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Payne v Payne - The long goodbye continues
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As someone whose life is unduly preoccupied with thinking about relocation law I find it fascinating that the English courts cannot bring themselves to say in straightforward terms what we on the sidelines have known for so long -
Payne v Payne has had its day.
For anyone not familiar with
Payne it's a 2001 Court of Appeal decision which places considerable focus on the fact that the applicant was the mother and that she was the child's primary carer. Looking back over the earlier authorities those facts were almost always true and so it is perhaps unsurprising that the court's guidance about how to approach such cases in the future took this as being inevitable.
In the 15 years since the case was decided much has changed and the reality is that there is a far greater range of post-separation care arrangements on the ground now than there was when
Payne was decided. Consequently when thinking about a question as important as whether a child should be taken to live in another country or not the relevant considerations are now also...
Read the full article here.
