The Austin Lafferty Solicitors & Estate Agents Blog

The subject of child maintenance arrangements and the Child Support Agency has recently come back under the spotlight.

Children living in households where the parents are married are less likely to be obese, according to new research from Rice University and the University of Houston.

Children are being moved too many times between foster families because of the need for more foster carers across the UK, the Fostering Network has warned.

Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has recently announced the launch of a pilot scheme that will provide legal advice to non-Japanese parents whose children have been taken to Japan by their other parent without consent. 

The Marriage Foundation think-tank has produced a report revealing that second marriages are more stable than first marriages, challenging the widely held belief that couples who remarry are doomed to repeat the mistakes from their first marriage.

Divorce can have a detrimental effect on a woman’s retirement savings and result in a lack of financial security in retirement, according to recent research from the Phoenix Group.

In an interesting European development, MEPs last week approved amendments to an international treaty that will make it easier for someone living in one country to recover maintenance payments from someone living in another country.

A recently published study has carried out a detailed examination of informal kinship care arrangements in the UK.

The UK Government has announced funding of £6.5 million to help separated or divorced parents work together for the sake of their children.

The systems designed to help Scotland’s most vulnerable children need to work better together in order to help the very people they are trying to protect according to a report issued by the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Culture Committee.

Discussions on the consequences of divorce often focus on emotional and financial outcomes, which undoubtedly can be very significant for the couple involved. However, the life changing consequences of a divorce are not simply restricted to the emotional and financial spheres, and it’s not only the couple going through the divorce who will feel the pain of separation.

A ground-breaking new programme that promises to transform the lives of children in care has been launched by the Fostering Network.

A recent study from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business has explored what effect there is on a marriage when the wife earns more than her husband.

Same-sex couples who live together have worse health than married opposite-sex couples and similar health as opposite-sex couples who are living together (after adjusting for socio-economic differences), according to a new study from researchers at Rice University.

There has been much thought and angst in the press recently about the changes in family structure that have taken place in the UK over recent years. Many, such as the rise in the number of single parents or the growth in cohabitation, are seen by some as being bad for society - and for children.

A recent study by researchers at Cambridge University has examined the wellbeing of adoptive families headed by same-sex couples.

According to single parent family charity Gingerbread, recent statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions have revealed that unpaid child maintenance in the UK has soared by £25 million to £3.837 billion in the last quarter of 2012.

Researchers at the Open University are conducting a two year study to establish what a 21st century long-term relationship looks like, and to examine the emotional and practical work that couples do to sustain their relationship.

Around 59% of divorce attorneys in America have seen an increase in the number of cases using evidence taken from dating websites during the past three years, according to a recent survey of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML).

The subject of same-sex marriage has featured heavily in the British press over recent months, with both the Scottish and UK Governments carrying out consultation exercises on the introduction of gay marriage.