Tag: family status

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions v Akhtar

Posted on | by Aileen McColgan KC | Leave a Comment on Secretary of State for Work and Pensions v Akhtar

Court of Appeal, Underhill VP, Macur and Moylan LJJ, [2021] EWCA Civ 1353, 10 September 2021

The Court of Appeal allowed an appeal against the decision of the Upper Tribunal that the exclusion from entitlement to Bereavement Payment (“BP”) under ss 36 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 of those whose marriages were recognised for religious purposes, and not in English law, breached Article 14 read with A1P1. There was some disagreement between the Court of Appeal judges as to the law relating to polygamy but all were agreed that the claimant was not analogously situated to someone whose religious marriage (conducted abroad) was so recognised, further that the discrimination was justified in any event, the decision of the Supreme Court in R (SC) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions having little impact in this case. Continue reading →

Yocheva and Ganeva v Bulgaria

Posted on | by Aileen McColgan KC | Leave a Comment on Yocheva and Ganeva v Bulgaria

ECtHR, Fourth Section,  App. Nos. 18592/15 and 43863/15, [2021] ECHR 18592/15, 11 May 2021

Judge Eicke (President), Judges Grozev, Vehabović, Motoc, Harutyunyan, Vilanova, Guerra Martins

Here the ECtHR ruled that Bulgaria had breached Articles 8 and 14 by excluding from entitlement to a family allowance payable to families with only one living parent, single mothers of minor children whose fathers were unknown. The Court found, inter alia, that the exclusion amounted to sex discrimination because “as maternity is determined by the act of birth, in the vast majority of cases it is only children’s paternity that can be unknown” (§110-111). Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was unsympathetic to the argument put for the state that the rule was justified because it “was a regular practice of certain ethnic and social communities in Bulgaria to ‘pretend’ that the mother was a single parent so as to more easily obtain State benefit” (§§98, 121). Continue reading →