The Court of Appeal has today Friday 18 October handed down a landmark judgment for the continued existence of discretionary forum powers for the English divorce court. It has said that the ECJ decision in Owusu has no relevance to divorce jurisdiction under Brussels II. It means that where there are concurrent divorce proceedings in England and any non-EU country England still has the power to stay its proceedings on the basis that the other country has the closer connection with the family and so proceedings should go ahead in that country.
After much controversy and debate about whether Owusu applied to divorce and related family law proceedings the Court of Appeal has firmly said that it does not. In our opinion this is excellent news and a correct...
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