Family relationships crossing international borders are commonplace in our 21st century world. These relationships can bring with them many benefits for children, including first-hand experience of different cultures, languages and communities. But when international family relationships founder or new parental relationships are formed across national borders, children are often caught up in the ensuing dispute about where they will make their home or attend school, and, perhaps most importantly, how they will sustain valued family and peer relationships. Questions which are often difficult enough for the Family Court to resolve where the dispute engages a potential change of home for a child within the same locality are significantly more complex when the options involve different continents. The court's decision in these cases is stark. The stakes are always high. There is rarely scope for compromise.

The key principle by which all such decisions are made in England and Wales is that the welfare of the child is paramount (see K v K [2011] EWCA Civ 793 at [141]). Everything which is considered by the court in reaching its determination is put into the balance with a view to measuring its impact on the child. But is the same approach adopted elsewhere in the world? And what is the procedure by which such decisions are made?

When called upon to advise in these cases, the family law practitioner and the court invariably need a reliable guide to the essential principles by which decisions are made, or may be made, in the jurisdiction to which the parent aspires to relocate, in which the child has been retained, or to which he or she has been abducted. Parental responsibility and concomitant legal rights in respect of the child cannot be assumed to vest in other jurisdictions as they do in this; trends in child arrangements in this jurisdiction may not be replicated elsewhere in the world. While our own jurisprudence in international disputes concerning children has adapted to social demand, and responded to the requirements of international conventions and regulations (for instance, the European Convention on Human Rights, the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction 1980, and Council Regulation (EC) 2201/2003), we must be clear about the pace of jurisdictional change and the response of courts abroad in the same respects.

The increasing recognition of the importance of the child's views and participation in the proceedings, the weight to be attached to those views, and the manner in which those views may be taken, differs from country to country. While there is common expectation about the principle, there is variation in practice and procedure. The availability of and attitudes towards non-court dispute resolution (or Alternative Dispute Resolution) to assist separating families in making new and durable arrangements in the interests of children also varies widely.

Anna Worwood has assembled a team of family law experts from around the world to discuss these issues, and many others; each offer clear well-informed answers to many fundamental questions which arise in international disputes relating to children. This indispensible book will surely be never far from reach for the international family lawyer, and I am delighted to commend it.

Mr Justice Cobb

January 2016