Ciccone v Ritchie (No 2) [2016] EWHC 616 (Fam), [2016] All ER (D) 201 (Mar)
The Family Division granted Madonna permission to withdraw proceedings brought by her, under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, for the summary return of her son to the United States. It held that r 29.4 of the Family Procedure Rules (SI 2010/2955), applied to applications in proceedings under the Hague Convention and, accordingly, the permission of the court was required to withdraw such proceedings. It ruled that, applying settled law to the facts, in circumstances where the mother and the father accepted that the Supreme Court of the State of New York had jurisdiction in the present matter, there were positive merits to permitting the mother to withdraw her application in the present jurisdiction.
