Wrong Way: Go Back!

I was rather astonished to hear of the immigration, at least temporarily, of an internationally renowned family law expert from Australia into these less inviting waters as this Family Law Week news item relates. Professor Parkinson has come over here to express a few concerns he has about the proposed new child support system (see this earlier post on CMEC ). Professor Parkinson hails from the University of Sydney and this webpage gives a potted summary of his extensive academic track record.

I will be blogging about Professor Parkinson again as one of his learned pieces is a commentary on the "unacceptable risk" approach adopted in Australian family cases where allegations of sexual abuse are made - the Australian authorities decry the exercise of making findings of fact in favour of an examination of whether an unacceptable risk of harm has been established. There is movement afoot amongst certain quarters in the High Court to suggest that this sort of approach was wrongly decried by the House of Lords in Re H & R as 'mere judicial suspicion'.

Two Sides to Every Story

Further to the earlier post Sow & Ye Shall Reap about the seemingly uncharacteristic vigilance of the CSA in pursuing a sperm donor to lesbians who wanted children, the Times reports that the man in question actively sought and for a while enjoyed a rather more developed role as a father than the original report might have suggested. I can't believe I fell for another Evening Standard headline!

Sow & Ye Shall Reap

As a curious footnote to the previous post calling into question the efficiency of the CSA they seem to have fallen over themselves to track down a 'father' who helped two lesbians to have a child by donating his sperm. Five years later the chickens (or is it the eggs) have come home to roost and the CSA is pursuing him for maintenance for the resultant child. He is bringing a case to try to establish that he should not be responsible. In the meantime the HFEA are reminding men that donors who operate outside of authorised clinics have no legal protection from the uncharacteristically persistent reaches of the CSA. The Evening Standard reports.

Paying for children: never never?

Former Law Society Chief Executive, Janet Paraskeva, has been appointed as the Chair Designate of the Child Maintenance & Enforcement Commission to be established by a Bill which is up for its Third Reading this week. See the announcement by the CSA .

The aims of the CMEC & the Bill are to:

• Establish a new child maintenance delivery organisation, to be known as the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, to deliver child maintenance and replace the Child Support Agency.
• End the requirement that parents with care who claim certain benefits are automatically treated as having applied for child maintenance, encourage parents to make their own child maintenance arrangements, and give them more choice as to how they do so.
• Streamline and simplify how child maintenance is calculated enabling money to get to more children more quickly.
• Introduce tougher enforcement powers to collect arrears of child maintenance from parents who fail to pay.
• Introduce powers to reduce child maintenance debt more effectively
• Introduce a new scheme to make lump sum payments to people suffering from mesothelioma who were previously ineligible for such payments, within 6 weeks of them making a claim.

The NACSA website sets out more precise details on what the is proposed by the new scheme and what they think about it. Another note of scepticism is sounded by the Chair of Resolution's Child Support Committee, Kim Fellowes as reported on Family Lore . Resolution's press release on the subject is now on their new website .

Clearly the CSA will not be sorely missed by Journalist Clover Stroud, from whose article in the Sunday Times (He Won't Pay - so I Have To) will be happy to dance on its coffin when it finally goes.

Unfortunately this will not be until 2009 for existing cases and 2010/2011 for new cases.