Blog

The following is an article with advice on the matter of discussing divorce with your children.  Prepare yourself and use the resources that are available, many of which are listed in this article below.

Government plans to amend the 1989 Children Act by introducing a presumption of shared parenting are well-intentioned but misguided, say the authors of new research into childhood experience of family break-ups.

A new report from The Marriage Foundation has found that after ten years of marriage the divorce rate for celebrities is 40%. For the rest of the country, the figure is just 20% over the same amount of time.

A new study has revealed that fewer American couples got divorced during the recession.

National membership organisation and support charity, Adoption UK, has been awarded the contract for the National Gateway for Adoption, in partnership with Coram and Coram Children’s Legal Centre.

People in London are in favour of better financial and practical help for grandparents raising children because their parents can’t look after them, according to a new poll commissioned by charities Grandparents Plus, the Family and Parenting Institute and Family Lives.

A care proceedings pilot launched between three London councils in April is already proving it is possible to dramatically speed up the majority of children’s care cases, including adoption, to hit the government’s target of six months.

Despite the well-intentioned and very significant efforts invested by those involved in resolving private law children disputes within the family justice system (including international relocation or "leave to remove cases"), I do not believe that the critics of the system – mainly those parents unfortunate enough to be involved in it – are wholly unjustified in certain very important aspects of their criticism.

Children from the UK will now have international protection if they move to another country outside the European Union.

The Court of Appeal has ruled that the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (CMEC) cannot threaten two men with imprisonment if they continue to fail to pay child maintenance arrears, reports the Telegraph.

The Economic and Social Research Council has reported on recent research that suggests children's parties or activity days, where prospective adopters meet children awaiting adoption, could be part of the solution to the current adoption crisis.

A service manager at the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), John Mellor, has reported seeing an increase in the number of international child custody cases involving British couples abroad, reports the Guardian.

The Office for National Statistics has recently published a statistical release showing that there were 723,913 live births in England and Wales in 2011, increasing slightly (by 0.1%) from 723,165 in 2010.

The European Court of Human Rights has rejected a claim that the Official Solicitor’s decision to place a woman’s child into care, and subsequently for adoption, was in breach of the woman’s human rights.

The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) has commented on recent claims that families who move to England from Slovakia and Russia are being unfairly targeted to satisfy demand from prospective British adopters.

Adoption UK has commented on the recent release by the Department of Education of statistics relating to children in care.

Barnardo's has issued a statement welcoming the announcement that the Government is to consult over changes to fostering and adoption procedures.

The Law Commission has published a supplementary consultation paper as part of its project examining a number of different aspects of the law relating to the financial consequences of divorce and of the dissolution of civil partnership.

A recent study from Portugal has found that men are more likely to divorce because of a lack of love, whereas women find lack of communication to be a greater cause of marital breakdown, reports the Portugal News. Other reasons given included infidelity and domestic violence.