Royal family way

The royal family appeared at a conference on cohabitation reform at Inner Temple last week – but not in the way you might expect.

Discussing whether schedule 1 to the Children Act is fit for modern society, 1 Hare Court barrister Joshua Viney used members of the royal family to explain how the measure – which gives a parent with primary care of a child the right to claim financial support from the other parent – works in practice.

One very hypothetical scenario had William and Kate splitting up, with Kate going on to marry Hollywood star George Clooney. In another scenario, William and former rugby player Mike Tindall were a cohabiting couple – William was the biological father of the couple’s baby. Tindall had elected not to adopt their little bundle of joy. Sadly, the couple split up a few years later.

With schedule 1 new to Obiter, we were a little lost in the legal technicalities (OK, we got distracted by the colourful slides). But we do remember Viney describing the ‘bizarre situation’ where William could hypothetically make a claim against Clooney, whom he had never met and who had no biological link to William and Kate’s child; yet, in the other scenario, William would not be able to make a claim against Tindall.

Whatever the solutions to the challenges thrown up by Viney’s hypothetical scenarios, Obiter is all in favour of the royal family being used more often to explain family law. There is, one feels bound to observe, no shortage of potential material.