Only available to natural persons

Legal services under the Act are usually available to natural persons only (i.e. to individuals) and not to legal persons (e.g. a company).

The only exception is in child abduction cases, where the applicant is a state body in another jurisdiction (equivalent to the Child and Family Agency – for example, a Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland or a local authority in England and Wales) and we must give assistance under the relevant Convention. In these cases the child is usually alleged to have been abducted out of State care in another jurisdiction.