Boom in cross-border family disputes

The number of cross-border family legal disputes where a UK judge's team was called grew to 253 last year, an increase of almost 50 per cent on 2011.

Cases have grown ten times in a decade and more than doubled in two years, the report, published today by the office of the head of International Family Justice, shows.

The report shows there were three new cases handled by the office in 2005, rising to 65 in 2008 and to 253 in 2012.

Head of international family justice Lord Justice Thorpe said in the report that the rise in cases could be attributed to the growing number of families where parents are of different nationalities and the number of children born to foreign parents.

Lord Justice Thorpe also cited the "increasing awareness amongst judges and practitioners throughout the world of the service that the Office provides".

The report cites the case of a mother who had taken her children to France to prevent them from being taken into care, where they were found living on a waterlogged caravan site, due to close for the winter, and were not attending school.

In another case the office obtained the personal assurances of the Cypriot Attorney General that a woman agreeing to return from Britain to Cyprus with her child would not be prosecuted by the Cypriot authorities.

The most frequent areas dealt with by the office include child abductions and other custody disputes between parents living in different countries.

The office functions as a 'help desk' for judges and lawyers in multiple jurisdictions who have experienced delays because of cross-border involvement.

A third of requests to the office come from solicitors and employed barristers, 28 per cent from judges and 23 per cent from self-employed barristers. Litigants, including McKenzie friends, account for only 11 per cent.

There are no published figures for the growth in international litigation overall.