A recent case shows how a person who is intent on being difficult can obstruct matters for a long period. In the case in point, the court (after a legal battle lasting eight years and involving 25 court hearings) eventually…
The Court of Appeal recently ruled in a case which asked whether fatherhood is sufficient to warrant contact with a child and decided that the answer is ‘no’. The case was unusual. It involved a married couple who wanted to…
Having rejected the findings of a report it commissioned into the parenting of children after divorce, the Government has thrown into doubt the whole area of how this issue will be dealt with in future. The Government recently issued its…
The Court of Appeal has upheld the decision of the High Court that a Christian couple who refused to allow a homosexual couple to share a bed at their hotel had unlawfully discriminated against them. The hotel owners refused double-bedded…
Mothers serving a prison sentence who have sole caring responsibility for children under 16 years of age are normally allowed to spend up to three days every six months at home as the end of their sentence approaches. This is…
When the marriage between a wealthy property developer and his wife ended acrimoniously, their battle over the financial settlement lasted more than a decade. As part of their divorce settlement following their separation in 2000, the husband was ordered to…
Statistics show that 33 per cent of the 244,710 marriages that took place in 1995 had ended in divorce 15 years later. This compares with 22 per cent of marriages that took place in 1970. The workload of the Family…
How do you prove that you are married when a valid marriage certificate is not available? This question may not often arise, but it does sometimes happen that a marriage certificate cannot be produced, which can be particularly problematic when…
Although pre-nuptial agreements are persuasive rather than binding in the British courts, a recent ruling of the High Court on a French ‘pre-nup’ illustrates clearly the current approach of the courts. It involved a very wealthy French couple who married…
A court ruling that a spouse’s lottery winnings were not ‘matrimonial property’ so were not subject to the usual rule of equal division between the spouses when the marriage broke up received much publicity recently. The normal rule on divorce…