Beyond the Nuclear: Can you unmake a family?

"To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune... to lose both seems like carelessness".

So observed Lady Augusta Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) on hearing of the death of Mr Worthing's parents.

Death inevitably separates children from their parents. Even then the legal ties between most parents and children live on. For children born to parents in the usual  way - meaning most common as opposed to being a value judgement - that family relationship will be forever.

But the same is not always true in alternative family structures. For children born through surrogacy arrangements or else placed with parents via adoption the legal ties created between parent and child can sometimes (albeit rarely) be unmade.

It was an application to unmake a family that came before Mr Justice Hedley in the recent case of G -v- G [2012] EWHC 1979 (Fam). That case concerned a boy D. He was born in January 2011 as a result of a surrogacy agreement...

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