In a ruling that underlines that the wishes and feelings of children can be decisive in even the most intractable family cases, a father has won a seven-year battle to have more contact with his daughter. The ‘doggedly persistent’ father…
When a separated couple appeared before the family court, having already spent more than 20 per cent of their combined wealth of £4 million on legal costs, the judge felt it necessary to warn them of the danger of dissipating…
As Lysander observes in Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, ‘The course of true love never did run smooth’ – so in any relationship it pays to be careful what you sign. Recently, a mother of five children who executed a…
When a woman’s ex-husband was made bankrupt, the mortgage lender on their home sought repossession of the property. The property had been purchased in her ex-husband’s sole name in 1978. When the couple divorced in 2004, she continued to live…
Local authorities are not always as thorough as they should be when obtaining and evaluating information on which their decisions on child welfare are based, as a recent case shows. It involved a couple who went to court after their…
A recent attempt by the wife of a British expatriate, who had lived for many years in Spain, to persuade the English court to accept jurisdiction over their divorce was frustrated by the Court of Appeal, which decided that the…
A recent case dealt with the issues surrounding the respective rights of a parent and child in unusual circumstances. The natural father of the child wished to join in the proceedings to oppose his son being adopted. The unusual feature…
When a divorced wealthy couple sought to wage ‘litigation war’ against one another, running up legal bills of more than £2.7 million in the process, the family judge was unsympathetic. Accusing the pair of trying to engage in ‘forensic points-scoring’…
A businesswoman whose business fell victim to the recession has persuaded the family court that it would be appropriate for the settlement she had agreed to pay her ex-husband to be varied. The total settlement was £450,000, made up of:…
In a ruling which emphasises the importance of fathers in the lives of young children, the Court of Appeal has upheld a man’s right to have contact with his eight-year-old son. Despite concerns expressed by the boy’s mother that the…
