AE & JE v M: Children make extraordinary application to resolve jurisdictional impasse
Image: Public Domain, via Piqsels How do you resolve an impasse where the courts of two countries make conflicting children orders, and refuse to recognise the order of the other? The answer given in the remarkable case AE & JE v M is that the children decide their own destiny, by seeking an order of their own. The relevant facts in the case were as follows. The parents are both Spanish nationals and were married in Spain in 2002. Their first child was born in Spain in 2003. Between 2006 and 2011 the family lived in England, where the second child was born, in 2006. The father left the matrimonial home in 2012 and the mother and the children returned to England in 2013, where they have lived ever since. There were then conflicting proceedings concerning the children brought by the father in Spain and by the mother in England. In 2016 the Spanish court granted custody of the children to the father. The father sought to have that order recognised in England, but the English court r
