Introduce LOTTIE’s Law:
(loss of time through invented evidence)
make emergency orders reliable (stop the silver bullet) + a 150-day parachute against drift

What do you want the Government/Parliament to do?

Introduce LOTTIE’s Law in England and Wales: a statutory framework designed primarily to prevent the “silver bullet tactic” from succeeding at the emergency stage (especially without-notice/ non-molestation applications that may affect parent–child contact).

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LOTTIE’s Law should require the family court to apply mandatory reliability safeguards whenever an emergency order may directly or indirectly alter the course of child arrangements, so separation cannot form by drift.

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Secondarily, where the silver bullet is attempted or misused, LOTTIE’s Law must give the court clearer powers to identify it early, test it quickly, record findings properly, and apply meaningful consequences, so process delay does not become the outcome.

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LOTTIE’s Law must also include a 150-day face-to-face contact backstop (the parachute) to urgently correct cases where drift has already occurred.

The purpose is simple: process delay must not become the outcome, because delay creates a new “status quo” that can then be wrongly used to justify a child’s relationship being taken backwards.

Why do you want this?

Emergency protective orders can be life-saving in genuine risk cases. But when emergency processes are used during separation/divorce, and child arrangements are in play, urgency + delay can create a new “status quo” where a child loses a relationship for months before disputed issues
are properly tested.

This is HLE (Harm through Legalised Exclusion): a child’s relationship eroded through process drift, untested allegations, and weak enforcement rather than proven safeguarding need.

The damage is caused at take-off. If the court does not actively consider linked divorce/C100 timelines and contact impact at the emergency stage, drift can do the deciding before fairness and evidence testing catch up.

International precedent (eligibility, usability, power): Practical “make-up time” enforcement mechanisms already exist elsewhere. For example, Texas law allows courts to order additional periods of possession/access to compensate for denied court-ordered parenting time. In North Dakota, legislation provides that where a parent intentionally interferes with court-ordered parenting time, the court must order additional parenting time and may allow it to be up to double the lost time. Reform advocates in the USA, including Robert Garza, have promoted the “time
taken, time back” principle—showing that accountability and restoration can be written into law.
LOTTIE’s Law adapts the principle for England & Wales and adds UK-specific safeguards to stop emergency processes being misused to create separation by drift.
LOTTIE’s Law would make emergency decisions more reliable, prevent drift from becoming separation, and ensure that proven misuse is met with consequences rather than reward.

The purpose is simple: process delay must not become the outcome, because delay creates a new “status quo” that can then be wrongly used to justify a child’s relationship being taken backwards.

What should LOTTIE’s Law include?

1) Silver Bullet Prevention Protocol (Primary): mandatory “reliability filters” at the emergency stage
Where a non-molestation order (or other emergency safeguarding order) is sought during separation/divorce and may affect parent–child contact (directly or indirectly), the judge must complete and record reasons for a reliability assessment (not a simple yes/no), including:

• Linked-proceedings check: confirm whether there are current/recent child arrangements proceedings/orders (C100/CAO/enforcement) and record that check.
• Chronology check: consider key dates (e.g., divorce/financial remedy timeline; C100/CAO steps; last face-to-face contact; upcoming hearings).
• Contact-impact check: record whether the emergency order is likely to restrict, chill or derail face-to-face contact (directly or indirectly).
• Collateral purpose risk (reasons required): where the timeline suggests potential tactical use, the court must give brief reasons why it is satisfied the application is for a proper protective purpose and not being used (or drifting) to influence child arrangements.
• Evidence basis for urgency/proportionality: record what evidence supports immediate relief and why lesser measures are insufficient.
• Anti-drift plan: if contact may be affected, record an immediate plan and timetable to prevent drift and restore safe contact where safe.

2) Rapid review that matches real urgency (often remote)
If emergency relief is granted without full testing and it may affect parent–child contact, the court must list a rapid return/review hearing on an expedited timetable.
This should be practically deliverable, including short remote hearings (telephone/video) where appropriate—because this is where drift must be stopped.

3) Hard time limits so “as soon as convenient” can’t become months
Where a without-notice emergency order may affect parent–child contact, LOTTIE’s Law should require:

• a prompt return date within a clear maximum timeframe (set in rules/legislation), and
• a mechanism so emergency measures do not remain in place by drift (including automatic review/expiry unless actively continued).

4) The “LOTTIE Review” pathway (fast challenge when reliability wasn’t done)
If the emergency order does not show that the court has considered linked proceedings/chronology and contact impact with reasons, the respondent must have a right to an expedited review listing so reliability failures are corrected immediately—not months later after a new status quo has formed.
5) 150-day trigger (Secondary): the parachute/backstop against drift – face-to- face only
If there is no face-to-face parent–child contact for 150+ days (excluding indirect contact like calls/ messages/letters), the case must enter an urgent safeguard route with a written plan and timetable.

6) Duty to decide (no drift / no vague outcomes)
The court must make and record a clear determination stating whether restriction is:

• child-centred,
• necessary and proportionate, and
• factually supported,
including the legal basis, the evidence relied upon, the risk being managed, and what must happen (and by when) for face-to-face contact to resume safely where safe.

7) Automatic return to the pre-block schedule (no “new status quo” weaponisation)
Where safeguarding risk is not proven (or can be safely managed), the default outcome must be automatic restoration of the pre-block face-to-face schedule, with structured stepping-stones only where necessary.
This prevents “new status quo” arguments being used to take a child’s relationship backwards simply because time has passed.

8) Post-order compliance checks across all family court cases affecting children
Where the court makes any order affecting a child’s arrangements (including contact schedules, handovers, prohibited steps, specific issue orders, and enforcement), the court must list automatic early compliance checks to confirm the order is actually being followed in real life and intervene
quickly if it is not.
This ensures orders are not just made, but implemented, and prevents drift from becoming the outcome.

9) Make-up time clause on every child arrangements order (12-month window)
All family court orders affecting a child’s time arrangements must include a standard clause:

• If court-ordered time is lost due to non-compliance or disruption (and it is not genuinely unavoidable), the lost time must be offered back and facilitated within the next 12 months,
in a structured and workable way, unless doing so would be unsafe or not in the child’s welfare.
This removes “status quo” momentum, ensures children are not permanently deprived of ordered time, and makes compliance measurable.

10) No cost to apply for enforcement + costs charged to the proven cause of breach (“cost follows cause”)

Where an order affecting a child is breached (including loss of ordered time), there should be no court fee for the parent applying to enforce or restore the order.
At the first enforcement listing, the court must make a prompt determination (on the evidence available) of who caused the breach and why. Where the breach is found to have been caused without reasonable excuse, the court must:

• order the breaching party to pay the court costs/fees associated with enforcement (and where appropriate, proportionate costs consequences), and
• make directions to prevent repeat breach and drift.
This prevents cost barriers from rewarding non-compliance and ensures accountability sits with the party who caused the loss of a child’s time.

11) Proven misuse consequences: “time taken, time back” + costs on the person who fired it
Where the court finds that contact loss was maliciously created or deliberately and unjustifiably obstructive (causing HLE), the court must order:

• time taken, time back (make-up face-to-face time), and
• repayment of reasonable reconnection costs (supported contact/contact centres where needed), and
• repayment of reasonable legal costs required to restore contact.

Where an emergency non-mol application is found (on findings) to have been misused to trigger HLE or to derail child arrangements, the court must also order repayment of the reasonable material costs of defending that non-mol application.

12) LOTTIE Register (court-held, findings-based, privacy-protected) + controlled disclosure side-arm
Where the court makes findings of:

• proven malicious/vexatious misuse of emergency safeguarding applications linked to contact outcomes, and/or
• proven serious patterns of unjustified obstruction/breaches causing loss of face-to-face time, the outcome must be recorded on a privacy-protected, findings-based register held within the system (not public, not allegation-based).
Where strictly necessary and lawful, relevant confirmed findings may be available for safeguarding disclosure decision-making under existing safeguards (aligned with the protective principle behind disclosure schemes), without identifying children and without publishing restricted material.

13) Section 7 / ICFA safeguards: third-party right to correct, early contest, author accountability, and “show your working” evidence rules
To prevent Section 7 / ICFA reports accidentally snowballing proceedings through drift or untested assertions, LOTTIE’s Law must require:

A) Third parties quoted must receive their excerpt and a right to correct
• If a school, nursery, family member, professional, or any third party is quoted, summarised, or relied upon in a Section 7 / ICFA report, they must be provided with the exact excerpt that relates to them (not the full report), via a confidentiality-safe court/authorised gateway.
• They must be given a clear opportunity and reasonable timeframe (e.g., 14 days) to confirm, correct, or clarify what is attributed to them.
• Any confirmation/correction must be served on both parties and filed with the court, so the court and both parents have the same information.
• No third-party quote should be relied upon unless the third party has been given this opportunity (save for recorded exceptional reasons where urgency makes it impossible).

B) Mandatory early challenge (before the case progresses)
• Any party disputing a Section 7 / ICFA report must be able to file a short notice of dispute, and the dispute must be addressed at the first hearing after the report is filed, before the case moves to the next stage.

C) Contest at the first report hearing (there and then)
• At the first hearing listed to consider the report, the court must allow disputed parts to be contested immediately if requested, including making directions for early testing.

D) Author available for questioning when requested
• Where disputed factual assertions or disputed recommendations are to be relied upon, the author must be available for questioning (in person or remotely) when properly requested and relevant.

E) If the author cannot attend, the disputed parts cannot drive the case
• If the author is not available (ill/unavailable) and disputed material cannot be tested, the court must:
◦ give the report reduced weight on those disputed points, or
◦ disregard / not rely on the disputed parts until they can be tested,
so untestable disputed content cannot drive decisions through drift.
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F) Evidence-anchored opinions (the report must “show its working”)
• Any professional opinion, recommendation, or conclusion must be supported by evidence.
• For each major recommendation, the author must bullet-point the key evidence relied upon (documents reviewed, communications considered, direct observations, corroboration sources).
• The author must identify any material evidence that conflicts with the recommendation and explain why it was given less weight or disregarded.
• Observed facts must be clearly separated from interpretation/opinion, so untestable “impressions” cannot silently become case-driving conclusions.

14) No “consensus requirement” for essential testing
Necessary directions (including fact-finding/testing disputed evidence) must be decided by the court on welfare/justice grounds and must not depend on legal-team “consensus”, so litigants in person cannot be blocked from essential case-testing by imbalance.

15) Safe anonymised speaking-out in the public interest
Create a clear statutory safe harbour so parents can speak publicly, in anonymised form, about systemic issues and lived experience—without identifying children or publishing restricted material —so problems can be evidenced and reforms improved.