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Family courts top judge dies

As the Family Division's longest serving judge, Mrs Justice Bracewell, who last year celebrated her fiftieth year in the legal profession, presided over some of the most difficult and controversial family cases of recent times.

Sir Mark Potter, President of the Family Division, said: "Joyanne Bracewell was universally admired and respected for the quality of her decisions and the fairness, humanity and extreme care which she invariably displayed in reaching them."

In one of her most controversial judgments, Mrs Justice Bracewell ruled that the former lesbian lover of a woman who gave birth through artificial insemination should spend more time with the child than the biological mother. The decision was upheld at the Court of Appeal but reversed in House of Lords last year.

Following other emotive custody cases, Mrs Justice Bracewell became a target for the pressure group Fathers 4 Justice, which threatened to stage protests on the roof of her Somerset home.

Called to the Bar in 1955, Mrs Justice Bracewell was appointed a QC in 1978 and a High Court judge in 1990.

She married Roy Copeland in 1963 and had one son and one daughter. A lifetime supporter of the arts, she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1994.

The Hon Dame Joyanne Winifred Bracewell