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| General Disclaimer: Nothing presented
constitutes legal advice and the McKenzie Friend UK
Network is not a legal entity or in anyway claims to be a
'legal resource'. The resource guide is supported by
McKenzie Friends and Litigants in person for Litigants in
Person in Family Court. McKenzie Friends provide
layperson support as an informed friend under the Family
Court Practice Guidance of 2010. All information is
published under the spirit of that guidance. For any
corrections of the information, please contact the McKenzie
Friend UK Network |
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| WITNESS
CREDIBILITY AND LYING IN THE FAMILY COURT |
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| R v Lucas [1981] QB
720 The 'Lucas' Direction: Lies in the family court |
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| "Just
because a person lies about one thing it does not
automatically follow that they are lying about
everything. This is the perhaps obvious rationale which
has informed judges and tribunals charged with the
responsibility of fact-finding hearings for many years
but at least since the seminal court of appeal
authority" |
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| Lucas direction as
would be given at a criminal trial, Source: Chapter 16-3
of the December 2020 Crown Court Compendium: 1. A defendant’s lie, whether made
before the trial or in the course of evidence or both,
may be Probative of guilt. A lie is only capable of
supporting other evidence if first it is shown by other
evidence in the case to be a deliberate untruth, that is
that it did not arise from confusion or mistake; second
It relates to a significant issue, and third it was not
told for a reason advanced by or on behalf of the witness
or for some other reason arising from the evidence, which
does not point to it being a lie.
2. The direction that I give myself should
be tailored to the circumstances case come up but I must
direct myself that only if I'm satisfied on the balance
of probabilities that the criteria are met should a lie
be used as some support for the case advanced by the
other party, but in any event a lie cannot by itself
prove the opposite case.
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| Re A (A Child) (No 2) [2011
EEWCA Civ 12 at para 104 |
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| “A witness
deposing to serious domestic violence and grave sexual
abuse – whose evidence, although shot through with
unreliability as to details, with gross exaggeration and
even with lies, is nonetheless compelling and convincing
as to the central core… Yet through all the lies, as
experience teaches, one may nonetheless be left with a
powerful conviction that on the essentials the witness is
telling the truth, perhaps because of the way in which
she gives her evidence, perhaps because of a number of
small points which, although trivial in themselves,
nonetheless suddenly illuminate the underlying
realities.” |
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| Resources: |
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| Practice Directions 12J |
| Practice Directions 12J Guidance |
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