The growing needs of ‘non-traditional’ families has prompted law firm Birketts to launch an innovative Modern Families service to provide legal advice beyond the realms of conventional family law.
Birketts, a Top 50 UK law firm, commended for its family practice in The Times’ Best Law Firms 2025 and winner of the LexisNexis Family Awards 2023 and 2024, will serve the needs of a wide range of individuals through its Modern Families Team, by widening its practice to include specialist advice on fertility treatment, adoption, surrogacy, and sperm/egg donation.
Surrogacy has hit the headlines recently with Italy banning couples from travelling abroad for surrogacy and former Olympic sailor Sir Ben Ainslie and his partner publicly opening up about their experiences of surrogacy with a surrogate in California.
Designed to cater for clients who do not identify with a stereotypical or ‘traditional’ family image, or are considering non-traditional methods to grow their families, Birketts’ new team is made up of lawyers from a broad spectrum of legal practice areas; immigration, employment, private client and international private client teams who will work together on all legal matters affecting modern family clients.
Jennifer Headon, Head of the International Family Team at Birketts, aid: “Navigating the law on matters that affect modern families here in the UK, but also on a cross-border basis, goes far beyond the realms of just family law. There can be immigration, employment and private wealth considerations that need to be factored into those growing their families via contemporary methods, such as surrogacy, adoption and so on.”
Recent figures show that modern families are on the rise. The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show that in 2022, there were 167,000 same sex married couples in England & Wales, up from 26,000 in 2015. Civil partnerships have also increased from 120,000 in 2012 to 222,000 in 2022, while UK surrogacies quadrupled between 2011 and 2020.
Birketts has expertise across the firm for the benefit of its clients who are part of a modern family setting. Offering holistic advice on all legal issues in an even more accessible way is essential for those individuals and families beginning their modern family journey.