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A brave new world?

21 June 2007 / David Burrows
Issue: 7278 / Categories: Features , Child law , Family
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The Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill will increase child support troubles, predicts David Burrows

The Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill hit the bookstands earlier this month—the “other payments” are in respect of mesothelioma, which bears no immediate relationship to child support. The Bill proposes the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (C-MEC) to do the job which the Child Support Agency (CSA) failed to do, and sets out extensive intended amendments to Child Support Act 1991 (CSA 1991). The already derided CSA 1991, with the separate proposed legislation as well, will be doubled in length. And doubtless the excessively cumbersome regulations will be proportionately extended to cover the new provisions in the Bill. Previous efforts at this legislation have gone through Parliament more or less unopposed; and so too, I suspect, will this. Not at all a propitious start…

A SEMANTIC EXERCISE

The reforming proposals, apart from enforcement, are light. First comes a semantic change with administrative undertones: out goes the CSA—it never had a statutory existence: everything in CSA 1991

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Birketts—trainee cohort

Birketts—trainee cohort

Firm welcomes new cohort of 29 trainee solicitors for 2025

Keoghs—four appointments

Keoghs—four appointments

Four partner hires expand legal expertise in Scotland and Northern Ireland

Brabners—Ben Lamb

Brabners—Ben Lamb

Real estate team in Yorkshire welcomes new partner

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Writing in NLJ this week, Thomas Rothwell and Kavish Shah of Falcon Chambers unpack the surprise inclusion of a ban on upwards-only rent reviews in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve charts the turbulent progress of the Employment Rights Bill through the House of Lords, in this week's NLJ
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