Family Court a law unto itself?

By now the press are reporting widely the case of Alas Al-Wray (FD10C00445 LB of Islington v Al Alas and Wray Approved Judgment 19 April 2012). Not many other than lawyers will have the fortitude to get all the way through the judgment, which is extremely lengthy and medically technical. But it is a shocking [...]

s91(14) Again

I wrote an article a while ago for Family Law Week about s91(14). There’s been another s91(14) case recently, once again a successful appeal against the making of a s91(14) order. You can read the article here and about the recent case of M (A Child) [2012] EWCA Civ 446 here on Family Lore.

Stuff I grazed on today

It was a slow old day today. A spot of overlisting and a lot of hanging around at court, a couple of hours on a train….The iphone has had a workout today – I cleared all my backlog of unread RSS feeds, gorged on twitter and read Metro from cover to cover whilst languishing in [...]

Parental Kidnap

International child abduction is a thorny issue, particularly where a child is abducted by a parent to a country that is not a signatory to the Hague Convention. Family practitioners tend to see it from two angles – attempted prevention through the seeking of orders in the family court, and where children are abducted to [...]

Jones v Kernott

Here is a thing I wrote for the Comment is Free section of The Guardian website: Cohabitees’ property rights: still as clear as mud (I wanted to call it Gordian Knot, but that was a bit too cryptic…) And here is Hayley Trim’s excellent piece on the case, aimed at lawyers rather than punters: A [...]

Purging like a kitten

I’m a bit behind the curve on this one. Others have covered it already so I can do no better than to point you to their work. Elizabeth Watson has purged her contempt in relation to the publication of material concerning the Vicky Haigh family proceedings. The judgment is astonishingly blunt and in my view [...]

Friday Oddments

More good stuff on the Haigh / Hemming / Booker / Watson sagathon: John Hemming’s Extraordinary Defence on Head of Legal. A must read. Christopher Booker sets us straight: about Judge Wall, the secrecy rules, and another stinging attack, saying “When journalists judges have such power to make their own rules about what can and [...]

Neither a Paedophile Nor a Paediatrician

More information is filtering into the public domain about the contempt of court proceedings connected to Vicky Haigh, and to the Children Act proceedings concerning her children, which have been held up by John Hemming MP as a case of injustice. Today the UK Human Rights Blog publishes the full press release, but we still [...]

Bared Teeth – Grrrrr!

Contempt of Court are the “teeth” behind privacy rules in family proceedings. The court will bite, but only when necessary. This week a private investigator enmeshed in the Vicky Haigh care proceedings (which has become a weird kind of celebrity care case thanks to the Max Cliffords of the family justice world: Christopher Booker and [...]

Hurrah for independent Guardians

A County Council v K & Ors (By the Child’s Guardian Ht) [2011] EWHC 1672 (Fam) I have not had the chance to fully read this judgment, but this case appears to be an astonishing rebuke to CAFCASS’ bureaucratic, authoritarian managerial approach, and firmly reminds them of the need to allow Guardian’s to exercise their [...]