Category: Children

It is quite a common scenario that parents will agree that one of them may temporarily remove their children to another country. Obviously, the ‘removing’ parent may then decide not to return the children to the country from which they were removed. A critical question may then be: when did the removing parent make that decision? Did they have the intention not to return the children all along, or did they only form that intention late on? The ‘retention’ only occurs when the decision is made.

The reason why this can be critical is that it relates to the issue of the children’s habitual residence. If both countries are signatories to the Hague Convention on Child Abduction then obviously the ‘left behind’ parent may make an application for their summary return under the Convention. However, the Convention only applies where the removal or retention of the child is ‘wrongful’. It is only wrongful if “it is in breach of rights of custody attributed to a person, an institution or any other body either jointly or alone under the law of the state in which the child was habitually resident immediately before the removal or retention”. Accordingly, if the child stays in the ‘new’ country for long enough, they will gain habitual residence there, and any ‘retention’ thereafter will not therefore be wrongful, so the court cannot order the return of the child.

When the mother retained the children was the essential question for the court in the recent Court of Appeal case G-E (Children : Hague Convention 1980: Repudiatory Retention and Habitual Residence).

The facts of the case were that the father was Australian and the mother British. They were not married but they had two children, born in 2012 and 2014. The family lived in Australia, but the mother and children came to England for holidays. Lord Justice Moylan then takes up the story:

“In January 2017 the mother applied online for, and in April 2017 obtained, a school place for the elder child in England from September 2017. In April she obtained a quotation both for the storage of her possessions in Australia and for their being shipped to England. The mother accepted that she did not inform the father about these matters but said that this reflected the manner in which they conducted their lives and were not “clandestine” acts as suggested by [the father’s counsel].”

In or about June 2017 the parents agreed that the mother and the children would travel to England, because the mother’s father was terminally ill. The mother and the children arrived in England on the 21^st of July 2017, on tickets which provided for a return to Australia within 6 months. The mother’s father died on the 2^nd of September 2017. The father agreed that the mother could extend her stay with the children in England, apparently putting no time limit upon when she should return. On the 27^th of March 2018 the mother sent the father an email making clear that she did not intend to return to Australia.

The father commenced his application under the Convention on the 10^th of August 2018. The application was dealt with by Her Honour Judge Hillier in the High Court in October. She found that the mother had not formed the intention to retain the children in this country until March 2018, and that by that date the children were habitually resident in England and Wales. Accordingly, the father’s application was dismissed. The father appealed.

Giving the leading judgment of the Court of Appeal Lord Justice Moylan found that Judge Hillier had properly considered the evidence and was entitled to come to the conclusion that the mother had not formed the intention to retain the children in this country until March 2018. As to the issue of habitual residence, he found that Judge Hillier’s determination was one which was reasonably open to her. He said:

“She has undertaken a sufficiently broad assessment and explained why, in the context in particular of the children’s existing “real ties” with England, she concluded that their stability and integration “grew closer and faster as a result” and that the “centre” of their lives … had become England by late December 2017/January 2018.”

Lords Justices Flaux and Longmore gave consenting judgments. Accordingly, the father’s appeal was dismissed.

You can read the Court of Appeal judgment here, and the original judgment of Judge Hillier here.

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Incredible how time flies. I remember as if it were yesterday when the Children Act was passed, attending various seminars to familiarise myself with its provisions (the main provisions of the Act did not come into force until 1991). In the following thirty years the Act has gained a familiarity, amongst not just family lawyers but also many non-lawyers, in a way that I don’t think many other statutes have. It has even spawned its own novel and film, the latter being reviewed here by Naheed Taj, Managing Partner of Stowe Family Law’s reading office, last September.

What was so special about the Act?

The Act might now be remembered, at least amongst those private law practitioners who are old enough, primarily for doing away with the outdated terminology of ‘custody’ and ‘access’, replacing them with ‘residence’ and ‘contact’ (and, later, with ‘child arrangements orders’). But the Act was about much more than that. As Professor Jo Delahunty QC (see below) explains:

“The Children Act 1989 embodied a change in philosophy by making the child’s welfare the courts ‘paramount’ concern, moving away from the concept of parental rights towards the right of the child. It embraced the idea of shared parental rights and responsibilities and that children are best cared for within their families but not at the expense of suffering avoidable significant harm.”

As that quote suggests, the Act brought together both private and public children law ‘under the same roof’ (the child must have been found to have suffered, or be likely to suffer, ‘significant harm’ before a care order can be made). Thus, whether the court is considering how to resolve a dispute between parents over arrangements for their child, or whether a child should be removed from the parents by the state, the same basic principles apply. By section 1 of the Act the welfare of the child is the court’s ‘paramount consideration’, to be determined by reference to the ‘welfare checklist’ set out in section 1(3).

Accordingly, the law is now ‘child centric’: when considering a question in relation to a child’s upbringing we no longer talk of a parent’s rights in relation to the child, but rather about what is best for the child. This is a lesson that, sadly, many parents have still not learned, despite the length of time that the Children Act has been with us – we still regularly come across parents seeking to enforce their ‘parental rights’.

Perhaps somewhat confusingly, as the above quote also suggests, the Act brought in the new concept of “parental responsibility”, which it defines as “all the rights, duties, powers, responsibilities and authority which by law a parent of a child has in relation to the child and his property.” But in this context “rights” really mean something else. They are not to do with what may benefit the parent (if I may put it that way), but rather about the parent looking after the interests of the child, for example by choosing which school the child should attend. In other words, hold on to the concept of “responsibility”, rather than “rights”.

So the Act really changed the landscape when it came to dealing with children issues, and that new landscape has now been with us for nearly thirty years. But what of the future?

Recently Professor Jo Delahunty QC, who is one of the UK’s leading barristers specialising in cases concerned with families and children, and who was appointed Gresham Professor of Law in the summer of 2016, asked the important question: is the Act still fit for purpose?

The question was asked at a lecture given by Professor Delahunty for Gresham College on the 31^st of January. You can watch a recording of the lecture here, and if you have an interest in the subject then I strongly recommend that you do (a more detailed PDF transcript is also available). I won’t give the game away by telling you the Professor’s answer to the question, but I will say that the journey she takes us on is both enlightening (including going into a lot more detail about the provisions of the Act, and the rationale behind them) and thought-provoking.

Of course, the Act does not stand alone, as Professor Delahunty makes clear. In particular, there is the issue of the destruction of legal aid for private law cases, which has changed things so dramatically in recent years. No matter how good the legislation may be, if parents do not have access to proper legal advice (and, if necessary, representation), then the law is never likely to operate optimally and, for some parents who decide it is too much for them to go to court without a lawyer, it may not even operate at all.

The post The thirtieth anniversary of the Children Act appeared first on Stowe Family Law.

I don’t recall previously writing again about a case as soon as this one. In late January I wrote here about the High Court case S v D, in which a mother was, unusually, ordered to return her child to a different country from where he was removed. The mother’s appeal against that order has already been heard, and allowed.

For details of the case I refer to my previous post. However, I shall very briefly recap, and mention a couple of things in more detail, as they were particularly relevant to the appeal.

The case concerned a four year old boy whose parents were both Hungarian nationals. In early 2017 the family moved to Germany. The marriage broke down and the parents separated in March 2018. Shortly after that the mother brought the child to England, where the mother’s sister lives. The father then returned to Hungary, and applied under the Hague Convention for the child to be ‘returned’ to Hungary. As explained in my previous post, that application was allowed by Mr Justice Cobb.

The two matters that I wanted to mention in more detail were as follows.

Firstly, whilst Mr Justice Cobb was satisfied that the father had displayed violence towards the mother, there was a particular incident which the Court of Appeal clearly thought was of special importance. As Lord Justice Moylan explained, the father travelled to England in early April 2018. The mother told the father that she wanted to end their relationship and apparently in response to this news the father made an attempt on his own life. He was admitted to hospital, where the mother visited him with the child. During that visit, as Cobb J described in his judgment:

“…the father seriously assaulted the mother on the ward; he attempted to strangle her. The mother had been holding [the child] at the time of the assault and dropped him to the floor. Both the mother and [the child] were medically checked and were found not to have sustained any serious or long-lasting injuries, but both were plainly shaken and understandably distressed by the events.”

The father subsequently pleaded guilty to assaulting the mother and was given a suspended sentence of six months. A restraining order was also made prohibiting the father from contacting the mother.

Secondly, the father gave various undertakings to the court to satisfy Cobb J that, as the mother alleged, there would have been a grave risk that the return of the child would expose him to physical or psychological harm. I’ll set the undertakings out in a little more detail, as explained by Moylan LJ:

“The undertakings given by the father included: (a) not … to molest the mother or [the child]; (b) not to remove [the child] from the mother’s care and control and that, pending a decision of the Hungarian court, [the child] would remain in the mother’s care; (c) to submit to supervised contact with [the child] until welfare issues could be considered by the Hungarian court; (d) to provide and pay for an identified property for the mother and [the child’s] sole occupation until 1st March 2019 and an equivalent property thereafter pending the decision of the Hungarian court; (e) to pay the mother maintenance for herself and [the child] at a stipulated rate until the Hungarian court could be seised of the issue of financial support; (f) not to come within a specified distance of the property occupied by the mother and [the child]; (g) to submit to the jurisdiction of the Hungarian court and to “co-operate to bring this matter before the Hungarian court for the purposes of determining” care, contact and welfare issues.”

OK, having got those points out of the way, why did the Court of Appeal allow the mother’s appeal?

Well, it was essentially for two reasons, which I will attempt to explain in language that a lay person can understand.

The first reason relates to the decision to order the return to a different country. This actually amounted to a ‘relocation’ decision, rather than just a ‘summary return’ decision under the Convention. Summary return decisions are intended to be quick, simply returning the child to its ‘home’ country, where decisions as to the child’s welfare should be made. The court dealing with a Convention application does not therefore make a detailed investigation as to what is best for the child’s welfare. However, such an investigation is necessary on a relocation application. Cobb J had not made such an investigation.

The second reason was that, as Moylan LJ explained, Cobb J’s “reasoning as to the efficacy of the protective undertakings provided in this case was insufficient to support his conclusion that they were “effective””. In particular, Cobb J had not addressed the issue of whether the undertakings were enforceable in Hungary. In fact, it appeared that jurisdiction to deal with the case appeared to lay with the German courts, rather than the Hungarian courts.

Accordingly, the mother’s appeal was allowed, and the father’s application for the return of the child was dismissed.

You can read the full judgment here.

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Sometimes it’s hard to say goodbye, and sometimes it’s not so hard…

Last week the Department for Work and Pensions (‘DWP’) published the latest summary of quarterly statistics on the progress of the Child Support Agency (‘CSA’) child support schemes, to December 2018. The summary was very brief, but one of the statistics was quite significant.

But first a short explanation, for the benefit of those sensible enough (or lucky enough) to have had nothing to do with the CSA.

The CSA was established in 1993 to administer the then new child support scheme, which was effectively to replace the role of the courts in determining the amount of, and enforcing the payment of, child maintenance. There have actually been three child support schemes. That first, 1993, scheme was replaced by the 2003 scheme, which in turn was replaced by the present 2012 scheme. The 2012 scheme is administered by the Child Maintenance Service (‘CMS’), which replaced the CSA. Since then, CSA cases have been run down, as cases have been closed and new cases dealt with by the CMS.

OK, so what was significant about the statistics? Well the summary informed us that before the end of December the on-going liability (i.e. requirement to pay child maintenance) was ended on all CSA cases. So the CSA is no longer required to collect on-going child support maintenance. Sadly, this does not quite mean the end of the CSA, as it still has arrears to collect on its cases, more of which in a moment, but we are at last approaching the end of its sorry story.

So why will the CSA not be missed? Well, where to start? Perhaps with its delays in making and enforcing maintenance assessments? Or maybe its errors in making assessments? Or the interminable issues with its IT system? Well, yes, all of those, which caused endless misery, frustration and hardship for those dealing with the agency, or affected by its hopeless endeavours.

But the big issue was those arrears, which were of utterly staggering proportions. As the DWP itself noted back in December 2017:

“Significant policy, operational and IT issues beset the 1993 and 2003 schemes [i.e. the schemes administered by the CSA] which contributed to the build-up of considerable arrears of unpaid maintenance – currently £3.7bn of this debt is outstanding. Of this, a minimum of £2.5bn is owed to parents (approximately 970,000 cases) and £1.2bn is classed as owed to government (approximately 320,000 cases) … The published CSA Client Fund Accounts for 2015/16 make clear that £3.1bn of CSA debt is deemed uncollectable.”

Just let that sink in. Three point seven billion pounds worth of debt. Of which three point one billion is uncollectable. Remember, we are talking about the maintenance of children. How many children have suffered as a result of financial hardships caused by the ineffectiveness of the CSA? No, I will not shed a tear when the CSA is finally consigned to the scrapheap of history.

The big question, of course, is whether the CMS is any better. Or, more to the point, whether the current, 2012, incarnation of the child support scheme is an improvement over its forebears.

Well, it’s pretty much impossible to make a direct comparison. And that is exactly how the government wanted it to be. When it came up with the 2012 scheme the government very cleverly shifted much of the responsibility for dealing with the issue of child maintenance from the state on to parents. Parents are now encouraged to deal with it themselves, with the threat of having to pay significant fees for the privilege of something that was previously free: having the state deal with it for you.

This means that the workload of the CMS is a fraction of what the CSA used to deal with. Which obviously means that complaints about the CMS will be fewer, and the amount of arrears accrued under its administration will be less. In other words, the government specifically designed the current scheme to reduce the huge number of complaints about the child support service, which had embarrassed so many previous governments.

Whether the new scheme and the CMS is actually an improvement is a moot point. Certainly, it is far from perfect. For example, the fees have caused hardship, parents caring for children have preferred to settle for less rather than use the service, and there have still been significant arrears, although nothing like on the previous scale.

So I am not exactly happy about the current system. But that will not make me hanker after the old one.

You can read the full statistics summary here.

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Parental alienation, for want of a better description, is a hot topic right now. In fact, it is a term, that as a specialist child and family lawyer, I hear more and more in cases where parents are experiencing difficulties in making arrangements for their children.  

A somewhat controversial concept, parental alienation is often misunderstood and lawyers, social services, CAFCASS and the courts have been trying to deal with it for years in cases where the parents are locked in legal proceedings over contact for their children.

So what is parental alienation?

Parental alienation is often confused with estrangement but they are not the same thing.

Estrangement can occur if a parent is abusive or has behaviour that damages or strains the relationship with the child. Parental alienation is when one parent deliberately manipulates a child to unfairly reject the other parent with the motivation to destroy the parental bond.

Parental alienation syndrome refers to a variety of symptoms displayed by a child when rejecting a parent, and the effects are far-reaching.

Deliberately influencing a child to reject the other parent is very emotionally damaging and often leads the child to fear the alienated parent and avoid seeing them, despite them previously having a loving relationship prior to separation or divorce.

Signs of parental alienation

An attempt to alienate a child from a parent is carried out for many reasons; I have seen it take place as an attempt to punish the other parent or at times, it is a  personality disorder affecting the alienating parent that stops them from handling stress rationally.

Whatever the reason, alienation works slowly and takes place over some time. Here are some warning signs I have noticed with clients over the years:

• Belittling, criticising and making derogatory comments about the targeted parent in front of, or in ear-shot of the child.
• Cancelling or interfering with visits or blocking all contact.
• Keeping important information about the child including medical, educational and social activities away from the targeted parent.
• Making important decisions about the child without consultation.
• Interference and /or blocking contact via telephone, text, email, FaceTime etc with the targeted parent.
• Rejection of the targeted parent’s gifts, cards, holidays and offers of help.
• Defying the authority of the targeted parent and encouragement of the child to do the same.  

Through this, and many other forms of alienation,  the child is programmed to believe that the alienated parent is worthless and does not care about them. The result – a child is convinced that they would be happier without them in their lives.

So, what can be done?

Emotionally, parental alienation is a complex form of trauma and I would advise seeking out professional help for both yourself and the children if possible.

From a legal perspective, seeking professional advice early on is so important so that you have support to understand the complex legal system. And the courts can help.

If parental alienation does exist properly in a particular case then the court can order that the alienated child spend time (has contact) with the alienated parent and can even increase the time with that parent.  

The court can also impose conditions in relation to the time the child spends with the other parent and can impose penal notices if the order is not complied with by the alienating parent such that he/she may be fined, ordered to undertake unpaid work in the community or, in the most serious of cases, can be sent to prison.  

In the very worst cases where parental alienation continues, despite the court’s attempts to preserve the relationship between the child and the alienated parent, the court can order a change of residence so that the child lives with the alienated parent.

Whatever your situation, do not lose sight of what is important: your children and their well-being. And remember that the family courts are there to protect the best interests of all children.

Need help?

If you are concerned about parental alienation please do get in touch with me . I have practised family law for over 35 years specialising in all aspects of divorce and children disputes including residence, contact, prohibited steps orders, specific issue orders and parental alienation.

The post The parents left behind: What parental alienation does to a family appeared first on Stowe Family Law.

When I began practising as a family lawyer in the dim and distant days of the early eighties, the two main types of private law children orders went by the names ‘custody’ and ‘access’. These terms had been used since time immemorial (or so it seemed) and, indeed, were so ingrained in the public consciousness that they are still commonly used today.

In 1989, however, the powers that be decided it was time for a change. What had worked for so long was no longer appropriate for modern sensibilities. Accordingly ‘custody’ and ‘access’ were replaced with ‘residence’ and ‘contact’, the rationale behind the change being that ‘custody’ and ‘access’ were too ‘emotive’, causing unnecessary antagonism between parents.

But, as with all consumables, in the modern world nothing lasts for long. In 2014 our lords and masters decided that ‘residence’ and ‘contact’ were also obsolete, for pretty similar reasons to the 1989 change, and had to be replaced (well, not entirely, as I will explain in a moment). In a Monty Python “And now for something completely different” moment the government came up with the child arrangements order, which we were told means an order regulating arrangements relating to any of the following:

(a) With whom a child is to live, spend time or otherwise have contact, and

(b) When a child is to live, spend time or otherwise have contact with any person.

Hmm. There is a slight problem here. Whilst the words ‘residence’ and ‘contact’ may have gone the way of the dodo, the concepts behind the words remain. After all, a child may still reside with one parent, and have contact with the other. Thus ‘residence’ became ‘live with’, and ‘contact’ became ‘spends time with’.

But wait a minute, doesn’t the word ‘contact’ still appear in the new terminology? Well, yes it does. So maybe ‘contact’ was not such an awful word after all? Does this mean that we can interchange ‘contact’ and ‘spends time with’? Are the two exactly the same? I honestly don’t know. (I note that the relevant standard family order refers to a ‘Live with order’ and a ‘Contact order’.)

I confess I was never very impressed by the new terminology. It did seem to me to be very awkward, and didn’t seem to achieve an awful lot, being little more than a quibble over semantics, driven by a desire not to upset anyone. Still, I put my lack of enthusiasm to one side, and moved on. Until recently.

Reading law reports relating to child arrangements applications I have been increasingly struck again by how awkward the terminology is. Instead of the judge referring simply to a ‘’residence order’ or a ‘contact order’ they now have to refer to a ‘live(s) with order’ or, worse still, a ‘spends time with order’. This terminology is not just ungainly, it can also be hard to follow, particularly, I suspect, for litigants in person.

But it is not just the awkwardness of the terminology. It can also be quite confusing. Take, for example, this extract from the judgment in the recent appeal RC (A Child), referring to the orders being appealed against:

“ii)       Paragraph 18

lives with order: the child shall live with both parties …

iii)        Paragraph 19

spends time with order: the parties must make sure that the child spends time with the respondent father within a regular fortnightly cycle for at least six nights, into blocks of three nights …”

Erm, doesn’t paragraph 18 contradict paragraph 19 (or vice versa)? Surely, if the child is to ‘live with’ both parents, then, to use the old terminology, they reside with both parents, i.e. there is a joint residence order. Why, then, is there a need for a ‘spends time with’ or ‘contact’ order as well? Surely, a parent has residence or contact, not both? Of course, as a family lawyer I understand what is happening here, but do parents involved in child arrangements proceedings, particularly those who are not represented, understand? I’m sure that many are left confused as to exactly what the court has ordered.

OK, perhaps I should leave it there. I am of course a family law dinosaur (and perhaps soon to be a dodo). Maybe those younger and less stuck in their ways have no problem with the terminology.

I would also like to point out that the above should not be interpreted as a call for yet another change in terminology – that is the last thing we need.

The post Is the child arrangements terminology awkward and confusing? appeared first on Stowe Family Law.

I don’t normally comment here in detail on public law cases, but as the events that happened to the mother in the recent case L-W Children could happen to pretty well any parent, I thought it might be of interest to readers of this blog.

The case primarily concerned the mother, her four year old daughter (‘L’) and the mother’s new partner (‘GL’), who was not L’s father but had fathered twins with the mother. The mother, GL, and the three children appeared to be a perfectly ‘normal’ family. As Lady Justice King remarked:

“Prior to the events which took place in January 2018, there had not been, and there was no reason to believe that there should be, any involvement by social care in the domestic lives of either the mother or GL.”

It was true, she said, that GL was known to have a quick temper, but there was no suggestion that there had been violence at any time within the household. It was also true that L, as is not unusual for children of her age, was known to tell lies about various matters.

So what happened in January 2018? Well, it was the nightmare scenario for the mother.

On Friday the 12^th of January and Saturday the 13^th, L stayed overnight with her father, returning on Sunday the 14^th. The mother went to work on the Sunday afternoon, leaving the three children in the care of GL. So far as the mother was aware, L went to bed in the usual way between 6-6.30pm, as did the twins.

The mother returned from work at 10.15pm. She went upstairs to kiss L goodnight, and noticed a lump on her forehead. L told her that this had happened when she had fallen on her doll’s house whilst visiting her father. As the only light in the bedroom was a nightlight, the mother did not notice any other bruising to L’s head or face at that time.

The following morning the mother saw that the lump on L’s head was significantly bigger, and that she had bruising to the left-side of her face and her ear. When asked how she had come by the bruises, L said that her father’s partner had caused them. The mother checked L’s whole body and discovered a number of fresh bruises.

The mother then phoned the GP in order for L to be checked out, and also called the health visitor. In addition she contacted GL, who was at work, and L’s father, asking what had happened to L whilst she was in his care. GL returned home. The mother did not ask him what had happened to L, as she was afraid that this would have “caused a big row”.

GL told the mother not to go to the GP, but the mother ignored him. A child protection referral was made and at the subsequent child protection medical, a number of very concerning bruises, particularly around L’s left ear, were seen. The bruises were highly indicative of non-accidental inflicted injuries.

Care proceedings were commenced in April, and at a hearing in September the judge found that GL had inflicted the bruising to L, and that the mother had failed to protect L from physical abuse at the hands of GL, and also her other two children from the risk of physical abuse at the hands of GL. The mother appealed against that finding, to the Court of Appeal.

Giving the leading judgment of the Court of Appeal Lady Justice King found that there was no evidence which could properly lead to a finding that the mother failed to protect her children. She knew that GL had a short temper, and had been involved in violent incidents with two adult males, but this did not mean that she should have known that he presented a risk of physical abuse to L or the twins, and that therefore she should not have left the children in his care. She had failed to ask GL what had happened whilst she was at work, but GL’s “unattractive personality traits and/or the controlling personality of GL did not prevent the mother from acting quickly and appropriately when her child was injured, and she maintained her independence sufficiently wholly to ignore GL’s suggestion that L should not be taken to see a doctor.”

The appeal was therefore allowed, and the finding against the mother deleted.

As I indicated at the beginning of this post, it is easy to imagine this kind of scenario happening in many families. After all, who really knows what their partner is capable of? This mother, however, could not have been expected to know, and when she found out what had happened to her child she did pretty well all of the right things. To say that she had failed to protect her children would be harsh in the extreme.

You can read the full judgment here.

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Since the legal aid cuts of 2013 we have been living in the age of the litigant in person. Just last week it was reported that government data revealed that 23,881 parents who applied for child arrangements orders in 2017 had no legal representation, up 134% since 2011. This is of course causing huge difficulties for the courts. The courts do try to make allowances for litigants in person, but justice of course demands that they are not given preferential treatment.

This was illustrated by the recent case of QC v UC & Others, which concerned an unrepresented father’s appeal against findings of fact made in his and the mother’s cross applications for child arrangements and specific issue orders relating to their three children. The appeal was heard by Mr Justice Williams in the High Court.

The judgment does not list the twelve findings of fact made against the father, but we are told that the judge in the court below concluded that he was “a deeply unsatisfactory witness”, whereas he found that the mother was a reliable witness on nearly every issue on which she gave evidence, and he therefore accepted (most of) her allegations. The father sought to appeal against “all the judge’s findings and decisions in regards to the whole case”.

As Mr Justice Williams explained, the father’s grounds for appeal boiled down to two matters:

“The grounds of appeal in essence allege firstly that the decision of the judge was wrong because he should not have accepted the mother’s allegations because she was a proven liar and there was no other evidence to support her allegations. Secondly, that there was a procedural irregularity in that the appellant father was unable to properly present his case”

As to the first of those grounds, Mr Justice Williams found that the judge in the court below had “conducted an extremely thorough and detailed evaluation of the evidence in respect of each of the areas where findings of fact were sought.” He was clearly entitled to make the findings that he did and, as stated, he found that the mother was a reliable witness on nearly every issue on which she gave evidence.

As to the second ground, the father had complained:

“I feel the judge didn’t take into consideration how being on my own in the court representing myself against two other solicitors was a very nervous time for me and considering the allegations against me made it all the worse”

Specifically, the father said that he was suffering from anxiety in court which may have affected his demeanour, and led the judge to say he was evasive towards questioning. He also said that he could have obtained further evidence to support his case, but had not known that he could. Mr Justice Williams did not accept these points. He said:

“The judge was clearly very much alive to the fact that the father was a litigant in person. In paragraph 67 and 68 [of the judgment] he refers to the issue and how the judge had sought to ensure that the father had a fair hearing by allowing him the opportunity to put further documents for the court and to put questions on the father’s behalf to witnesses.”

He also said:

“I cannot see that there is any case to show that the father was unable to put relevant material before the court because of his lack of legal representation. In particular there is nothing which suggests there was anything which was of such significance that it could have materially altered the overall evidential picture before the judge. The transcript makes clear that the father was well able to speak up for his position when he gave evidence and there is no evidence that any anxiety materially hampered his ability to present his case.”

In short, allowances had been made for the fact that the father was unrepresented, and the father was not entitled to anything more.

Mr Justice Williams concluded that there was no substance in any of the father’s grounds of appeal. Nor was he able to identify anything else that might arguably indicate that the judge was in any way wrong in the conclusions that he reached, or that the decision was unjustified by reason of any procedural irregularity. The appeal was therefore dismissed.

You can read the full judgment here, and if you are an unrepresented litigant aggrieved at the findings of the court, then I would recommend that you do.

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