Family and Matrimonial

• A Guide to the 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 joint applications to adopt can only be made by married couples and civil partners. Unmarried couples can...
• 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...
• Child Maintenance Explained 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 2008 ...
• Civil Partnerships And Same-Sex Marriage Explained 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...
• 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...
• 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 to...
• Divorce and Foreign Residence: Children When a marriage breaks up, it is usual for the couple to separate physically as well as legally and in some cases the physical separation can be considerable. With the increase in international travel and residence abroad, marriages between persons of...
• 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 and...
• Divorce and the Company Director 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...
• 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 the...
• 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...
• Guide to 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...
• 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...
• Pensions and Divorce 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...
• Post-Nuptial Agreements - the Basics Although divorce rates are in decline, more than 40 per cent of marriages end in divorce (in England and Wales more than 100,000 couples divorce annually) and when one in five of all men and women seeking to end their marriage have already been through one...
• Pre-Nuptial Agreements: Wise Planning for the Wealthy Following a 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...
• Relationship Break Up and Tax Getting divorced is never a pleasant experience and couples going through the process have a lot to think about. Whilst management of the tax consequences of the split is not normally at the top of their priority list, these can be considerable, even where...
• 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...
• What Are Financial Needs? When financial settlements are being made on divorce, one crucial aspect that is taken into account in deciding the structure and value of the settlement is the 'financial needs' of the person receiving maintenance from their former spouse. However, one of...