Blog
Kingsley Napley’s Medical Negligence Team ‘walks together’ with the Dame Vera Lynn Children’s Charity
Sharon Burkill
25 May 2016
Surrogacy: a gift without price – differences of opinion and a call for reform
I recently attended the conference "Surrogacy in the 21st Century: Rethinking assumptions, reforming law" organised by Dr Kirsty Horsey from the University of Kent. She has been part of a working group on surrogacy law reform, who published a report last November 2015 which sparked the ideas for the conference.
18 May 2016
Domicile in the Modern Family
In the Oxford Dictionary, ‘domicile’ is defined as “the country that a person treats as their permanent home, or lives in and has a substantial connection with”. However, the law in this area is far from straightforward, and as our customs and values change at an ever increasing pace within modern society, the question is to what extent the law is able to keep up.
5 May 2016
Parenting after separation – co-parenting, parallel parenting and ways to make it work
If you have recently separated and are considering how you and your former partner will raise your children, you will no doubt have looked online and come across a wealth of information on the benefits of “co-parenting”. Co-parenting is, in its simplest definition, sharing the duties of raising a child. In reality, this usually means that the following dynamics exist between the parents: co-operation, communication, compromise and consistency, along with a strong ethos that the child’s needs should be placed before the parents’. Effective co-parenting is usually not immediate and it can take many years of hard work to create. However, many are willing to put in this effort as co-parenting is clearly portrayed as the “gold standard” of post-separation parenting.
But is co-parenting achievable in every situation?
5 May 2016
The opportunities and pitfalls of surrogacy for same sex couples
Reports last week of a gay couple fighting for custody of their surrogate child gives a harsh warning on the pitfalls of international surrogacy. Happily, the couple have won their custody battle with the surrogate mother, who changed her mind about handing over the child when she discovered the intended parents were a gay couple. The American-Spanish couple entered into a surrogacy arrangement in Thailand where same sex marriage is not recognised. Their child was born in January 2015. Thailand is no longer an option for foreign surrogacy, which since this case has been banned, but we find that when one country closes its borders to international surrogacy, another one opens, and intended parents must be extremely cautious when choosing where to enter into their surrogacy arrangement (and where the child is to be born).
26 April 2016
Moving abroad with children - rocking the legal ‘see-saw’ of habitual residence
Sadly, disputes regarding the international movement of children are common in the English courts, as a result of the increasingly international dynamic of families who move from country to country with their children. Moving a child to another country without the approval of the other parent or permission from a court can have serious legal implications and child abduction proceedings may become inevitable.
- Children
- Civil Partnerships & Co-habitation
- Divorce & Separation
- Financial Settlements
- International Adoption & Surrogacy
- International Family Law
- Mediation & Alternatives to Litigation
- Pre-nuptial & Post-nuptial Agreements
- Anglo French Family Law
- Legal Updates
- Reflections on The Split
- Child Relocation after Divorce or Separation