Blog
Rayner my parade! The importance of specialist advice.
Jemma Brimblecombe
20 January 2012
Parental rights: new year, new landscape for fathers?
The press reported in early January that the Government is considering proposals to promote shared parenting and to give rights in law for parents to have contact with their children. Action groups will undoubtedly welcome any proposals which recognise the role fathers often play in their children’s upbringing. As a general principle, the courts consider that it is in a child’s best interests to have regular contact with both parents. It will therefore be interesting to see how far the proposals go and whether there is, in practice , any change to the current legal position.
13 December 2011
Christmas holidays – getting the balance right
Arrangements for the Christmas holidays are often the subject of numerous enquiries at this time of year and, during what is usually an emotionally charged time of year, negotiations can be fraught. Our advice is not to leave it until the last minute – no-one wants to be exchanging solicitors letters the week before Christmas – and keep the focus on what is in the children’s best interests. In an ideal world that may involve spending time with both parents on Christmas day; however, this may simply not be possible for geographical or other reasons and a solution is often alternating Christmas days and treating Christmas Eve or Boxing day as a “second” Christmas day with the other parent.
3 November 2011
Government to overhaul Adoption system
Following the publication of ‘Adoption League Tables’ ranking local authorities as to how quickly children are placed for adoption, the Government has announced a widespread review of the adoption system. The aim is to ensure that children are placed with families quicker by making the system more efficient less onerous for hopeful parents. This is backed by a campaign to encourage adopters and foster carers to volunteer. The Family Justice System (courts and Cafcass officers) will also be subject to closer scrutiny and new procedures are likely to be proposed later this week as part of the Norgrave review. All of these measures are designed to ‘speed up’ a system which, last year, resulted in only 60 of the 3600 babies (under 1 year) available for adoption being placed with families.
8 August 2011
Holiday strife?
During this time of the year we are often approached by clients faced with arguments about how the children should divide their time between their parents during the school summer holidays. These disputes have the potential to be acrimonious and stressful to all concerned. Clients often query what is the “usual” or “normal” arrangement where parents have separated which is a difficult question to answer as there is no regime prescribed by the law or a right or wrong answer and our response is often whatever the client, as the parent, considers to be in the child’s / children’s best interest(s). As a guide, the experts often suggest that it is appropriate for younger children to visit / stay with the non resident parent for shorter periods of time but more frequently and as the children become older, that the periods of time should be extended to larger blocks of time (perhaps with the principle of the school holidays being divided equally). Our advice is always to grapple with the issue well in advance of any school holidays (particularly where foreign travel is planned) to try to avoid last minute fraught negotiations and potentially a Court application.
26 July 2011
Relocation, relocation...
The recent case of MK v CK has marked a change in the treatment of “leave to remove” or relocation cases. The father successfully appealed against the decision allowing the mother permission to relocate to Canada with the parties’ two children.
