Melanie Barnes: Review of Heidelberg Conference on Recovery of Maintenance

One limitation of being a lawyer is that you can become so engrossed looking at the minutiae of legislation that you forget the policy and purpose of it all.  In the past few months I have spent a lot of time looking at how the Maintenance Regulation 4/2009 and 2007 Hague Convention for child support and maintenance have been implemented in domestic and international law but in doing so seem to have lost touch with the enormous effort made by various countries negotiating the agreements and facilitating cross-border cooperation and procedure. This commitment was certainly apparent from the Heidelberg conference held 4 - 8 March where the German Institute for Youth Human Services and Family Law (DIJuF) invited participants from around the world to engage in discussion to increase their knowledge of child support family maintenance law proceedings and enforcement and to develop models for good practice. The conference...

Read the full article here.