Working with our Social Services Lawyers

Here at Higgins Miller, we specialise in matters of family law. This means helping clients to cope with stressful events such as a divorce or processing wills and probate. For most of our clients, the need to deal with highly stressful issues of this kind will mark the first time on which they’ve had to […]

Working With our Social Services Solicitors

The fact that we specialise in family law at Higgins Miller means that we’re used to dealing with clients who are coping with some of the most stressful events which life is likely to throw at them. These might include dealing with a divorce, handling wills and probate or undertaking the adoption process. What these […]

Judge accuses social services of “social engineering”

The country’s most senior family Judge Sir James Munby has criticised Darlington Borough Council for what he described as social engineering. The local authority had made applications for care orders and placement orders in respect of a one year old child. Their plan was to place the child for adoption. The child’s mother had concluded […]

Ashya King

The case of Ashya King the five year old cancer patient has led to a media frenzy with comment coming from everyone from Boris Johnson to Nick Clegg. But what are the legal implications of the situation? It appears that upon Asyha’s removal from hospital by his parents Portsmouth City Council made an application for Ashya to be […]

Special Guardianship Allowance

At Higgins Miller we have become aware that an increasing number of people who have special guardianship orders are having difficulties in relation to obtaining financial support for the children that they are caring for. The law requires a local authority in which the special guardian lives  to consider what payments would have been made […]

Courts won’t wait in care proceedings

A mother has lost her appeal against a care order and adoption order in respect of one of her two children and a decision not to re-instate contact with her other child. In the case of  S (A Child) the mother argued that the Judge hearing the case at first instance had not given sufficient weight to her […]