Education
Thorpe was educated at Stowe School and Balliol College, Oxford.
Sir Mathew Alexander Thorpe (born 30 July 1938) is a retired Lord Justice of Appeal, who served as one of the judges of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales from 1995 to 2013.
Thorpe was educated at Stowe School and Balliol College, Oxford.
Thorpe was called to the bar (Inner Temple) in 1961 and was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1980. [1] He was appointed a Recorder in 1982. [2] He was appointed a High Court judge on 11 April 1988, [3] assigned to the Family Division, and received the customary knighthood. He was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal on 2 October 1995. [4] Thorpe was appointed Deputy Head of Family Justice and Head of International Justice in January 2005. [1] He retired on 31 July 2013
He has presided over a number of important cases which have influenced the evolution of family law. He is regarded as a traditionalist in respect of parenting role but as a reactionary by his detractors.
1. Roles of men and womenRe: S (Children) [2002] EWCA Civ 583
This case concerned a divorce where the mother had a high salary and the father stayed at home to look after the children under a shared parenting arrangement. If residence had been awarded to the father, the status quo in London would continue. However, if residence were awarded to the mother then she would move with the children to Linlithgow in Scotland. It was submitted on behalf of the father that it would be gender discrimination to decide residence in favour of the mother: if the roles were to be reversed, a father who proposed to abandon a lucrative career with the consequence that his wife and children would suffer a dramatic downturn in the standard of living, would not have the smallest chance of being given a residence order as his reward. This submission was rejected by Thorpe LJ on grounds of gender role:
2. Leave to remove from the jurisdiction
This refers to the situation where the court must decide whether to grant permission to a parent who wants to take the children to live in another jurisdiction in the face of opposition from the other parent. It means that a parent (invariably the father) who continued to live in the UK would no longer have access to his children.
In Payne v Payne (2001) 2 WLR 1826, Thorpe LJ found that unilateral relocation cases had been consistently decided over 30 years upon the application of the following two propositions:
Applying these principles, the Payne child was allowed to be taken to New Zealand by the mother since otherwise the effect on her of being forced to stay in England would be "devastating". This approach was followed again later in Re: B (Children) (Removal from Jurisdiction); Re: S (A Child) (Removal from Jurisdiction) (2003) (2003) 2 FLR 1043. Thorpe LJ said, in connection with two cases involving children being removed to Australia and South Africa respectively, that to frustrate "natural emigration" risked the survival of the new family or blighted its potential for "fulfilment and happiness". He said,
Often there will be a price to be paid in welfare terms by the diminution of the children's contact with their father and his extended family
He said that it was also possible for a father to take employment abroad after separation or to marry a foreigner and there would be the same loss of contact:
These are the tides of chance and life and in the exercise of its paternalistic jurisdiction it is important that the court should recognise the force of these movements and not frustrate them unless they are shown to be contrary to the welfare of the child.
Thorpe was appointed in 2010 to head a working party of the General Medical Council to consider and offer advice to doctors on matters relating to child protection.
Thorpe was disqualified from driving and then, in January 2012, was reprimanded by the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice, both for receiving the ban and for failing to adhere to the guidance regarding the reporting of traffic offences. [5]
Child custody, conservatorship and guardianship describe the legal and practical relationship between a parent and the parent's child, such as the right of the parent to make decisions for the child, and the parent's duty to care for the child.
Child support is an ongoing, periodic payment made by a parent for the financial benefit of a child following the end of a marriage or other similar relationship. Child maintenance is paid directly or indirectly by an obligor to an obligee for the care and support of children of a relationship that has been terminated, or in some cases never existed. Often the obligor is a non-custodial parent. The obligee is typically a custodial parent, a caregiver, or a guardian.
Shared residence, joint residence, or shared parenting refers to the situation where a child of parents who have divorced or separated live with each parent at different times, such as every other week. With shared residency, both parents have parental responsibility. Shared residency does not mean that the time the child spends with each parent must be equal.
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I (a child) was a case heard by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom on the 10 and 11 June 2009 and decided upon on 1 December 2009. The case principally involves the mother (a British Citizen of Indian origin), the father (a British Citizen of Pakistani origin) and their son (a British Citizen also born in the United Kingdom). The child was born on the 27 July 2000 and was 9 years old at the time of the case.
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In re B (A Child) [2009] UKSC 5 was a 2009 ruling by the United Kingdom Supreme Court case concerning child welfare, family law and the correct weighting of factors to be considered by a Family Court in making a residence order. The case was the first substantive appeal to be heard in the new Supreme Court.
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