Category: Family
21 October 2010 by Rosalind English
Radmacher (formerly Granatino) (Respondent) v Granatino (Appellant) [2010] UKSC 42 (On appeal from the Court of Appeal [2009] EWCA Civ 649) Read judgment
The Supreme Court has ruled that ante-nuptial arrangements should be binding and enforceable in ancillary proceedings. Thus in future it will be natural to infer that parties who enter into an ante-nuptial agreement to which English law is likely to be applied intend that effect should be given to it.
Although human rights were not in issue in this litigation, there is an interesting question to explore here in relation to the parties’ rights to peaceful enjoyment of their possession without interference by the state (in the form of a court order reversing the provisions of a private settlement). Now the Supreme Court has given nuptial agreements considerably more weight in the fall-out folllowing marital breakup the likelihood of a Convention-based challenge in this context falls away but does not disappear altogether because the statutory regime still obliges courts to interfere with agreements if they are considered unfair in any way, or prejudicial to the children of the marriage.
First, the following summary is based on the press release of the case published on the Supreme Court website.
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20 October 2010 by Adam Wagner
Radmacher (formerly Granatino) (Respondent) v Granatino (Appellant) [2010] UKSC 42 On appeal from the Court of Appeal [2009] EWCA Civ 649 – Read judgment / press summary
The Supreme Court has ruled by an 8-1 majority (Lady Hale dissenting) that a court should give effect to a nuptial agreement that is freely entered into by each party with a full appreciation of its implications unless, in the circumstances prevailing, it would not be fair to hold the parties to their agreement.
The court robustly dismissed Mr Granatino’s appeal against a Court of Appeal decision to enforce his pre-nuptial agreement with Ms Radmacher. The agreement provided that if they were to separate, he would receive none of her considerable independent wealth.
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19 October 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated x 2 – full details of review below | The much-heralded Ministry of Justice budget cuts will be announced shortly as part of the government spending review. Previously, it had been reported that the department’s budget would be cut by around 20%, or £2bn (see our post). However, over the weekend the Observer reported that the cut would be much larger, running to £3bn – around 30% of the total budget – which represents a 50% increase on the original figure.
The justice minister Ken Clarke is believed to have had to take an extra hit “after the defence secretary, Liam Fox, and Michael Gove at education won more generous agreements than previously expected“.
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8 October 2010 by Isabel McArdle
(1)A Chief Constable, (2) AA v (1)YK, (2)RB, (3)ZS, (4)SI, (5)AK, (6)MH, [2010] EWHC 2438 (Fam) – Read judgment
The High Court has given guidance on the role which special advocates may play in forced marriage and honour violence cases. The controversial special advocates system has been used in anti-terrorism trials to prevent national secrets being revealed to terrorist subjects. However, recently the courts have roundly rejected attempts for the advocates to be used in non-criminal scenarios, on the basis that open justice is a fundamental legal right.
Forced marriage cases often involve information which it is in the public interest not to disclose because to do so would, for example, endanger police informants. Special advocates are not normally needed, because the legislation in question allows the courts to make orders to prevent forced marriages without those suspected of attempting to force a marriage from being notified at all.
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4 October 2010 by Adam Wagner
Coventry City Council v X, Y and Z (Care Proceedings: Costs: Identification of Local Authority) [2010] EWHC B22 (Fam) – Read judgment
Coventry City Council has been ordered to pay £100,000 in costs and has been severely criticised by the High Court for child protection failures. What is particularly interesting about the case is the unusual decision of the High Court to disclose the name of the offending council at the request of the BBC.
Judge Bellamy decided the main case in February, ruling that the council, which had accused the children’s parents of faking their illnesses, had “fallen below acceptable standards”. The council had attempted to withdraw care orders for three children at the last moment after it admitted to not having enough evidence to back up its claims. The judge was so unimpressed with the council’s conduct of the case that he ordered them to pay the parents’ costs of £100,000.
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30 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated The High Court has ruled that the Legal Service Commission’s legal aid tender process was “unfair, unlawful and irrational”. The decision came in a judicial review of the tender brought by the Law Society.
According to the Law Society’s press release:
The failure of the LSC to anticipate, let alone manage, the outcome of the process was the latest and perhaps most alarming of the LSC’s apparently haphazard attempts to reshape legal aid…
The LSC’s actions would have seen the number of offices where the public could get subsidised help with family cases drastically cut from 2400 to 1300.
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30 September 2010 by Rosalind English
J M v. The United Kingdom – 37060/06 [2010] ECHR 1361 – Read judgment
The European Court of Rights has declared that rules on child maintenance prior to introduction of the Civil Partnership Act discriminated against those in same-sex relationships.
The events happened nearly a decade ago and the law in relation to same-sex couples has greatly altered since, so it will be of limited relevance to those paying child benefit now. Of more interest is the reasoning of the majority in deciding the case under the right to peaceful enjoyment of property rather than the right to family life.
The case summary is based on the Court’s press release, and is followed by my comment.
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26 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
Last week I posted on a speech given by Sir Nicholas Wall on family justice reform. The speech has been widely reported: see the BBC, Zoe Williams’ challenge to Sir Nicholas’ point that intelligent parents made worse litigants, and this thorough analysis from Marylin Stowe.
It should not be forgotten, however, that Sir Nicholas’ speech was to Families Need Fathers (FNF), a fathers’ rights lobby group – see the Wikipedia entry on the movement’s history.
There are two interesting articles on fathers’ rights in this morning’s Observer, the second of which comments on the speech. FNF is, according to the Observer, “at the forefront of a shift in tone in fathers’ rights – away from the notorious stunts of Fathers 4 Justice, which involved grown men dressed as superheroes unfurling banners on public monuments, towards a professional lobbying approach, deploying reasoned argument and concern for the child.”
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21 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
Update The president of the family courts, Sir Nicholas Wall, has given a wide-ranging speech to Families Needs Fathers. In it he outlined his own vision for change and also sounded a warning that legal aid in family cases may soon be abolished.
On legal aid, he said “you do not need a crystal ball to see that legal aid for private law proceedings is likely to be further diminished if not abolished“. This may not come as a surprise to those who have been following the family legal aid tender debacle. But the practical outcome of a reduction or abolition of Legal Aid will be that when cases do come to court, more will have to be accomplished, and faster, before the money runs out. Sir Nicholas suggests some ways of achieving this.
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26 August 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated 27 Aug (17:15) | A High Court judge has branded the Legal Service Commission’s recent and highly controversial tender for legal aid work as a “dreadful” and potentially irrational decision.
The comments of Mr Justice Collins came in a permission hearing (i.e., only the first stage of a two-part process) on the application by the Community Law Partnership to judicially review the LSC’s recent tender, and specifically the rejection of CLP’s own application. It appears from a Law Society Gazette article that the hearing was adjourned, with the judge warning the LSC to consider its position carefully, and that if it fights and loses the decision could set a dangerous precedent. The hearing is to resume in around a week and a half.
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24 August 2010 by Matthew Hill
UE (Nigeria) and Others v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] EWCA Civ 975
The Court of Appeal has held that in deciding whether the removal of a person from the UK is compatible with their human rights, their value to the community can and in many cases should be taken into account.
The court ruled that when a decision-maker is undertaking the balancing exercise required to determine whether the removal of an individual from the UK is proportionate under Article 8 ECHR (right to family life), the individual’s value to the community in this country is a relevant consideration to be taken into account. However, this judgment was qualified by indications from the judges that, in practice, this factor is unlikely to carry much weight in the decision-maker’s evaluation.
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5 August 2010 by Adam Wagner
A Federal court in California has struck down a ban on gay marriage in the state, marking the first step on a path to a United States Supreme Court decision on the issue. A similar decision is unlikely here, however, given a recent European Court of Human Rights ruling on gay marriage. Ultimately, only Parliament is likely to bring about a change to the law in the UK.
The decision in Perry v Schwarzenegger has been widely reported and can be downloaded here. U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker found that California’s ‘Proposition 8’, approved by voters in 2008, was unconstitutional. SCOTUSBlog explain the reasoning:
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29 July 2010 by Adam Wagner
Tchenguiz & Ors v Imerman [2010] EWCA Civ 908 (29 July 2010) – Read judgment
The Court of Appeal has ruled that secretly obtained documents can no longer copied and then used in divorce proceedings, overturning a rule dating back almost twenty years. The case will have a significant impact for divorcing couples, but has the court left itself open to a Supreme Court reversal on human rights grounds?
The appeal related to the divorce proceedings between Vivian and Elizabeth Imerman, in which Mrs Imerman’s brothers brothers had downloaded documents from Mr Imerman’s office computer in order to prove that he had more assets than he had disclosed to the court. Mr Justice Moylan ruled in the High Court that seven files of documents should be handed back to Mr Imerman for the purpose of enabling him to remove any material for which he claimed privilege. Mr Imerman appealed against the decision that he would then have to give the documents back, and Mrs Imerman argued that she should be given more control over the privilege process.
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21 July 2010 by Adam Wagner
The deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats has said that gay couples are likely to gain full rights to marriage under the current Parliament. This would represent a revolution for gay rights, but there is still a long way to go before same-sex couples achieve full rights to marriage as they are arguably entitled to under human rights law.
Simon Hughes MP has told Yoost.com, a question and answer website, that Liberal Democrat MPs would be consulted on the rights of gay couples. He said “I don’t know the answer because we haven’t had the discussion“, but that
I see absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t all be able to support what Nick Clegg said, which is that it would be appropriate in Britain in 2010-11 for there to be the ability to have civil marriage for straight people and gay people equally.
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10 June 2010 by Adam Wagner
The Government has commissioned an independent review of children’s social work and frontline child protection practice. Child protection services have been widely derided as a result of a series of scandals such as that involving baby Peter Connelly (Baby P), and many lawyers feel the court system is at breaking point.
Update 13/06/10 – The Court of Protection has issued its first annual report, which can be accessed here. The forward to the Report says “The court has had to endure more than its fair share of setbacks, which were caused in the main by a failure to anticipate, prior to the implementation of the Act, the volume of work that would inundate the court during the initial transitional period, and the overall burden it would place on the judges and staff.”
According to a Department for Education (DoE) press release, Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, has asked Professor Eileen Munro, a professor of social policy at the London School of Economics, to lead the a “fundamental” review of child protection services. Professor Munro has written widely on child protection and the regulation of child care.
According to the DoE, the Government intends to
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Radmacher (formerly Granatino) (Respondent) v Granatino (Appellant) [2010] UKSC 42 (On appeal from the Court of Appeal [2009] EWCA Civ 649) Read judgment
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