The Hague Convention of Parental Responsibility and the Protection of Children entered UK law yesterday (1st November).
The Convention is a multilateral treaty providing an agreed set of legal provisions and cooperation arrangements to cover the handling of cross-border cases where children’s safety or welfare may be an issue.
Although the 1996 Hague Convention was concluded 16 years ago, it has only been ratified by the United Kingdom this year and is one of a number of conventions in the area of Private International Law of the Hague Conference on Private International Law in 2007. To date, the Convention has 39 participating states.
The Convention sets out rules governing which Contracting State’s courts will have jurisdiction in children cases. The country in which the child is habitually resident will have jurisdiction, although there are exceptions to this rule.
As the Children Act 1989 states, parental responsibility is an important legal concept, which incurs on a parent all the “rights, duties, powers, responsibilities and authority, which by law a parent of a child has in relation to the child and their property.
In the UK currently, parental responsibility is not granted to an unmarried father automatically. In order for an unmarried father to have it, they must be either named on the child’s birth certificate, to have entered into a parental responsibility agreement with the mother, or to have been granted it by a court order
However, under the convention, there will be additional ways in which an unmarried father can acquire parental responsibility, which means that potentially, there could be implications in cases where parents are considering relocation, particularly if going to a non Hague Convention country.