Family Law

Parental alienation is a "highly controversial" concept and the use of the term in Irish legal settings should be treated with serious caution, researchers have said. Though the term is being used increasingly often by Irish judges, they "do not appear to use an agreed definition of [parental aliena

Claire Edgar of Belfast-based Francis Hanna & Co Solicitors examines a recent Northern Ireland court ruling on non-molestation order applications. The High Court of Northern Ireland recently handed down judgment in the judicial review case of JR231. The judgment explores the legal test to be app

The Supreme Court has ruled that a child born in the UK via a surrogacy arrangement was not entitled to Irish citizenship based on his non-biological father’s Irish citizenship. The parents were a same-sex married couple and had obtained a parental order in England, which was not available in

A Deputy Judge of the High Court of England and Wales has granted permission for a Ukrainian father to withdraw an application under the Hague Convention of 1980 under which he sought the return of his two children to Kyiv. Applicant NW had remained in Ukraine under the requirements of martial law w

The High Court has set aside the grant of leave to bring judicial review proceedings after the applicant had provided a “grossly misleading” account of his complaint against a Circuit Court judge. The applicant had issued the proceedings after the Circuit Court had made certain orders in

Emergency legislation is needed to prevent thousands of divorcees from losing hundreds of thousands of euros in payments as a result of changes to EU law, the Law Society of Ireland has said. The Law Society today said it has alerted the Pensions Authority and practitioners to the serious effect of

Ireland is an "outlier in Europe" because of its failure to give legal recognition to prenuptial agreements, a lawyer and government minister has said. Josepha Madigan, a qualified solicitor and minister of state for special education, told The Sunday Times that the law should be changed to recognis

Northern Ireland’s Court of Appeal has upheld a decision permitting evidence of sexual assault in the context of a family court application where the same evidence was rejected as hearsay in a criminal trial. The facts of this case are explicit and reader discretion is advised.

Paul C McCarthy SC has been admitted to the International Academy of Family Lawyers (IAFL) as a Fellow. The prestigious organisation is a worldwide association of practising lawyers recognised by their peers as the most experienced and skilled family law specialists in their respective countries.

The government has ordered a review into waiting times for domestic violence orders in the District Court amid claims that vulnerable people are waiting as long as 16 weeks in parts of the State. Simon Harris confirmed in the Dáil that he had asked the Courts Service to prepare a report on th

Restrictions on the disclosure of evidence heard in-camera are creating an inadvertent barrier to complaints about the conduct of judges in family law cases, the Judicial Council has said.

The High Court has determined that a mother had wrongfully removed her two children to Ireland and ordered that they should be returned to Sweden under the Hague Convention. The eldest child claimed that she would self-harm if she was returned to Sweden but the court held that there were not strong

Northern Ireland’s High Court has determined that it is in the best interests of a child to be relocated to Poland, where he has family ties and where his mother’s new husband is based. The court noted the emotional impact that refusing the application could have on the mother and, in tu

New research into Ireland's family law system has found that the voices of infants and very young children are "starkly absent" from decision-making. The first-of-its-kind research was conducted by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Trinity College Dublin and University College Cork and i

The Law Society of Ireland has urged the government to commit the "necessary resources" to ensure that planned reforms to the family courts system can be put into practice. The long-awaited Family Courts Bill 2022, which will provide for the establishment of a Family Court as divisions within the ex