Oh lord, so many posts in the same day. Cannot think any more......help!

Client is Danish - single parent with 2 pre school children. Did work in past but cannot use Teixiera decision as child not in school yet. She had a muslim marriage to a UK national - not registered as such in UK. Children are British nationals. Her claim for IS has been refused.

What's doing my head in is the status of the children - they obviously have R2R so surely she should as well as their primary carer, independant of any rights through Art 12 of 1612/68? But how?

to clarify - the children have UK passports?

As your client is not British the children will only have British nationality if the marriage was recognised in English law AND the children were either born in the UK OR if born outside the UK the father was British as a reseult of having been born himself in the UK (and, usually, the birth registered with the British embassy/consulate shortly after birth).

So I'm not sure what the import is of your point about the marriage. To put it very roughly and in a grossly over simplifed way: the English legal system generally recognises the validity of a marriage if it was valid in the country and at the time it was entered into. This is modified in the case of a person with UK domicile in that such a person cannot enter into a marriage that would be illegal in the UK (usually polygamous marriages fall into this category and I would guess possibly marriages where either party is under 16).

Thanks for the replies.

The mother tells me that the children do have GB passports.

The reason I mentioned the marriage was because I was trying to work out how the children got their GB nationality - that explains it - the marriage must have been recognised as valid even though it was not registered in any way (so the client tells me).