My “Adolescence” column addresses the thorniest aspects of teenagerdom — including how to talk about vaping, drugs and sex, or what to do when they won’t talk to you at all.
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The potential impact of the Sally Challen case
We wait in anticipation of the outcome of the Court of Appeal decision tomorrow to see if Sally Challen’s conviction is reduced from murder to manslaughter.
In 2010 Sally was sentenced for life with a minimum of 22 years (which was later, on appeal, reduced to 18 years) following hitting her husband, Richard Challen, 20 times over the head with a hammer, which led to his death.
Sally is pleading diminished responsibility on the basis of his controlling and coercive behaviour; a behaviour that became more widely known when the legal system recognised that abuse does not need to be physical it can be psychological too.
In 2015 Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 created a new offence of controlling and coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship. Prior to this, the closest offence was harassment which was difficult to prove in an intimate relationship.
The statute provides that an office is committed by A if:
- A repeatedly or continuously engages in behaviour towards another person, B, that is controlling or coercive;
- At the time of the behaviour, A and B are personally connected;
- The behaviour has a serious effect on B;
- A knows or ought to know that the behaviour will have a serious effect on B.
Examples given by the children of the parents, in this case, include isolating their mother from her friends and family, controlling who she socialises with, controlling her money, restricting her movement and creating a culture of fear and dependency. This behaviour continued for over 40 years before Sally finally struck her husband.
There has been a lot of domestic abuse awareness on the television in recent weeks and a common question asked is why would you not just leave?
This way of thinking is so frustrating. If it was really that simple to leave then an individual would just leave. I have read the reports that Sally did try to leave and even start divorce proceedings on a number of occasions, but she felt she could not be without Richard and this was most likely part of his controlling behaviour, Sally did not feel like she could live without him, so kept returning, until one day it all got too much.
I have worked with victims of domestic violence for over 10 years, firstly through charity work and in my professional capacity and they often tell me that the emotional/psychological abuse is often more painful than the physical abuse.
This case has the potential to be a landmark case as it will be the first time the court will hear controlling and coercive behaviour being used as a defence in a murder trial. If Sally is successful, I believe not only will we see a rise in such defences being raised, but a greater understanding by the court of the seriousness of psychological abuse.
My view is that the court must accept the impact of this psychological abuse and if Sally can prove this it will be a most welcomed result.
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Author: Sarah Jane Lenihan
England v Germany: A clash between two countries’ legal systems
As will be well known to regular readers of this blog, family courts in England and Wales deal with financial claims on divorce rather differently to the courts in many other countries. The fundamental basis of the rules that govern such claims here is quite different to that in most other jurisdictions. This, of course, means that in certain circumstances our courts may be considered to be more generous than the courts in other countries, hence the phenomenon of ‘forum shopping’, whereby a spouse may seek to have the divorce dealt with in the country where they believe they will get the best outcome.
As one can imagine, these differences can sometimes lead to a clash between two countries’ legal systems.
This was the situation in the recent case Re MF, heard by Mr Justice Mostyn in the High Court in December.
The background to the case needs to be explained. Unfortunately, the judgment is quite brief, and I have had to make a few assumptions about certain details – I hope I am correct. The case concerned an English husband and a German wife. They cohabited in Germany from 1999, and were married in 2003. They lived all their married life in Germany, in a house owned by the wife. They had two children, born in 2003 and 2005. They marriage broke down in 2011, when the husband left the matrimonial home. He returned to England the following year. The wife and children continue to reside in the former matrimonial home.
The particular feature of the case is that the matrimonial home was the only asset of the parties, and it actually decreased in value over the course of the marriage (the judgment doesn’t explain why this was so). Accordingly, there were no ‘matrimonial assets’, i.e. assets accrued during the course of the marriage.
Under German law any capital provision made to a spouse on divorce can only come out of matrimonial assets. Accordingly, as there were no such assets, when the parties were divorced in Germany it was agreed that the husband would not make any claim for capital provision in the German courts.
However, the husband subsequently made an application in the English court “for financial relief following a foreign divorce in circumstances where the powers of this court would be wider than directing a division of the marital aquest [i.e. the matrimonial assets] and could extend to awarding a lump sum to the husband to meet his needs”, as explained by Mr Justice Mostyn. The husband’s particular need was to have the debts that he had incurred since the divorce in rehousing himself met by the wife.
The wife indicated to the English court that she opposed the husband’s application, on the basis that the matter had been dealt with by the German court. Other than that, the wife did not take any further part in the English proceedings, and the English court awarded the husband a lump sum of £20,000. However, as the only source of payment of that debt would be further borrowing on the matrimonial home, the judge decided that it was reasonable and fair for enforcement of that the lump sum to be deferred until completion of full-time tertiary education by the youngest surviving child of the family. In order to compensate the husband for being kept out of his money, he awarded interest on the outstanding sum at 2% per annum.
The decision was appealed (this is what Mr Justice Mostyn’s judgment was about), but the appeal was dismissed.
So we have a situation where a divorce had been dealt with, and apparently finalised, by the courts of a country whose courts one would expect to be fully ‘respected’, and yet the courts of another country make a different, and apparently conflicting, decision. I’m not sure that I feel that this outcome is the right one, even if, as Mr Justice Mostyn found, it is legally correct.
You can read the full judgment here (note that the first four paragraphs relate to the issue of whether or not the appeal should be heard in public).
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Author: John Bolch
National Pistachio Day
In the United States, today is National Pistachio Day, but my sources tell me that it’s also World Pistachio Day, which sounds more impressive, so let’s go with that. Pistachios are probably my third- or fourth-favorite tree nuts, so not too shabby. They’re a bit labor-intensive to eat if you buy them in the shell, which you should. (I suppose opening the shells will also burn off a tiny percentage of the calories found in the nuts themselves.) If you want to enjoy your pistachios in the form of ice cream or pudding or whatever, you’re allowed to do so today! If you need me to write you a note, just ask.
Image credit: Pixabay
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Author: Joe Kissell
Super Easy Vegan Babka Recipe
For those of you who’ve never had it, babka is a delicious Eastern European Jewish yeast risen cake that is filled with various, traditionally, either cinnamon or chocolate, and then twisted together to make a delicious dessert. If you’ve never had babka before, think of a fluffy cinnamon bun, except its made into a giant loaf. And sometimes its with chocolate filling instead of cinnamon. 
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Author: Penniless Parenting
5 Essential Tips to Keep In Mind While Pregnant
Pregnancy isn’t easy! While I’m not pregnant now, I had four pregnancies, each very difficult. Here’s some tips from a reader how to be more healthy and comfortable during your pregnancies.
So you have a bun in the oven? Congratulations! Concern and emotions are bound to flow your way at this exciting time. It will seem like you cannot get away from smiles and well-meaning advice from every
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Author: Penniless Parenting
Goodbye Child Support Agency, you will not be missed
Sometimes it’s hard to say goodbye, and sometimes it’s not so hard…
Last week the Department for Work and Pensions (‘DWP’) published the latest summary of quarterly statistics on the progress of the Child Support Agency (‘CSA’) child support schemes, to December 2018. The summary was very brief, but one of the statistics was quite significant.
But first a short explanation, for the benefit of those sensible enough (or lucky enough) to have had nothing to do with the CSA.
The CSA was established in 1993 to administer the then new child support scheme, which was effectively to replace the role of the courts in determining the amount of, and enforcing the payment of, child maintenance. There have actually been three child support schemes. That first, 1993, scheme was replaced by the 2003 scheme, which in turn was replaced by the present 2012 scheme. The 2012 scheme is administered by the Child Maintenance Service (‘CMS’), which replaced the CSA. Since then, CSA cases have been run down, as cases have been closed and new cases dealt with by the CMS.
OK, so what was significant about the statistics? Well the summary informed us that before the end of December the on-going liability (i.e. requirement to pay child maintenance) was ended on all CSA cases. So the CSA is no longer required to collect on-going child support maintenance. Sadly, this does not quite mean the end of the CSA, as it still has arrears to collect on its cases, more of which in a moment, but we are at last approaching the end of its sorry story.
So why will the CSA not be missed? Well, where to start? Perhaps with its delays in making and enforcing maintenance assessments? Or maybe its errors in making assessments? Or the interminable issues with its IT system? Well, yes, all of those, which caused endless misery, frustration and hardship for those dealing with the agency, or affected by its hopeless endeavours.
But the big issue was those arrears, which were of utterly staggering proportions. As the DWP itself noted back in December 2017:
“Significant policy, operational and IT issues beset the 1993 and 2003 schemes [i.e. the schemes administered by the CSA] which contributed to the build-up of considerable arrears of unpaid maintenance – currently £3.7bn of this debt is outstanding. Of this, a minimum of £2.5bn is owed to parents (approximately 970,000 cases) and £1.2bn is classed as owed to government (approximately 320,000 cases) … The published CSA Client Fund Accounts for 2015/16 make clear that £3.1bn of CSA debt is deemed uncollectable.”
Just let that sink in. Three point seven billion pounds worth of debt. Of which three point one billion is uncollectable. Remember, we are talking about the maintenance of children. How many children have suffered as a result of financial hardships caused by the ineffectiveness of the CSA? No, I will not shed a tear when the CSA is finally consigned to the scrapheap of history.
The big question, of course, is whether the CMS is any better. Or, more to the point, whether the current, 2012, incarnation of the child support scheme is an improvement over its forebears.
Well, it’s pretty much impossible to make a direct comparison. And that is exactly how the government wanted it to be. When it came up with the 2012 scheme the government very cleverly shifted much of the responsibility for dealing with the issue of child maintenance from the state on to parents. Parents are now encouraged to deal with it themselves, with the threat of having to pay significant fees for the privilege of something that was previously free: having the state deal with it for you.
This means that the workload of the CMS is a fraction of what the CSA used to deal with. Which obviously means that complaints about the CMS will be fewer, and the amount of arrears accrued under its administration will be less. In other words, the government specifically designed the current scheme to reduce the huge number of complaints about the child support service, which had embarrassed so many previous governments.
Whether the new scheme and the CMS is actually an improvement is a moot point. Certainly, it is far from perfect. For example, the fees have caused hardship, parents caring for children have preferred to settle for less rather than use the service, and there have still been significant arrears, although nothing like on the previous scale.
So I am not exactly happy about the current system. But that will not make me hanker after the old one.
You can read the full statistics summary here.
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Author: John Bolch
Parliamentary research briefings: a useful resource
These days the first point of call for basic legal knowledge for most people is, of course, the internet. The problem, though, is finding information that is accurate, and that you can therefore trust.
There is plenty of legal advice available on the internet, but comparatively few places where you can find detailed expositions of the law, similar to what you would find in a legal textbook. One such place is parliamentary research briefings.
The research briefings are produced by the House of Commons Library, the House of Lords Library and the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, and are primarily intended to get MPs and members of the Lords up to speed with topics with which they are not familiar (although reading or listening to parliamentary debates one sometimes wonders how many MPs actually read them!).
The briefings cover a huge range of subjects, including family law, and related matters.
As the briefings are not written solely for lawyers they are particularly useful for the general public. They are authoritative, clear, concise and fully referenced, including having many links to primary and other sources.
Here are a few examples that readers may find useful:
“No-fault divorce”, published last October, which “considers the current basis for divorce, arguments for and against the introduction of “no-fault” divorce, and the Government’s consultation paper, Reform of the legal requirements for divorce”. You can find a link to this briefing here.
Children: residence and contact court orders and related matters for parents, grandparents and others, published in November 2017, which “looks at child arrangements orders for residence and contact under the Children Act 1989.” Note that it still uses the old, and perhaps less confusing terminology ‘residence’! You can find a link to this briefing here.
Children: Enforcement of child arrangements orders relating to contact, published in June 2014, which “outlines the powers of enforcement available to the courts when a parent does not comply with a child arrangements order regulating contact.” You can find a link to this briefing here.
Financial provision when a relationship ends, published just last month, which “deals with the law in England and Wales and relates to the division of a couple’s property and income when their marriage or civil partnership breaks down.” You can find a link to this briefing here.
Child maintenance: income in the CMS formula (including why gross income is used, and annual reviews), published last December, which “sets out how the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) uses, collects and reviews the income of the non-resident parent under the 2012 statutory child maintenance scheme.” You can find a link to this briefing here.
“Common law marriage” and cohabitation, published in June last year, which “provides general information about how the law applies to cohabitants, the number of cohabiting couples, and about the Law Commission’s proposals for reform.” You can find a link to this briefing here.
And that is just a very small sample. All currently available research briefings are accessible from this page.
I suppose I should urge a note of caution for non-lawyers using the briefings. They may be very useful and informative, but they do not make you an expert. In particular, there is a huge difference between knowing the law and being able to apply it to a given set of circumstances. And trying to apply just a limited amount of law, as you will find in a briefing, can be especially dangerous. In short, there is no substitute for proper legal advice from a trained lawyer.
And on that note there is one other briefing that I would like to mention, that is definitely of direct use to non-lawyers. If you want to find legal help and advice, the House of Commons Library has produced a paper Legal help: where to go and how to pay, published in June last year, which “provides information about sources of legal help and advice, and how to pay for it”. You can find a link to this briefing here.
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Author: John Bolch
Mail Recovery Centers
Undead letter offices
Mail used to be one of my favorite things in the world. I was always excited to see what might be in the mailbox today: a letter from one of my many correspondents, a magazine, a check, photos I’d sent out for processing, a gift from a friend or relative, a catalog full of interesting things, or a package containing one of the interesting things I’d ordered from the catalog. Some days I got nothing, and many days I got only bills or junk mail. But the tiny thrill of finding something interesting in my mailbox was always something to look forward to.
Times have changed. Although the U.S. Postal Service is still doing brisk business, my love affair with mail has faded. I still have lots of correspondents, but we communicate electronically. I receive and pay most of my bills online too. Photos, of course, go straight from my phone or camera to my computer and/or the cloud. And the whole notion of “mail order” seems quaintly anachronistic, even though the mail carrier is sometimes the person who delivers the stuff I order online. Yes, I do still get the occasional check or letter in the mail, but for the most part, the spark is gone.
Addressing Concerns
One day, though, I was in a library looking at a book from the early 1900s in which there happened to be an extensive discussion of the Dead Letter Office. All at once, childhood memories came racing back: stern warnings from teachers and parents to address mail properly, always include a return address, and, when sending a package, put an extra copy of the address inside. Were we not to do these things, the grown-ups cautioned us, our mail may end up in this mysterious and spooky room where it would, so we were led to believe, be unrecoverable for all eternity. And I remembered fantasizing about visiting that sacred vault, wherever it may be, wondering what incredible treasures I might find among its misaddressed envelopes and parcels. The century-old book provided a rather more prosaic description of how the Dead Letter Office had functioned at that time. And that got me thinking: is there still such a thing today? Where do letters really go when they die?
The answer, surprisingly enough, is Atlanta. There, the U.S. Postal Service operates a large facility called a Mail Recovery Center (MRC), as the “dead letter office” has been known officially since 1992. (Formerly, there were also MRCs in St. Paul, Minnesota and San Francisco.) The Post Office established the first dead letter office in 1825; from then until 1917, all undeliverable mail was sent to a single, central location in Washington, D.C. Then, for nearly a century, the operation was decentralized, but now the Atlanta facility handles all of the nation’s nearly 90 million undeliverable items per year.
Bring Out Your Dead (Letters)
Items arrive at the MRC when they can be neither delivered nor returned—meaning both the recipient’s address and the sender’s address are incorrect, illegible, or missing. There, the pieces follow one of two paths—one for letters, one for parcels. Letters are scanned by machine for currency, checks, or other items of obvious value. If such enclosures are discovered, the envelopes are opened and examined. (Incidentally, Mail Recovery Center clerks are the only people who can legally open someone else’s mail—for everyone else, it would be a federal offense.) The Post Office makes an effort to locate either the sender or the recipient, using any clues available in the letter itself; if successful, they return the valuables. The rest of the letters are unceremoniously shredded—love letters, poems, manifestos, everything.
Packages are a bit different: every one must be opened and inspected by hand. Again, postal workers look for an enclosed address or some other kind of clue—a name, a phone number, or anything they can use to discover the item’s rightful owner. If they do find the owner, which happens about a quarter of the time, they normally forward the item without charge. If not, the contents of the package are stored for 30–180 days, in case someone files a claim. Unclaimed items left longer than that are recycled, given away to charities, or sold at auction. At these auctions, which are held online periodically, bargain-hunters can bid on large lots of merchandise—the quantity is simply too great to auction each item individually. Income from the auctions pays for just a portion of the MRCs’ operating expenses, which are considerable.
Although a great many of the items that arrive at the MRC are truly dead, the purpose of the facility is in fact to resurrect as many as possible—it’s really an undead letter office. MRC employees have found an astonishing variety of items—not only common items like books and CDs but jewelry, computers, live animals, drugs, guns, human remains, and everything else imaginable. And, from all accounts, they find it quite rewarding to reunite lost belongings with their owners. It sounds like the perfect job for someone who still loves getting surprises in the mail.
Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on April 21, 2005.
Image credit: Billy Hathorn [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
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Author: Joe Kissell
National Chocolate-Covered Peanuts Day
I’ve always thought that the combination of chocolate and peanuts is one of the more perfect food pairings, making chocolate-covered peanuts a delightful snack. Whether you go for the old movie theater favorite Goobers, Peanut M&Ms (the dark chocolate variety is my favorite), or a more artisanal offering, today’s the day to treat yourself to some chocolate-covered peanuts.
But a word of warning, and I’m not just talking about peanut allergies here. Who among us has not, at one point or another, incautiously popped a small chocolate morsel into their mouth, expecting to bite down on the crunchy goodness of a peanut, only to find a raisin inside? Nobody needs that sort of trauma today, so be careful out there.
Image credit: Ural-66 [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
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Author: Joe Kissell