Family court judges should proceed with caution when postponing final decisions in a case, the Court of Appeal has declared. The case of S-L (Children: Adjournment) concerned a local authority’s appeal against a ruling made earlier this year. The recorder in that case had adjourned the council’s application for care and placement orders for two young children. The parents of the three year-old girl and her seven month old baby brother were suspected of neglect and had poor parenting skills. ‘Care and placement’ orders are twin rulings made by family courts to take children into care and then place them…
Doctors treating a mentally ill woman can conduct a caesarean section against her will, the Court of Protection has ruled. The unnamed woman, in the final stages of pregnancy, has insisted she does not want a C-section. But her medical team told Mr Justice Hayden that she has bipolar affective disorder, as well as a history of both depression and psychosis and they believe there is a real risk that she could relapse while in labour and make irrational decisions if serious complications occur. The Court of Protection is a division of the High Court which makes decisions on behalf…
The term child abduction conjures up frightening images of sinister strangers pouncing on innocent children as they play in the park. Of course, such crimes do occur and they grab headlines and break hearts when they do. But abduction by strangers is rare. The majority of the child abduction that does take place is considerably more mundane and much closer to home: most children who are abducted are taken by their own parents. This type of abduction occurs most commonly following an acrimonious divorce or separation, between couples at loggerheads over arrangements for the children. Sometimes the parent with whom…
Jeremy Ford of Cambridge Family Law Practice represented the Litigation Friend on behalf of the child in a recent hearing before the President of the Family Division where the Telegraph Media Group Ltd, Associated Newspapers Limited, News Group Newspapers Limited and Reach sought to lift the anonymity order which protected the identity of the Claimant within the Judicial Review and Family Proceedings. The Media Group were successful in their application and the President decided that the anonymity order should be lifted in respect of the identity of the Claimant but not the child. This important judgment delicately balances the competing…
