Family and Matrimonial

• Adoption Process Explained

• 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...

• Business Assets and Divorce

• 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...

• Child Custody Explained

• 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 agree...

• Child Maintenance Explained

• In spite of reforms introduced in 2003, the Child Support Agency (CSA) was heavily criticised for failing to meet its objectives. With nearly 4 billion worth of unpaid child maintenance estimated to be outstanding, clearly something had to be done. To...

• Civil Partnerships - What they Mean for You

• 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 2005....

• Cohabitation Agreements - Protection for Unmarried Couples

• 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 couples. However, a...

• Court Backs Cohabitee Claim - in Part

• A lady barrister who broke up with her barrister fiancee was recently awarded the flat they shared and a 25 per cent share of a mill in Sussex despite the fact that both properties had been held in the sole name of her ex-fiancee. Kerry Cox was awarded...

• Divorce and Foreign Nationality

• 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...

• Divorce and Money

• 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...

• Divorce and the Family Home?

• 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...

• Financial Settlements in Divorce: Factors

• 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 the couple to the marriage will...

• Guide to Adoption Process

• 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...

• Living Together Agreements

• 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 ...

• Parental Responsibility

• 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 care for one's...

• Post-Nuptial Agreements - the Basics

• 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...

• Pre-Nuptial Agreements: Wise Planning for the Wealthy

• Following a recent decision in the Court of Appeal, 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...

• Taking Children into Care - The Legal Process

• 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...

• The Process of Divorce

• 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...