About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


8 K.C.L.J. 147 (1997-1998)
New Model Trusts

handle is hein.journals/kingsclj8 and id is 149 raw text is: Case Notes that application, the issue of paternity would be settled. The Court made a further direction for blood tests, to permit the petitioner, in a final effort, to put his belief to the test. Waite L.J. acknowledged the petitioner's belief that contact between him and the child was good for her, but correctly stated that contact was best when it took place in light of the true factual position, which only the tests could establish. Furthermore, if the petitioner were proved not to be the father, he would be accepted as a committed stepfather of a child of the family, and no injustice would be done. Although the Court of Appeal asserted the need to establish the truth as to paternity to promote justice to the child, the case illustrates the difficulty in accepting that it is in the child's best interests to know that her putative father's refusal to submit to a blood test, in an effort toprotect her, has resulted in his status changing to that of a devoted stepfather, and to face the consequences of that finding. However, it should be of some comfort to the petitioner that despite the Court's firm belief that he should submit to the tests, the directions made were such that even if the tests established he was not the natural father, he would still have contact with the child as her stepfather. Although there is, in general, no presumption that step-parent should continue to have contact with his/her stepchild, Butler-Sloss L.J. in Re H (A Minor)(Contact) [1994] 2 F.L.R. 776 recognised that in a child's life, there are people who, although they have no biological relationship with the child, can nevertheless be very important to the child. The Court of Appeal in this case supported that view. A small, but significant, consolation prize for the petitioner. ANJANA BAL* NEW MODEL TRUSTS In 1991 the House of Lords decided that interest rate swap agreements between banks and local authorities were ultra vires the local authorities, thereby setting off a spate of litigation to recover sums which had been wrongly paid over between parties to such agreements. Typically these swaps involved the payment by a bank of a lump sum to a cash-starved (i.e., rate-capped) council followed by periodic payments by the local body to the bank over a contractually determined period. These periodic payments were calculated according to the difference between the two types of interest rates on which the bank and council had each chosen to gamble. In Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v. Islington Borough Council, [1996] A.C. 669, the bank made a lump sum payment of £2.5 million and took on the fixed interest rate payments, while Islington Lecturer in Law, King's College London