It has been reported that the Justice Secretary, David Gauke, has confirmed that he will introduce legislation enacting the no-fault divorce in the next session of Parliament. Nigel Shepherd, former chairman of the family law organisation Resolution, which has long campaigned for the introduction of no-fault divorce, said he was pleased that the government are […]

Husband who was seeking a lump sum payment or other capital provision from his ex-wife has failed in his claim. A new study has found that children’s wellbeing is not negatively affected by living in single parent households. A High Court judge has used Twitter to urge a mother who vanished with her three-year-old son to return home. And finally, The Independent has reported that the number of parents forced to represent themselves in child disputes in family courts has more than doubled in six years, as a result of the legal aid cuts in 2013.

A Family Court judge has been praised for writing a judgment without legal jargon, so that it could be more easily understood. Her Honour Judge Lynch, sitting in the Family Court at Leeds, was handing down the judgment in a case in which the local authority were seeking care and adoption orders in relation to […]

A mother involved in long-running care proceedings concerning her teenaged son has been spared jail for accepting an invitation to attend a parents’ evening at his school. The court had ordered that the mother should not contact the boy, but there was an exemption in the order to the effect that she could “attend parents’ […]

The number of children taken into care has pushed 88% of councils over budget in the last financial year, according to analysis by the Guardian newspaper and the Local Government Association (‘LGA’). The analysis found that 133 out of 152 councils responsible for children’s services overspent in 2017-18. Local authorities went over budget on children’s […]

Grandparents, and also aunts and uncles, are to get more ‘access’ rights, under plans being considered by the Government. Following pressure from MPs and campaigning groups, Justice Minister Lucy Frazer QC has agreed to look at the rules allowing grandchildren to maintain contact with grandparents after parental separation. Campaigners seek two changes: a presumption in […]

The Ministry of Justice has published the latest quarterly family court statistics, for the period July to September 2018. The statistics show an increase in the number of cases started and a decrease in number of cases disposed of. 66,118 new cases were started, up 1% on the equivalent quarter in 2017, and driven by […]

The NSPCC has revealed that child cruelty and neglect offences in the UK have doubled over the last five years. There were 16,939 child cruelty and neglect offences recorded by police in 2017/18, up from 7,965 in 2012/13. Reports to the police included extreme cases of when a parent or carer deliberately neglected, assaulted, abandoned […]

The Government has passed legislation to bring in various changes to the child support maintenance system. These include: provision for specified assets belonging to the non-resident parent (‘NRP’) to be calculated as having a weekly value which is taken into account in order to vary a maintenance calculation, the weekly value of the asset being […]

The Government has confirmed that it will introduce legislation in the next Parliamentary Session to extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples. The confirmation comes in a report by the Ministry of Justice to the Joint Committee on Human Rights on the Government’s response to Human Rights judgments. The report refers to the Supreme Court decision […]