In England and Wales, an Occupation Order is an Injunction which gives the applicant the right to live in a property. The Court can grant an Occupation Order for the whole of a property or part of it.
An Occupation Order can also be used to exclude a person from an area around a property, and deal with issues such as who pays the mortgage. It may also cover whether the person who is ordered to live in the property should pay any rent for being allowed to do so.
For initial advice get in touch with our Family Solicitors.
We're rated‘Excellent’To apply for an Occupation Order, the person applying must be able to prove that they are associated with the respondent. This effectively means that you can only apply for an Occupation Order if you meet one of the following criteria:
- Parent/step-parent
- Child/stepchild,
- Grandparent/grandchild
- Spouse/former spouse
- Civil partner/former civil partner.
- Sibling
- Uncle/aunt
- Niece/nephew
- First cousin
Furthermore, you must be able to show that you’re entitled to occupy the property. The first element to this is that you must be able to show that both you and the respondent either continue to or have at some point occupied the property as your home. You must then also be able to show that you had the right to occupy the property as your home.
This is a complicated area, as there are several ways in which you can demonstrate to the Court that you have occupation rights. Establishing this requirement will depend on the individual facts of the case, although there are cases where somebody has clear occupation rights. For instance, they may be the registered owner or the property is or was their matrimonial home.
When deciding whether to grant an Occupation Order, the Court has a duty to make an Order if it appears that the applicant or any child they have Parental Responsibility for is likely to suffer significant harm from the respondent if an Occupation Order isn’t granted.
Where there isn’t a risk of significant harm, the Court will consider all the circumstances with particular regard to:
More and more couples across England and Wales are living together without getting married, but many mistakenly assume they have the same legal rights as a married couple, especially if they’ve been living together (cohabiting) for a long time.
You don’t need a Family Law Solicitor to go to the Family Court about your child but it’s always best to get legal advice and support if you can, especially if your case is complicated. There is no substitute for expert legal advice and getting a Family Solicitor to represent you in Family Court will always be better than going into Court alone.
Over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, online Hearings in family proceedings became the default position. As social distancing and safety restrictions relaxed, more Hearings started taking place face-to-face in Court buildings again, but there’s no doubt that remote Hearings are here to stay as well as the traditional ‘in person’ model.
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