16th June 2010

During a divorce or family breakdown, disputes over where children are going to live can be some of the most bitter and harmful to the family, and international family law deals harshly with cases of child abduction.

David Hodson, a Consultant at The International Family Law Group and Deputy District Judge at the Principal Registry of the Family Division, High Court, London has recently written an article for FamilyLaw.co.uk in which he looks at the "flip side" of child abduction – child relocation - and how English and Welsh family law could be affected by a new resolution agreed recently in Washington, USA.

He states that while laws relating to child abduction have two major international conventions, supported by the governments of more than 70 countries, to harmonise a legal approach to this crime, treatment of child relocation has no such international coherence of law.

The Washington Declaration was agreed in March 2010 when more than 50 lawyers and family law experts gathered to identify relevant factors for international child relocation decisions.

Agreed with the support of the Hague Conference, the declaration has been heralded as a major step forward and Lord Justice Thorpe has said that if it were adopted in England and Wales it would represent a significant departure from current English child relocation principles which are seen as possibly the most liberal and generous relocation laws in existence.

A conference to be held in London on 30th June – 2nd July 2010 by the Centre for Family Law and Practice entitled International Child Abduction, Relocation and Forced Marriages will be attended by more than 150 of the world's top family lawyers, judges and policy makers and it is hoped that progress can be made into the establishment of mutually-agreed principles on international child relocation.