Children and parenting on separation
A specific issue order answers a specific question in relation to a child. The Children Act defines a specific issue order as an order giving directions for the purpose of determining a specific question which has arisen, or which may arise, in connection with any aspect of parental responsibility for a child. The current draft of…
The French Senate passed an amendment last week providing that on relationship breakdown there is now a presumption that there will be shared care of the children from that relationship. If a judge makes an order other than shared residence then he or she will need to justify that decision with sound reasoning. The amendment,…
“Who has parental responsibility for this child?” is a question which often pops up on forms that you fill out for your child, whether at school or at the doctors. Courts are sometimes required to make a decision about this question too. The recent case of PM v MB* involved an 11 year old boy…
Parents of first born girls are significantly more likely to divorce than parents of first born sons. The probability that a first marriage with a first born daughter will end in divorce is 2.2% higher than for a first marriage producing a first born son. I read this surprising fact in a very interesting paper…
In my earlier post “What is shared residence?” I looked at how residence disputes focus on whether a child should reside with one parent, and spend time with the other parent, or reside with both parents. It is not the case that when judgment is given in these cases, that all aspects of the dispute…
Reading a book* about Milton Keynes this week, I came across a rather pertinent tale from a 1916 edition of the Bucks Advertiser and Aylesbury News. It referred to a letter which had been written by a young man Leonard Kempster, to his beau, Gladys, stating “I have absolutely made up my mind that I…
I was contacted this week and asked to write about a specific problem which has arisen in the life of a reader’s family member, who has suffered a relationship breakdown, and is unmarried, not on the house deeds and is unable to agree on contact arrangements for the children of the family. This made me…
Today, The Centre for Social Justice thinktank published a press release, stating that one million children in the UK grow up in a “man desert” with no contact with their father or a male role model or a male teacher. The report includes league tables for the most number of single parent households, and reveals…
Social media certainly has the capacity to get people into legal difficulties. The High Court found last week that a tweet posted by Sally Bercow was libellous, and as a result, she is going to be paying out damages for those 140 costly characters posted on the Twitter website. In the family law world last…
When parents separate, decisions have to be made about where their children are going to live. The court’s view is that the parents are best left to make these arrangements for themselves, as long as there are no Social Services concerns. Whilst both parties have the opportunity to set out in the divorce…
