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Bereavement Benefits for Unmarried Partners
Co-habitation has once again come under the spotlight with the recent Supreme Court decision that denying bereavement benefits to unmarried, cohabiting partners with children is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The case - An application by Siobhan McLaughlin for Judicial Review (Northern Ireland) [2018] UKSC 48 - centred around the widowed parent's allowance ('WPA') - a... more >
A New Dawn for Maintenance Payments?
As you are probably well aware, the Government has struggled to enforce child maintenance payments since time immemorial. This summer, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has taken further steps towards coherent enforcement and has published its response to its own consultation seeking views on a new child maintenance compliance and arrears strategy. The Government has said that these... more >
Habitual residence and child abduction – where are the boundaries?
When a child is taken by one parent to a foreign country away from their other parent, emotions will always run high and the law will often be complex. Recently the BBC attempted to explore the legal minefield that is international child abduction law by covering the story of Tracy, whose daughter had been taken by her father, a Czech... more >
Vulnerable witnesses
Our new partner, Jeremy Ford, brings to Cambridge Family Law Practice his experience in international family law. Earlier this year, Jeremy, at short notice, represented the children in a fact finding hearing in the High Court which tested the jurisdictional capacity of English law and which considered the best interests of four siblings who had been brought up in different... more >
Needs vs ‘Meal Ticket for Life’?
A new briefing paper funded by the Nuffield Foundation has found that high profile, ‘meal ticket for life’ cases have given a distorted view of final settlements in divorces. Dr Emma Hitchings (University of Bristol) and Joanna Miles (University of Cambridge) recently published a briefing paper outlining key findings from their research on financial settlements in divorce cases. The briefing... more >
Law Commission Report on Surrogacy
A new report, published by Surrogacy UK, claims to dispel many of the myths concerning international surrogacy and brings into focus the practice of surrogacy in the UK. Surrogacy laws were first introduced about 30 years ago but society and the medical options available to couples have changed over the years since then. Many parents, medics and legal professionals (uncluding... more >