May 26, 2017 5 comments
Children’s health can suffer if their parents do not handle divorce well, new research suggests. While previous studies have found a link between parental divorce and ill-health in children, Spanish academics claim it is not the divorce itself which is the real problem. When a couple bring their marriage to an end, “improper handling of…
May 11, 2017 26 comments
The ’nuclear option’, when it comes to intractable contact disputes, is to transfer the child’s residence from the parent denying contact to the parent seeking contact. The recent case of Re B (change of residence; parental alienation) is an example of the court using that option. The judgment in Re B is quite long, and…
April 13, 2017 0 comments
A brother and sister brought to Britain by their father should be returned to their mother in Canada, despite a complicated and acrimonious legal history. The English parents met in 1998 when the mother was still just 17. Their first child followed in 2002 and the second three years later. They eventually married in 2005….
April 13, 2017 1 comment
The Washington State Supreme Court has overturned a ban on a lesbian mother coming out to her children. Rachelle Black asked her husband Charles for a divorce in 2011 after 20 years of marriage. She did so because she admitted that she was a lesbian. He was a devout Christian and their three sons attended…
April 11, 2017 50 comments
Children suffer more from the parental arguments before divorce than they do after the marriage has come to an end. An academic from the University of York, Gloria Moroni, has suggested that behavioural issues such as hyperactivity or emotional development problems can be the result of such conflict. She analysed data from around 19,000 children…
April 10, 2017 8 comments
OK, before I begin I suppose I had better explain the terminology I have used in the above title. As anyone familiar with family law in this country will know, the term ‘custody’ was superseded nearly thirty years ago, replaced first by the term ‘residence’ and then by the term ‘child arrangements’. However, I have…
March 21, 2017 1 comment
A Canadian woman has been given a life sentence for murdering her nine year-old daughter shortly after the end of an acrimonious divorce. Laura Coward, from the western province of Alberta, was arrested two days after Amber Lucius was reported missing. The girl’s body was found in a burnt-out SUV in a remote area. The…
March 20, 2017 2 comments
The return of children who have been abducted into other European countries by alienated parents could become significantly more difficult following Britain’s exit from the European Union, peers have warned. Currently the return of children in such circumstances is facilitated by reciprocal recognition of legal orders under EU law,with the child’s country of habitual residence the principal…
March 15, 2017 11 comments
A Canadian woman has failed in her bid for child support from a man who is not the father of her son. The Ontario couple had been married for three years by the time the boy was born in March 2009, the Vancouver Sun reports. Her husband, referred to as ‘PZ’ in the ruling, believed…
February 17, 2017 2 comments
A six year-old boy should be returned to Northern Cyprus, the High Court has ruled, despite an acrimonious relationship between his parents. In D v D, the father had applied for the boy’s return, against the opposition of the mother. The parents married on the Mediterranean island in 2009 and the boy, ‘D’, was born…
