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Yesterday she was told in no uncertain terms to stop playing mother to her fiancé’s children. But Elizabeth Hurley is clearly a woman who doesn’t scare easily as she stepped out with Shane Warne’s daughter. The model was snapped with her betrothed and his youngest girl Summer, and her son Damian, both 10. They were [...]

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Between her husband’s affair and their very public break-up, it has been a tough couple of years for Yvonne Keating. But the mother of three insists that she has to remain strong for the sake of her children. The former model joined friend Miriam Ahern yesterday at Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel for Mrs Ahern’s annual lunch [...]

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My father, Harry, died suddenly before my 21st birthday, leaving unanswered all the questions I hadn’t thought to ask while he was alive. On an October Sunday afternoon, he had a massive heart attack and never regained consciousness. He was 58. His funeral was the first and only time I have ever seen my older [...]

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A woman was jailed for one day after letting her 12-year-old son get baptized without consulting the boy’s father, her ex-husband on the decision. Stephanie and Stephen Miller’s divorce contract states that decisions, including those on religious upbringing, about their children must be made together – and the boy’s mother was dragged to court. Both [...]

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Two months before the death of the Princess of Wales, Prince Charles decided it was time to tell his boys about the woman he loved. He sat them down together and tried to explain how Camilla Parker Bowles had re-entered his life — after a youthful love affair — and made him deeply happy. When [...]

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A 13-year-old schoolboy at the time, the young William watched the programme in the study of Andrew Gailey, his house master at Eton, says the book by Penny Junor. Mr Gailey was said to have insisted that Diana explain face-to-face what she was about to do after learning about the BBC interview, and she eventually [...]

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At the age of 13, Prince William faced the daunting prospect of becoming a new boy in a school that was almost ten times the size of his old one. That was hard enough. What made his transition to Eton far more of an ordeal was that no one — from masters to pupils — [...]

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After a decade in exile, I find myself making an unexpected visit to your house, returning my son to his mother after a weekend with me. I don’t make it past your hallway, where we stage a civilised conversation, that even in its awkwardness reminds me how wonderfully well we used to get on. Perhaps [...]

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If there’s one thing people of all political stripes can agree on, it’s that human relationships are complicated. Often they’re downright messy. So it seems counterintuitive for a government to introduce a set of policies that are predicated upon the belief that we all fit into the mould of a traditional nuclear family – from [...]

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Britons have an addiction to divorce fuelled by a ‘Hello! magazine’ attitude to marriage, a top judge has warned. Sir Paul Coleridge said family breakdown was ‘one of the most destructive scourges of our time’. Citing growing evidence of harm to a generation of children, he said youngsters whose parents separated saw their educational achievements [...]

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When she answered the unexpected knock on her front door a few weeks ago, Tammy Butler knew immediately that her cosy Easter weekend with her family was about to be ruined. On the doorstep stood Tom, her elderly father-in-law, clutching a bag full of chocolate eggs for his adored grandchildren. Behind Tammy a furious scream [...]

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The divorcee who is on course to become France’s next first lady today suggested she will be a far more modest one than Carla Bruni. Valerie Trierweiler, 47, is the partner of Francois Hollande, the Socialist who is runaway favourite to replace Nicolas Sarkozy as President in less than two weeks’ time. If Hollande does win – [...]

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Thousands of vulnerable people facing family breakdown could end up without legal representation because of planned changes to legal aid, according to a legal group. The Family Law Bar Association says proposed changes to legal aid in England and Wales could slow and cause difficulties in divorce hearings. The government wants to cut £350m a [...]

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A Texas mother may have taken the old adage ‘Listen to your father’ one step too far. Brian Martin alleges in a lawsuit filed this week in Houston Federal Court that his ex-wife planted a recording device on the couple’s 9-year old child in order to record his private conversations. Mr Martin wants at least [...]

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The pressures of modern life mean the seven-year-itch comes round much sooner than it used to as troubled couples split up earlier, a new study shows. Dubbing the phenomenon the ‘three year itch’, the research shows that couples with young children are now most likely to go their separate ways at the three year mark. [...]

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‘Thousands of children’ to lose legal aid in shake-up Many of the children affected will be living alone from their parents Thousands of children will lose access to legal aid under government plans to shake up the system, campaigners say. Child rights group JustRights analysed government data obtained from a series of Freedom of Information [...]

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I am in London having dinner with my friend Nick. I first became close to him after my relationship with Raymond’s father ended. He was going through a divorce at the same time and we became post-separation friends, spending nights on end drinking, smoking and bemoaning our fate. Tonight, however, he throws me a curve [...]

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When a father gets a divorce and moves out, no one says he is worse than Hitler. That’s what happened to me. I was getting death threats. I was human garbage. Barbara Walters herself asked me what it was like for my children to know their mother didn’t love them or want them. Here’s what [...]

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She may have been ceremoniously dumped from Daybreak but Christine Bleakley is all smiles as she reveals she just loves not getting up at 3am. And the presenter, fresh from Dancing On Ice fame, has said she is just relieved she can spend more time with her fiancé footballer Frank Lampard. Despite publicly falling from [...]

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A mother of four has spoken out about her ordeal at the hands of an Orthodox Jewish community- saying she was trapped in an abusive arranged marriage for six years. Pearlperry Reich, 30, says she was pushed into an arranged marriage with Sinai Meir Sholz in her home of Borough Park in Brooklyn, New York [...]

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The dilemma I am a recently divorced woman of 34 years who has no regrets leaving a bad marriage. There were no kids involved, although I do hope to experience motherhood one day. During the dying throes of my marriage I fell in love with another man who is 18 years older than me. We [...]

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Judges and lawyers are already anticipating the government’s proposed reforms to the status of separated parents by pioneering ‘shared residence orders’, according to a leading family solicitor. The orders, under which children are looked after by both parents, are becoming increasingly common, says Jonathan West, head of family and matrimonial at the firm Prolegal. Earlier [...]

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The review of family justice published last year by the former Whitehall mandarin David Norgrove made depressing reading. It described a system characterised by mutual distrust, lack of leadership and incoherence. The consequences for children caught up in it have been wretched. The average childcare case in the county courts now takes more than 15 [...]

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Ken Clarke said plans to guarantee children a “meaningful relationship” in law with both parents after a divorce was not “about equal division of time”. Instead the relationship was likely to be defined as “the quality of parenting received by the child”. Mr Clarke made his comments as he unveiled the government’s response to the [...]

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Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has admitted there are “dangers” to proposals to give divorced and separated fathers stronger rights. Plans unveiled by the Government would see the law changed to stress the importance of children having contact with both parents. The move stops short of the guarantee of equal access demanded by some fathers’ rights [...]

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The government wants more divorcing couples to reach agreement on access to their children without resorting to costly and stressful court action to settle custody disputes. In future, separating parents will be encouraged to agree to give children contact with their grandparents when signing up to the arrangements, under the plan. Ministers will stop short [...]

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When pregnant for the first time, I was bombarded with gloomy predictions. “You’ll never lose the baby weight, you’ll never go out in the evening again, say goodbye to sleep for ever.” The one line that stood out came from a colleague. “Being a parent makes you incredibly judgmental,” she warned. “From the day you [...]

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A family justice system shake-up giving children legal rights to maintain relationships with both parents after separation has been criticised by the man who chaired a review of the rules. David Norgrove voiced “regret” after it emerged that his recommendation that such a statement risked “confusion” and “false expectations” had been rejected. Ministers are formally [...]

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The Government is cranking into action on behalf of fathers, by setting up a working group to look at how to protect the right of children to see their dads in the event of a divorce, and vice versa – a right which in all too many cases is crumpled up along with the marriage [...]

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It was a day like any other. I got back from work, called out my wife’s name, Kim, and waited for my little boy, Jobe, then two, to come running up to me as usual. Nothing happened; the house was silent. The washing was still on the line, so I assumed they’d popped out. Day turned [...]

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Even now, I can still remember the exact spot in my bedroom where my mother was standing as she announced she was divorcing my father. My parents had been due to emigrate to Australia for a ‘fresh start’ after years of affairs, separations and recriminations. I was ten so I still believed in ‘happily-ever-afters’. I [...]

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Fathers will get improved contact with their children following divorce, amid plans to rewrite the law governing custody disputes. A ministerial working group will decide how to amend the Children’s Act 1989 and might include in it a “presumption of shared parenting”. The changes are part of an overhaul in family law that is described [...]

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New rules will be “much clearer that it is vital for children to have an ongoing relationship with both parents”, the Department for Education said. However ministers looked set to disappoint fathers’ rights campaigners by ruling out any legal guarantee of equal access. A review led by former mandarin David Norgrove last year rejected the [...]

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Ministers intend to rewrite the law in an attempt to ensure that fathers get improved access to their offspring after a marriage breaks down. Currently, family courts decide to leave children with their mothers in the vast majority of divorce cases. Campaigners have long complained that without a legal right to see their children, fathers [...]

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There is no such thing as a good divorce when children are involved, a study has concluded. The analysis of almost 1,000 families found that children suffer when their parents’ marriage ends – no matter how amicable the split. The researchers said their finding contradicts the widely-held belief that it is possible to have a [...]

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The Paris criminal court ordered Prince Sattam al-Saud from the kingdom’s founding royal family, to hand over custody of his daughter Aya to her French mother, Candice Cohen-Ahnine, and provide child support of €10,000 (£8,300) a month. For the past three-and-a-half years, the prince has kept Aya in a Riyadh palace despite efforts by the [...]

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It’s Wednesday afternoon on a week without children and I’m working at the kitchen table. In front of me are three mugs of tea in various stages of neglect, an empty yoghurt pot, some tangerine peel and, mystifyingly, a single sock. There are several teetering piles of papers, a toolbox, a jar of face cream [...]

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Every woman knows, deep down, that the much-vaunted maternal instinct isn’t nearly as ‘natural’ as society makes it out to be. In fact in my experience – and I know I will be roundly condemned for this view – this means that some women can even be better at taking care of and understanding a [...]

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The ex-wife of a Russian oligarch won a £12.5million divorce settlement yesterday as a judge condemned the foul means her husband used to hide his vast fortune. Boris Agrest, 51, an international financier, claimed to have ‘no assets whatsoever’ and to be earning the equivalent in roubles of £150 a month after fleeing the UK [...]

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Surely I can’t have been the only separated mother who felt great empathy for Elen Rivas after hearing about her Twitter row with Christine Bleakley over Christmas. Rivas, who was in India at the time, claimed that her former partner Frank Lampard and his new fiancee would not allow her to talk to her two [...]

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Taxpayers are forking out thousands of pounds a year on DNA paternity tests after mothers seeking maintenance wrongly identified the father of their child. Last year, around £100,000 went on tests which turned out to be the wrong man because the mother has slept with so many men that she has no idea who the [...]

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My daughter and her husband row much more than in the past, often in front of me. Their fights are usually kicked off by my son-in-law being bossy or lazy (‘When’s dinner going to be ready?’ or similar) and if I get involved he tells me it’s none of my business. But she’s my daughter [...]

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The Daily Telegraph disclosed yesterday that the Government is drawing up plans to place a legal duty on courts to ensure both parents are given access to their children in divorce settlements. But a Whitehall source warned the plans will face opposition from some senior ministers in Cabinet, including Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary. “There [...]

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The children are back from their Christmas holiday with their father, irrepressibly bouncy and laden with plastic tat, an inch taller each. They ripped through their painstakingly assembled stockings in three minutes, then settled on the sofa to bicker and play video games while I stuffed tissue paper and plastic packaging into bin bags and [...]

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Katy Perry’s religious parents have managed to see something positive in the breakdown of their daughter’s one year marriage. The pair spoke about their daughter’s divorce for the first time – from the pulpit of their evangelical church, which was unusually packed it seems. Pastors Keith and Mary Hudson were seen taking to the stage [...]

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Ministers are drawing up new rules to put courts under a legal duty to ensure divorced parents are guaranteed access to their children. Parents who refuse to accept the orders will be in contempt of court and risk serious penalties or even jail. The move will delight fathers’ rights campaigners who believe dads are penalised [...]

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My friend has separated from his girlfriend and has bought a flat outright without telling her. They have two children who live with her in a rented flat. He has told me not to tell his ex-girlfriend about the flat. I like her and feel guilty because he has deprived them of income and she [...]

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A parent’s right to a “meaningful relationship” with children became law in 2006 in Australia to try to make the rules fairer. However a review by David Norgrove found that the Australian experience damaged children because courts had tended to apply the law by setting out how long children could spend with their parents. This [...]

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Courts will be put under a legal duty to ensure that both fathers and mothers are given access to children in divorce settlements. Parents who refuse to accept the orders will be in contempt of court and risk serious penalties or even jail. The news will give hope to campaign groups who have argued for [...]

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A lesbian couple was caught up in an extraordinary custody battle after both women claimed they were the real mother of their young daughter. After the pair split, one woman insisted she was the mom because she donated the egg. But her estranged partner claimed she was better qualified because she had the egg implanted [...]

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