Law digests: 3 February 2023

Child

R v T [2022] EWHC 3362 (Fam), [2023] All ER (D) 56 (Jan)

The Family Division ruled on preliminary issues concerning jurisdiction, which arose in the course of the British applicant’s applications, seeking orders for the children (including A) to spend time with her, following the breakdown of her civil partnership with the respondent (the children’s gestational mother). The children (who were British, but currently lived in the UAE with the respondent) had been conceived through IVF or intrauterine insemination. The applicant contended that she was the children’s legal and psychological mother and parent and that, if the English court declined to accept jurisdiction under the Family Law Act 1986, she would have no way of having her ‘parental rights’ determined because the UAE did not recognise parental rights relating to same-sex parents and criminalised same-sex relationships. The court considered, among other things, whether the applicant was a parent within the meaning of s 42 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 and, concerning the issue of consent to the respondent’s