go to drama school and act. I have always rather
fancied the idea of preaching, and have never got round to making
it happen. Probably too late now.
I'd like to be remembered as being an uncompromisingly
fair, impartial, and courteous judge. Not that I got it
right all the time, but that everyone had a fair hearing. And that
Marriage Foundation will last a long time to do what I want it to
do.
I've been influenced by C. S. Lewis, John
Stott, John Newton, and my wonderful, scatty forebear, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (my great-great- great-grand-uncle).
The Coleridges are a big clan, because each
member of the family from whom I'm directly descended has ten or 12
children; so by the 1900s there were dozens of them, either
soldiers, or lawyers, and judges, or clergymen. I'm descended from
the legal line. In the 19th century, there were three High Court
judges in three successive generations, which was a record. The
second one became the Lord Chief Justice of England, and presided
over many interesting cases, including one involving the Prince of
Wales. Then a break, and I'm the next.
My eldest son became a successful City
solicitor, but is now ordained. My younger son didn't go
to the Bar, which I think he now regrets, but became an
accountant.
I'm the Coleridge fanatic, and my daughter is
more interested in him than my sons. He was an extraordinary man:
you can so easily identify with his strengths and weakness.
I like Shakespeare, Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Hardy,
Trollope, and most classic authors, but also many modern
novelists, including Joanna Trollope.
Theology's a bit like curry: I like it at the
strong end of the scale. I cannot stand thin theology. I think
almost any sermon of J. C. Ryle, John Stott, or Dick Lucas, or the
great Evangelical preachers is memorable. Coleridge's theology was
interesting, of course, but a bit muddled; after all, he became a
Unitarian for a time. Yes, it's very reasonable, and you can see
how people could come to it, but it isn't true.
My favourite place is my cottage in Dorset,
which I have owned for 30 years, and where I can really relax like
nowhere else.
Acts is my favourite book of the Bible: it is
so inspiring. Least favourite? Some of the more turgid bits of the
Old Testament.
I'm happiest when I feel I am achieving something really
worth while, and which has taken real effort. Easy
achievements bring little satisfaction in any spheres of life.
I pray for a sense of real gratitude for my
faith, and for what I have, and my family.
I have great faith that people can learn and change
their behaviour when they are presented with facts in a
neutral and reasonable way. I have often seen people change their
mind in court when they see that there is another way of looking at
things.
If I found myself locked in a church with
someone, I'd like it to be my wife.
Sir Paul Coleridge was talking to Terence Handley
MacMath.
www.marriagefoundation.org.uk