Financial Remedies: Nicholas v Nicholas no longer good law

This is a guest blog post by Christopher Sharp QC, barrister and Head of Family Practice Group at St John’s Chambers. Christopher is a leading silk on the Western Circuit, known well for his expertise in high value ancillary relief cases.   PETRODEL RESOURCES LTD; PETRODEL UPSREAM LTD; VERMONT PETROLEUM LTD – v -  YASMIN [...]

Book Review: Financial Remedies Under The Family Procedure Rules 2010 & The @eGlance Guide

This review is a guest post written by  Zoe Saunders, barrister at St John’s Chambers, Bristol. Zoe has particular expertise in cohabitation disputes, including applications for financial provision for children and trusts of land issues, and financial remedies on divorce. You can also find Zoe on twitter (@ZASaunders). Financial Remedies Under the Family Procedure Rules 2010 [...]

The Second Wife Impact

Andrew Commins, a colleague in chambers, has written an interesting article for Family Law Week on the impact of remarriage on variation applications by the ex spouse. I particularly like the mental image described in the extract from Delaney v Delaney [1991] 2 FLR 457, CA, that the court will deprecate “any notion that a former husband and extant [...]

Trustee in Bankruptcy has 3 Year Window

I have not had time to read the full report of this case reported last week in The Times: Lewis and Another v Metropolitan Property Realisations Ltd (Court of Appeal, July 15 2009), but it is certainly going to be worth a look both for families concerned about losing their home and ex-(or soon to [...]

Ancillary to NOTHING

Where there is no lawful marriage there is no divorce and where there is no divorce there is nothing for ancillary relief to be ancillary to. The BBC reports on the High Court ruling recently in respect of a distant beach marriage that did not create legal ties. Did this poor lady never hear of Jerry [...]

Amending the Register

I’ve been meaning to make a short post about registration of births since going through the process myself with our newborn. Today it is reported that the arrangements are going to change. For myself and the other half registration of his name as father on the certificate is automatic since we are married, but for [...]

Mills McCartney Award Announced – and Judgment published in full

Well, we all knew there would be some kind of appeal – and apparently it is by way of Heather Mills McCartney appealing the decision to make the full judgment public, due to be heard tomorrow. In the meantime here is a link to the summary of the judgment published today. . In short, Heather [...]

NSPCC and Law Society Wade In

The NSPCC and the Law Society have recently aired their concerns by press release about the detrimental side-effects that the enormous hike in court fees for the issue of care proceedings is likely to have on child welfare. NSPCC director and chief executive, Dame Mary Marsh, says quite rightly: . ‘It is a matter of [...]

Making sure granny gets her pocket money

Yet another reminder that kinship carers are entitled to equality of treatment when compared other types of foster carers – the Local Government Ombudsman has just published a report [link updated 03/03/11] relating to an instance of discriminatory treatment by way of a refusal to make the same payments available to kinship carers as were [...]

new blog

The new ancillary actuary blog is intended to promote discussion of the financial aspects of divorce, amongst the professionals working in that area. I am in deepest darkest West Virginia with nothing but a painfully slow dialup connection so I don’t know if its any good, but here is the link.