The Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission are proposing to reform the surrogacy laws to allow intended parents to become legal parents when the child is born, subject to the surrogate retaining a right to object for a short period after the birth. This new “pathway” would replace the current […]

A group of “concerned family and human rights lawyers” have written to David Gauke, the Justice Secretary, and Paul Maynard, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, asking for an independent inquiry into treatment of domestic abuse in the family courts. The group, who work in-house in women’s organisations, in private practice and at the Bar, […]

Cafcass, the organisation that looks after the interests of children involved in family proceedings, has announced that its new Chief Executive, to replace Anthony Douglas when he retires in the autumn, will be Jacky Tiotto. Ms Tiotto, who is currently Director of Children’s Services at the London Borough of Bexley, commented: “Being offered the opportunity […]

Video hearings are being tested in domestic abuse cases, HM Courts and Tribunals Service and the Ministry of Justice have announced. The study by the Courts Service at Manchester Civil Justice Centre means vulnerable people can appear before the court using a video link from a computer in their solicitor’s office, thereby avoiding the distress […]

Children’s services in England are at ‘breaking point’, and need a £3.1 billion minimum funding boost by 2025, a report by the House of Commons Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee into the funding of local authorities’ children’s services has found. The report said that as services tried to respond to growing demand amid severe […]

The Department for Work and Pensions (‘DWP’) has published statistics about the separated family population, to provide information on child maintenance arrangements between parents in separated families. The statistics, which are for the period April 2014 to March 2017, show that during that time there were around 2.5 million separated families in Great Britain, and […]

The latest figures for care applications and private law demand, for March 2019, have been published by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (‘Cafcass’), the organisation that looks after the interests of children involved in family proceedings. In that month the service received 1,117 new care applications. This is 9.9 per cent […]

The Supreme Court has ruled that a woman who posted on Facebook that her former husband had tried to strangle her had not libelled him. The former husband issued proceedings against the woman, claiming that the statement was defamatory, as it suggested he tried to kill her. Initially he won his case in the High […]

The Office for National Statistics has published figures for the number of marriages that took place in England and Wales in 2106. Amongst the main points were that: there were 249,793 marriages in England and Wales, 1.7% more than in 2015, but 1.0% fewer than in 2014; that 97.2% of all marriages were between opposite-sex […]