Self-help and self-improvement books are a vibrant and growing market in the UK with sales of 3 million units in 2017, and a US $9 billion, America market.

Headlines from an article in the Mail Online read:

‘Anxious Britons buy three million self-help books in a year as sales rise 20%, as men look for guidance on how to be a man in a post #MeToo world’.

How to beat the family courts is very much of the above genre. Its author, Alexander Williams, is a ‘McKenzie Friend’, (or lay-helper for Private Law litigants), of eighteen-years standing. As a veteran of countless court hearings he can guide the reader, using anonymised case histories, on how to cope with the legal mechanisms employed in sorting out disputes over child-arrangements following a couple’s separation or divorce. As Family Law is not unisex in its words, or its execution, the book reflects this by setting out to help fathers overcome the propensity of Family Courts to favour mothers. Instead, the author promotes true ‘shared-parenting’ arrangements, as a family evolves into having two homes for its children.

What the book does not cover are: financial disputes, property settlements, Public Law action by social services, advice on divorce proceedings, or anything to do with newly defined parenthood resulting from medical intervention or same-sex marriages. The topic of discussion is ‘child arrangements orders’ made in the Lower Family Courts of England and Wales. As Family Courts in Scotland and Northern Ireland have different practices as well as other laws, especially in Scotland, most of this work does not apply in those countries.

As a self-help guide for Private Law litigants chapters of the book standalone as advice for men in different personal and financial circumstances. Yet this work is far more than just a legal guide. It is also a commentary on the state of Family Law in Great Britain at the start of the 21st Century. For the author is determined we shouldn’t lose the history of how countless fathers, and their children, have already suffered discrimination at the hands of Family Court Judges who have routinely sided with one gender over the other. 

While some may be alarmed at what he writes, others will find illuminating Williams’ examination and explanations of the politics and intrigues surrounding the making of, and the execution of, Family Law. On this, you are guaranteed a read that doesn’t pull its punches.

The text has been checked by practicing solicitors, but the publisher cautions that reading this book is not intended to replace any of the other good support available to parents estranged from their children; be that books by lawyers, assistance from parent support organisations, online help forums or the work of lobbyists. The publisher warns that reading this volume is not the same as getting legal advice, nor does it replace expert assistance in settling disputes about child arrangements following divorce or separation. However, what this book can do is to provide some experience-based glue around all of these different forms of help.