An eye-catching judgement — embedded in full below — from the president of the High Court’s
family division has been doing the rounds on Twitter today after it was
brought to wider attention by journalists David Banks and David Allen
Green.
The case involves a little boy whose mother has borderline learning
difficulties and whose father an IQ of around 50. The court has been
asked to decide whether the boy should live with his parents and wider
family, or, as Swindon Borough Council argues, be adopted outside the
family.
Because the father’s disposable monthly income is between £767.64 and
£806.94, the parents are ineligible for legal aid. The legal
aid-qualifying upper limit for disposable monthly income is £733.00.
This, as David Allen Green has summarised on his influential
@JackOfKent Twitter account, has enraged family division chief Sir James
Munby.
Munby has scheduled a further hearing to decide who should pay the
couple’s legal costs. Copies of his judgment, he explained, will be sent
to justice secretary Chris Grayling, the Legal Aid Agency, Her
Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service and the Association of Directors
of Children’s Services “inviting each of them to intervene in the
proceedings to make such submissions as they may think appropriate”.
The full judgment is below. Check out, in particular, paragraphs 18, 31, 33 and 37.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/245129159/re-child-d#fullscreen
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