Adoption - Wording Critical
The Court of Appeal recently ruled that a mother’s application to revoke a placement order for her seven-year-old son could be heard after it was rejected by the County Court. The County Court judge concluded that the boy, who was already living with a foster carer, was with a ‘potential adopter’. The carer had not committed to adopting the child but she had not ruled it out. The law prohibits an application to revoke a placement order from being heard when the child has been placed for adoption with a ‘prospective adopter’. The judge ruled that she was a potential adopter and that meant that the child had been placed for adoption.
However, the Court of Appeal ruled that a potential adopter and a prospective adopter are not the same thing. The two words have quite different dictionary definitions. The Court of Appeal considered that the judge’s focus on the wrong adjective had led to the wrong conclusion in law.
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Divorce is almost never easy and the financial negotiations can be protracted and difficult, particularly when there are business interests involved. In this article we consider some of the issues surrounding divorce for company directors. In the first...
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Family break-up is always complicated and when there is a property involved, things can get very complex indeed. In principle, when a couple are cohabiting (not married or in a civil partnership) the property belongs as of right to whoever is shown on the...
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The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (CMEC) – a statutory non-departmental public body – was established in 2008 to take on the work of the Child Support Agency. At the same time, the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act ...
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We often hear of children being taken into care, but the process by which this occurs is not well known. The Children Act 1989 lays down the circumstances under which it is appropriate for a child to be taken into care or a supervision order made. The...
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More than 40 per cent of marriages end in divorce (in England and Wales more than 125,000 couples divorce annually) and when one in five of all men and women seeking to end their marriage have already been through one divorce, it is perhaps not surprising...
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One of the most common myths in English law is that there is such a thing as a ‘common law marriage’. It simply doesn’t exist and this misapprehension has led the Law Commission to suggest proposals giving additional rights to cohabiting...
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Approximately one in six marriages in the European Union is between persons of different nationalities. Not surprisingly, approximately one in six divorces also involves spouses of different nationalities. This can make for some complexity on divorce as to...
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Arrangements over the custody of children (called residence arrangements by lawyers) after the breakdown of a relationship are usually best decided without the intervention of the court. Unfortunately, it is not always possible for the two parties to...
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The most important requirements for adoption are that the adopter must be over 21 years of age, the child to be adopted must be under the age of 18 and that joint applications to adopt can only be made by married couples and civil partners. Unmarried couples...
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Although divorce is a commonplace occurrence these days, few people going into their first divorce have much idea about how the process operates. Here is a brief guide. The process for dissolution of a civil partnership is essentially the same, as are the...
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When you begin living together as a couple, without being married, it is best practice to set up a trust deed to make clear your joint wishes and intentions concerning ownership of the house you live in. Preferably, this should be in association with a...
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The headline-grabbing decisions in a spate of ‘rich list’ divorce cases in 2007 confirmed that the House of Lords (now the Supreme Court) is emphasising that marriage is a partnership and that the relative contributions of...
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Divorces among the over-60s are by no means infrequent and, whilst the potential for acrimony arising from issues concerning young children is absent, they often do produce a great deal of dispute regarding the division of the family assets. There...
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The first Civil Partnerships were formed on 21 December 2005, after the Civil Partnerships Act 2004 came into effect on 5 December 2005. Same-sex marriages contracted abroad, however, have been recognised as valid civil partnerships from 5 December...
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When it comes to dealing with money and divorce, it is important to know what has to be taken into account and the powers available to arrive at fair decisions. For most couples, the basic problem is how to finance two separate households from income and...
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Divorce is seldom an easy business, but the problems are compounded when there is a family business involved. The division of the spoils has traditionally been the subject of a great deal of argument, but recent cases have at least clarified the thinking of...
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The 1989 Children Act aimed to clarify the law regarding who could look after children. One of the main new concepts introduced by the Act was that of ‘Parental Responsibility’ (PR). This is the legal term which emphasises that the duty to...
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Following a recent decision in the Supreme Court, in which a pre-nuptial agreement entered into by a German heiress and her husband was held to be enforceable, wealthy families worried about preserving family assets in the event of a divorce should certainly...
The contents of this article are intended for general information purposes only and shall not be deemed to be, or constitute legal advice. We cannot accept responsibility for any loss as a result of acts or omissions taken in respect of this article.
