Cross-undertakings. Bankruptcy proceedings. A non-molestation application reframed as mutual fault. That is how my domestic abuse case ended in the family court.
Sir Stephen Cobb was sworn in as President of the Family Division on 14 May 2026, succeeding Sir Andrew McFarlane. Cobb also led the 2017 review that produced Practice Direction 12J, the rule meant to handle domestic abuse in the family court. He has the authority to extend it. Survivors who do not have children with their abuser are asking him to use it.
I left an emotionally and financially abusive relationship and applied for a non-molestation order. He evaded service and missed the first hearing. When he turned up, he filed a counter-application saying I was the abuser. The court issued cross-undertakings: mutual promises with no formal finding, no police record, no enforcement route. I walked out with nothing on the record. When he could no longer harass me directly, he used solicitors. He reframed our joint car as a loan after I left. He pursued bankruptcy over the house. The bankruptcy judge described his legal tactics on the record as “aggressive” and “deplorable”. The police told me nothing he had done in isolation was wrong, and that unless he had broken my arm they could not really act. He used the legal process as the new weapon. The filings forced response. The response cost money, time and bandwidth I no longer had. He now lives within walking distance of my family home. Our cross-undertakings expire next month.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (year ending March 2025) found 5.0% of adults experienced abuse from an ex-partner in the last year, compared with 1.7% from a current partner. Separated women experienced abuse at 26.3%, compared with 5.1% of married or civil-partnered women. Single-parent households face the highest rate of any household type at 23.7%. The Home Office Homicide Index recorded 178 women killed by a partner or ex-partner in the three years to March 2024, 72.7% of all female domestic homicide victims. The ONS rounds that to one woman every six days.
Most domestic abuse reaching the family court is post-separation. The CSEW pattern lines up with what survivors describe: leaving rarely ends the abuse, often it concentrates it. Practice Direction 12J only reaches directly into private children law cases. Standalone non-molestation proceedings under Part IV of the Family Law Act 1996, where the survivor and the perpetrator do not share children, sit outside the rule. Re H-N told family courts to look at patterns of abuse, not isolated incidents. The MoJ Harm Panel said the same in 2020. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 wrote the pattern definition into statute. None of it has closed the gap for survivors like me.
Extending PD12J-style protection to Family Law Act protective injunction proceedings would require proper fact-finding where abuse is alleged. A pattern-of-behaviour analysis would replace the default to mutual allegations. The use of undertakings would tighten where violence or threats are part of the record. The PFD’s 2026 guidance on non-molestation orders sharpened practice, but only a binding procedural rule will hold. Survivors without shared children still need a consistent, safety-first framework written into the rules of court, not bolted on as guidance courts can read past.
I’d argue this is the single change with the highest leverage in the family court today. It does not need new legislation or a new agency. The Family Procedure Rules Committee, with the President’s direction, can extend an existing protection to the survivors who currently fall outside it.
The architecture for protection already exists. The rule already exists. What is missing is the line of text that lets it reach the rest of us. Until that line is written, the same outcome will keep arriving at the same hearing: a survivor leaves the building with cross-undertakings, a perpetrator walks out unmarked, and the count of one woman every six days keeps climbing. Cobb wrote the rule once. He can write the line that completes it.
Watch the short film: Falling through the cracks →