Blog
Kingsley Napley’s Medical Negligence Team ‘walks together’ with the Dame Vera Lynn Children’s Charity
Sharon Burkill
1 March 2018
Coercive control and its effect on family court cases
It is now three years since the Serious Crimes Act 2015 received royal assent, creating a new offence of coercive behaviour in intimate or familial relationships. Last week the Sentencing Council recommended harsher sentences for offences in a domestic setting that have the capacity for lasting psychological and emotional effect. These changes not only have an impact on criminal cases of domestic abuse, but also divorce and family justice related cases too, because criminal proceedings often have a bearing on divorce and children cases.
22 January 2018
Parental alienation and intractable contact disputes – when all seems lost
Occasionally, as a family solicitor, I come across a case that makes me despair. Thankfully, it’s rare but that feeling overwhelmed me when I read the child contact case of Q and R (Intractable contact). Before I explain why, I must be clear that this piece does not intend to direct any criticism at the learned judge or the majority of the professionals who ably assisted her. Reading through the judgment it is clear that the judge was faced with an impossible dilemma:
19 December 2017
Children, divorce, narcissism and parental alienation - the perfect storm
I have for many years been representing people coming out of marriages where the other party is or is believed to fall somewhere on the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) spectrum. The majority of these cases involve children and it is a miserable reality of family law that children often become the battleground in their parents’ drama.
16 October 2017
Divorce in the digital age - poacher or gamekeeper?
Let’s face it, we are all amateur sleuths these days, and divorce lawyers are no exception. We use the internet to find a restaurant and a hotel. Inevitably, we also have a look at our clients or their spouses and partners at the beginning of a new case. There have been some disasters, among others an apocryphal story where a divorce lawyer with a new client took a peek at the husband on LinkedIn….and oops! - that was the first news the husband had that his wife was considering a divorce. Everybody knows that the inverted iPhone at home is the tell-tale of infidelity (it avoids the possibility of a spouse seeing the impossible to explain “see you tomorrow at the Travelodge, Big Boy” or similar).
10 October 2017
Maintenance pending suit and interim maintenance - where divorce meets poker
In a story picked up all over the world, The Times of India reported that a husband had been ordered to pay “a wapping RS four lakl (approximately £4,800) every month” pending the final decision in the divorce.