Children (domestic)

Penningtons Manches Cooper’s highly ranked family law team provides a child-focused and discreet service for parents, step-parents, grandparents and alternative families designed to promote agreement and maintain the privacy of the family. Our strength is the ability to harnss our vast range of experience to provide solutions tailored to each family’s unique needs.

A sensitive, child-focused approach

Our specialists, who are based in our offices in London, Oxford, Reading and Guildford, take particular pride in their sensitive and practical approach to cases involving children and can advise on all issues and aspects of law relating to children, both domestically and in an international context.

In a domestic context, we aim to help separating couples reach agreement about how their children should best be looked after and to find suitable mediators and family therapists to enable them to achieve this. All of our specialists, including our trained mediators and collaborative lawyers, can help parents negotiate with one another to arrive at shared care arrangements that will work best for their children. If an agreement cannot be reached, we represent parents in court proceedings.

We have particular expertise in advising and representing parents, same-sex families, and other interested parties such as step-parents and grandparents on complex issues of parental responsibility, as well as practical arrangements such as where a child should go to school, what surnme they should have, and what religion they should follow.

We have a wealth of experience in resolving cases where parents are suffering from mental health difficulties or drug or alcohol addiction. We are also regularly involved in cutting-edge cases involving allegations of physical and sexual abuse and parents who have differing views about medical treatment, religious upbringing or education of a child.

…prestigious, highly-rated family law practice, whose advice and service levels are widely considered to set the benchmark for this area of law.

A member of our team sits on Resolution’s Children Committee which shapes and influences law and policy in relation to children issues.

We offer an online system that can help our clients to understand their legal position, prepare for their first meeting, and provide us with the information required to maximise the value we can deliver. We invite you to get started online.

How we help our clients

Parenting plans

Parental responsibility, child arrangements, contact and residence

Advice on parents suffering mental health difficulties and addiction

Allegations of physical and sexual abuse

International and domestic movement of children

Adoption and surrogacy

Guardianship and special guardianship

Child maintenance and financial support

It’s a fabulous team, as well as doing fabulous financial work they also do exceptional children work.

They are highly skilled lawyers who are very personable – a great combination. It’s a brilliant team and clients are always well-supported.

They offered very strong technical knowledge coupled with extensive experience of similar cases, whilst paying close attention to the nuances of my specific case.

Recent work highlights

Change of residence

Acting for a parent of a two year old on contact arrangements and fact-finding proceedings, which culminated in a successful change of residence from one parent to the other.

Domestic relocation dispute

Advising the parent of a young child on a domestic relocation dispute where the other parent wanted to move several hundred miles away.

Implacable hostility

Representing a father, who, as a result of the mother’s implacable hostility, had not seen his daughter for seven years, and securing an order which allowed the father to re-establish, and build up, contact with his daughter.

Supreme Court matter

Acting on the case of XY (AP) (Appellant) (Scotland) UKSC 2019/0134, where the Supreme Court considered whether the requirement to be deemed a ‘relevant person’ to participate in children’s hearings was compatible with the ECHR.

Civil partnership children issues

Assisting the biological father and his civil partner in the case of ML and AR v RW and SW ([2011] EWHC 2455), a Children Act dispute, advising on their application to spend time with their two daughters.