CONFLICT OF LAWS IN MATTERS CONCERNING
MATRIMONIAL PROPERTY (11817/06)
Letter from the Chairman to Rt Hon Baroness
Ashton of Upholland, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Department
for Constitutional Affairs
The Green Paper was considered by Sub-Committee
E at its meeting on 18 October. We agree with the Government that
this is an area of considerable technical complexity and we are
pleased to see that the Government are consulting interested parties
and that a stakeholder group has been established.
You say that the Government are considering
how best to respond to the Green Paper and you promise to keep
the Scrutiny Committees informed. We would find it helpful if
we could see the Government's Response in draft. You say that
you aim to meet the Commission's deadline of 30 November. We trust
that your timetable would permit the Scrutiny Committees to comment.
19 October 2006
Letter from Rt Hon Baroness Ashton of
Upholland to the Chairman
Thank you for your letter of 19 October. You
said that it would be helpful for the Committee to see the Government's
response in draft and that you trusted the Government's timetable
for sending the response would permit the Committee to comment.
I enclose a copy of the response which we are sending to the Commission.
You will see this is a preliminary response and indicates a further
paper will be prepared to follow.
The response sets out our general approach to
cross-border family law matters and describes the subject matter
of the Green Paper. The basic problem as far as UK law is concerned
is that we do not have a matrimonial property regime as defined
in the Green Paper. This makes it very difficult to determine
what the effect of the possible measures that might flow from
the Green Paper would be. This is compounded by the failure of
the Commission to provide adequate evidence that there is a problem
to be remedied. We are therefore suggesting that the Commission
examines the evidence properly and makes a greater effort to understand
the position of the common law jurisdictions. The response offers
the Commission a detailed explanation of the domestic law at a
later date. We are planning to invite two academic experts to
prepare this paper, which I will copy to you. You may find it
helpful in due course to hear evidence from these experts; my
officials will provide yours with their contact details when they
have been appointed.
27 March 2007
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