Divorce law reforms – simpler, faster, friendlier
Posted by Lindsay Yateman on Wednesday, June 5th, 2019
After sustained lobbying from all sides, the government finally announced in April that divorce laws in England and Wales will be reformed and updated. The impetus for reform has gathered significant momentum over recent years. Prominent members of the judiciary, the Family Mediation Taskforce and Resolution, the national organisation of family lawyers, have all argued […]
Read MoreFamily law reform long overdue in light of Owens v Owens divorce appeal
Posted by Lindsay Yateman on Thursday, August 30th, 2018
The case of Owens v Owens is unusual. Not because Mrs Tini Owens is a woman of 68 who wants to divorce her 80 year-old husband, Hugh: after all, in 2016, there were 114,000 divorce petitions in England & Wales. What marks out the Owens case is that Mr Owens contested the divorce – one […]
Read MoreThe impact of acrimonious family breakdowns on children
Posted by Lindsay Yateman on Monday, December 18th, 2017
The issue of single parent families has attracted the attention of headline writers for more than a generation. But in the reporting of data relating to them, much of it centres on the two million single parents who comprise a quarter of all UK families with dependent children. Notably, rather less coverage is given to […]
Read MoreLitigation overload for divorced couple fighting over alleged undisclosed assets after 26 years
Posted by Lindsay Yateman on Tuesday, November 28th, 2017
The case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, as Charles Dickens called it, is well-known to every student of Law, and of English Literature, as an epic legal battle. An entirely imaginary dispute derived from his fertile imagination, it forms the centrepiece of Bleak House epitomising the very slow movement of the law that was a very […]
Read MoreWife denied divorce by Court of Appeal
Posted by Lindsay Yateman on Thursday, March 30th, 2017
In a landmark judgment, a wife has been denied a divorce by the Court of Appeal. After a 39-year marriage, Tini Owens applied for a divorce on the grounds of her husband’s unreasonable behaviour. In a highly unusual move, a High Court judge in the Oxford Family court, refused her application for a decree nisi, after […]
Read MoreHeterosexual couple lose civil partnership case at Court of Appeal
Posted by Lindsay Yateman on Thursday, February 23rd, 2017
A couple from London, Ms Rebecca Steinfield and Mr Charles Keidan, recently lost their battle in the Court of Appeal, to enter into a civil partnership despite being a heterosexual couple. Civil Partnerships were introduced in 2004 to enable same sex couples to formalise their relationship and acquire legal rights a kin to marriage. The government […]
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