Our family law team have experience in assisting clients achieve what is best for their children. We have a track record on resolving issues surrounding residence, contact, relocation and parental responsibility. When matters don’t always work, we can assist with specific issues and prohibitive steps orders to resolve issues.
It can be very distressing when the Social Services intervene and scrutinise your family. We regularly act on behalf of the parents, grandparents and children in public law cases where social services are involved and are considering applying for an emergency protection orders, care orders, supervisions orders or freeing for adoption.
We have specifically advised on the international law element of family law, and specifically have provided specialised advice and representation to families who have been the victim of child removal or abduction, and unaccompanied refugee children who have entered the jurisdiction without their parents.
Increasingly we are instructed in complex family cases that involve parents that show implacable hostility to the Orders of the Court and/or involve parental alienation. We have experience of providing robust advice and representation in such cases and regularly instruct leading experts to report and give evidence.
Our Department head is a member of the Northern Ireland Children Order Panel, Northern Ireland Guardian Ad Litem Solicitor Panel and the UK & Ireland LGBT Family Law Institute. He is also a fellow of the International Association of Family Lawyers.
Team Phoenix offers a specialised service for those victims of domestic violence who require assistance in putting in place the appropriate safeguards and protections afforded by the Courts. We offer urgent appointments should you require an emergency non-molestation orders, exclusion/residence orders and prohibited steps orders.
We are at the forefront of assisting families that may be considered a modern family structure. We provide specialist advice to many parents in same sex relationships seeking parental responsibility, contact or share residence orders. We are also involved in test cases to do with same sex couples who have entered into informal donor arrangements that have then resulted in dispute.
Sinead Marmion
Senior Associate
Sinead Marmion
Sinead is a Senior Associate with expertise in dealing with asylum and immigration cases. She has an LLM in Human Rights Law at Queen’s University Belfast and is fluent in French.
Sinead has built up an expertise in immigration and asylum work, with specialism in unaccompanied children’s claims.
Judicial Review
Sinead has specialism in public law challenges in immigration cases through judicial review. She has successfully challenged the Home Office’s decision in respect of a minor asylum-seeker’s age assessment, which is the first of its kind in the jurisdiction. She has a number of judicial review challenges ongoing in respect of the Home Office’s delays in deciding asylum claims within a reasonable time. She is also acting in the first challenge in Northern Ireland in respect of how the rights of asylum seekers interact with the rights enshrined in Article 2 of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Sinead is acting in a judicial review against the PPS in the Divisional Court in respect of a failure to prosecute forced labour and slavery of fishermen in a Northern Irish port, which is also the first case of its kind in Northern Ireland. She is instructed in a number of judicial reviews against the Home Office in their failure to recognise her client as victims of trafficking. She has also acted in appeals from the High Court to the Court of Appeal.
Tribunals
She has represented clients at the First tier Tribunal, Upper Tribunal, and Asylum Support Tribunal. This includes successful challenges to refusals of asylum in LGBT cases, political persecution cases and religious persecution cases. She has also had successes in challenging refusals of granting of residence cards by the Home Office on derivative rights of residence cases through the Zambrano route. Sinead has also represented clients who have faced destitution due to unlawful refusals to grant asylum support through representation at the Asylum Support Tribunal.
Sinead also provides legal support on family and criminal defence cases arising from her immigration work.
Advice
She works closely with Barnardo’s Independent Guardian Service in dealing with cases for unaccompanied minors. Sinead also works with victims of trafficking and modern slavery and works closely with Flourish NI. Sinead is also retained by South Tyrone Empowerment Programme (STEP), which is Northern Ireland’s largest migrant organisation run by veteran civil rights activist, Bernadette McAliskey. Through her work with STEP, Sinead advises on complex cases involving Europeans and their family members applying to the European Settlement Scheme.
Sinead has experience in a wide range of immigration related matters including; entry clearance, family reunion, spouse and fiancé visas, family visas, European Economic Area (EEA), visit visas, and settlement and naturalisation applications.
Sinead obtains instruction from clients who are in detention in Larne House Detention Centre, often facing removal and deportation. This can lead to bail applications, asylum claims, judicial review, urgent injunctions, and unlawful detention claims.
Membership
Sinead has assisted on setting up the first Northern Ireland regional working group for the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA).
She is also Chair of the Law Society’s Immigration Practitioners’ Group.
Sinead has recently been appointed as Module Coordinator for the Immigration module on the Public Law & Tribunals course in the Institute of Professional Legal Studies in Queen’s University Belfast.
Sinead is a member of Phoenix Law’s wellbeing committee.