The Child Law Partnership recently threw a party for 80  guests to celebrate our 10 year anniversary.  The Child Law Partnership was formed by Directors, Philip Bennett and Peta Malthouse in 2001 with just one office in Guildford.

From those humble beginnings, the firm has gone from strength to strength and now consists of 20 staff and 2 offices, following the addition of an office in Basingstoke.

Having initially established ourselves as a successful practice specialising solely in cases involving children, in 2008 our services were extended to offer advice on all aspects of family law in both offices.  With 12 lawyers offering a full range of advice, this now makes us the largest specialist family law firm in Surrey and Hampshire.

VALLEY TRUST

The Child Law Partnership has, for many years, been closely involved with the Valley Trust charity.

The Valley Trust was set up as a family breakdown counselling service in 1985 and from 1993 as a school counselling service covering Surrey and surrounding counties.

They provide a confidential counselling service to pupils in schools with emotional, social or behavioural problems to enable them to function more effectively in school or at home.  Such issues that arise include bereavement, family break up, family and peer relationship difficulties, anxiety, and bullying.

The Counsellors provided by the trust are all qualified, experienced and professionally accredited.

Peta Malthouse of the Child Law Partnership has had an interest with the Valley Trust since 1993 when she was involved in organising the first fundraising event, a 10^th anniversary dinner at Clandon Park.  She is also a past chair of the Valley Trust.  Following on from this first event an annual quiz was set up, which initially Peta jointly organised.  This is now run solely by the Child Law Partnership.  The quiz, which is held every March, generally raises at least £1,000 and is the only fund raising event for the Valley Trust.  The Quiz is well supported by local professionals who work in the field of family breakdown.

Further details of the Trust’s vital work can be found on their website here:  http://www.valleytrust.org/

With Valentine’s Day approaching this month, love is said to be in the air. For many, however, there are more practical and less romantic considerations to take into account upon marriage or when entering a civil partnership.

With this in mind more and more people are considering entering into pre-nuptial agreements in an attempt to determine what should happen to their money in the event of a separation.

The issue of pre-nuptial agreements has prompted considerable interest in the media in recent years following several high profile cases. Although in these recent cases, pre-nuptial agreements have heavily influenced the Court’s decision, they are still not binding in this country. The widely reported case of Radmacher v Granatino last year took the issue of whether they should become binding even further. In this case the Court decided that they should take into account the terms of a pre-nuptial agreement, in considering a financial settlement on divorce, where the parties had freely entered into it with a full understanding of its implications unless it would be unfair to uphold it.

However, as the law currently stands, the Court still has the final say. This can lead to uncertainty and the risk of expensive litigation. Following this particular case, the Law Commission has been prompted to publish a consultation paper asking the public for their views on whether the law should remain as it stands, with the Court having the final say, or whether pre-nuptial agreements should be binding. The Consultation paper sets out arguments for and against reform in this area and is open for the public views until 11^th April 2011.

The papers suggests that if a pre nuptial agreement is to be enforceable it should be in writing, that each party should take legal advice and the person seeking to enforce the agreement against the other must have made full and frank disclosure of their financial situation. It also considers the possibility of the agreement ceasing after a certain period of time or specified event e.g., the birth of a child.

The full consultation paper can be found here: http://www.lawcom.gov.uk/docs/cp198.pdf

It is possible that we will see a move towards pre-nuptial agreements becoming legally binding on parties upon divorce in the future bearing in mind the costs and uncertainties of divorce. Until then, pre-nuptial agreements do have their place, although legal advice should be sought when considering entering into such an agreement.

Happy Valentine’s!

With the arrival of the New Year, many people feel the need to reflect on their lives and make changes and resolutions for the year ahead.  Sadly for many, these changes can be as major as the decision to end a relationship.  Whether this is something you have been contemplating for a while or whether simply being at home together for an extended time over the Christmas period has brought everything to a head, it is nonetheless a life changing decision.  It is a big step and often it is a time of conflict and heartache for everyone involved.  There may be many issues that you need to sort out involving the care of the children, the home and finances.  Finding the right lawyer for you is an important step in the process.

Our family lawyers are members of Resolution. www.resolution.org.uk. Resolution is a group of around 5,500 lawyers who are committed to easing the pain and the financial cost of family breakdown.  We are committed to resolving disputes in a non-confrontational way by abiding to a code of conduct which encourages solutions rather than confrontations, and which takes into account the needs of the whole family.  We believe that family law disputes should be dealt with in a constructive way, designed to preserve people’s dignity and to encourage agreements. 

If you are considering separation or if you have separated, seek initial advice so that you know what your options are. There are various methods for resolving family law issues including direct discussions between you and your partner, negotiation, mediation and collaborative law. Bring a friend along with you to your meeting to listen and ask questions for you; we do not always take on board what is being said to us when we are stressed or when our heads are full of thoughts.

If you have children together, try and present a united front together, no matter how difficult. Your relationship may have ended, but your role as parents will not. Children will adapt to change if it is handled carefully.

Change can be a good or bad thing, easy or hard, forced upon us or voluntary. Whatever New Year’s resolutions you make for 2011, we hope that it will turn into a good year for you.

Happy New Year.

 Although the Christmas period is seen as the happiest and most family oriented time of the year, it can be a huge strain on those who are going through relationship breakdown; and sometimes even more so for the children involved.

If you are affected by relationship trouble or a break-up this Christmas try to maintain a united front for the benefit of your children. Try not to impact or burden your children unnecessarily with problems that you and your partner are experiencing.

Contact arrangements are the most frequent cause for disagreement at this time of year. Try to be reasonable with each other and rather than having the same disagreement each year, come up with an arrangement which will stand the test of time. Alternate days on alternate years can be an effective way of ensuring that children see both parents. That way the children know well in advance what the arrangements are, and do not feel as though they are caught in the middle. Don’t try to compete with each other for your children’s affection. Be supportive of each other and focus on the time you have with the children, rather than worrying about the time your partner has. Remember you are there to support your children, not to use the event as a point scoring exercise.

Above all make sure that you and your loved ones have a happy time. Merry Christmas!

Some of our childcare lawyers are off again at the end of this month to the Association of Lawyers for Children Annual conference held this year in Southampton at the end of this month.

This amazingly is the 21^st Annual Conference . Peta and I went to the very first one and since then between us we have been to most of them.

In the old days they were held in Universities and we stayed in student Halls of Residence [ I remember that Durham was particularly cold due to the lack of heating!] but as the years have gone by they have moved to rather grander venues and this year we are again staying at the De Vere Grand Harbour Hotel in Southampton.

The Conference offers us a few days to switch off from our caseloads, to meet colleagues from other firms, and practitioners from other areas and professions involved in childcare law and to immerse ourselves in the latest practice, thinking and developments in what is in any event a very fast changing area of law.

We usually come back with our batteries recharged and reinvigorated to face the challenges of the year ahead –and it is generally fun!

In cases where the misuse of alcohol and/or illegal drugs by a parent is an issue the courts often direct that tests should be carried out on a sample of hair to provide evidence.

Judgment has now been delivered in a case involving Hair Alcohol Testing (LB Richmond v B & W [2010] EWCA 2903). The main points appear to be that
* hair tests should be used as part of the complete evidential picture
* greater use of the Experts’ Practice Direction when hair tests are commissioned or at least when interpretative analysis is sought
* the tests are reliable to show excessive alcohol use i.e. just under a bottle of wine / 2-3 pints lager
* the test results cannot yet discriminate between people who are abstinent and those who are social drinkers
* if reliance is sought to be placed on any result other than consistent with excessive use / inconsistent with excessive use experts must be able to justify this
* test results purporting to show alcohol use month by month are not reliable

* testing for both FAEE & Etg is more reliable than testing for one batch of markers only.

It will be interesting to see whether this decision slows down the growing trend to order these tests in all cases where a party is thought to drink more that they should !

Here we go again. Two and a half years ago the Labour government proposed a huge increase in court fees for local authorities starting care proceedings in the courts on behalf of vulnerable children from £150 to £4,825. The coalition government has now confirmed that it will stick with the eye-watering increase despite a campaign by childcare professionals, lawyers and judges arguing that the greater expense might encourage cash-strapped local authorities to give violent or neglectful parents one more chance.

The tragic life and death of Baby Peter was back in the news this week. When Lord Laming published his report on child protection last year, one of his 58 recommendations was to scrap the inflated fees in the absence of “incontrovertible evidence” that they were not deterring local authorities from taking children out of danger.
“If even in one case a local authority is deterred in taking action, that is one case too many,” he said. This year a government-sponsored independent review of the fees by Francis Plowden recommended their abolition.

Jack Straw, in a U-turn, accepted the point while justice secretary, so why not his successor? “Protecting vulnerable children is paramount and I do not believe that continuing to charge these court fees will place vulnerable children at risk,” argued Jonathan Djanogly, the minister for justice, last week. His ministerial statement was delivered the day after the spending review. You may draw your own conclusions as to whether children’s interests were paramount in that decision. The fees are part of a wider policy to make the courts pay for themselves.
So what of the government policy to make the courts self-funding? We don’t expect the CPS to pay to bring criminals to court, so why should we expect local authorities to pay to fulfil their statutory obligation for access to justice on behalf of children?

There have been a couple of stories in the press in the last week which demonstrate the wide variety of situations that face the family lawyer…

Nearly two thirds of children (61%), many as young as eight years old, have seen signs that could indicate child neglect in children in their classrooms, playgrounds, neighbourhoods and activity clubs across the UK, according to new findings from Action for Children .The findings come as the charity warns of the dangers of child neglect.

The large scale study of over 3,000 children aged eight to 12 years lifts the lid on the prevalence of child neglect across the country. Studies suggest that up to 10% of children in the UK experience neglect and it is the main reason for children to need a child protection plan ahead of both physical and sexual abuse.
Symptoms of child neglect previously highlighted in Action for Children’s research among professionals, including being dirty, smelly, and lonely and going hungry, have all been spotted by children. Children told the charity that they had seen, on average, at least three children showing one of these key signs this year alone. Other known indicators of neglect spotted by those surveyed included:

• Children who are often late or missing from school (41%)
• Don’t seem to have any friends to play with at school or at home (34%)
• May seem like their parents don’t know what they are doing a lot of the time (26%)
• Children whose clothes do not fit them, may be old or smelly (25%)
• Children who were unwashed or often dirty (19%)
• Children who might say they don’t get meals at home (7%)

We have revamped our website and hope that our clients and visitors like the changes that we have made.

One of the new things on our site is this blog. We plan to post new listings on a regular basis covering issues of the day relevant to family law and practice.

We will also aim to keep you abreast of all the news at CLP as it happens.

Do take a look at our first posting.