Reported Case: Father v Mother & Anor [2024] EWHC 2578 (Fam) (02 August 2024)

Will Tyler KC (36 Group), Andlib Mohsin (4BC) of Counsel, and our Sian Churchill represented a Mother in the Father's appeal against a County Court decision not to move the child into his care.

Background

The Father had applied for a Child Arrangements Order stating that the child should move from living with the mother, and live with him instead.

There is a very lengthy history to the case, and the current application was the Father’s 5^th application in respect of the child. The child has therefore been subject to proceedings for a lot of his life.

The current proceedings were applied for by the Father in 2020.

After significant time in proceedings for this current application, the Court appointed the child a Guardian through Cafcass, and made the child a party to the proceedings, via the Guardian.

In February 2024, the Recorder Patel made the decision to refuse the Father’s application to move the child into his care from the Mother.

The father appealed this decision.  Permission to appeal was granted by the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane on 26 April 2024.

The Appeal

The full appeal was heard by Mrs Justice Lieven at the High Court in the Royal Courts of Justice on 11 July 2024.

“ The ultimate decision, not to remove S from his M's care and place him with the F, was one that was self-evidently open to the Judge. It went directly to S's welfare best interests, and involved a balance between various factors as explained in considerable detail in the judgment. It could not possibly be said that the Judge's decision was one "that no reasonable judge could have reached" - Father v Mother & Anor [2024] EWHC 2578 (Fam) (02 August 2024)

The appeal was dismissed on all grounds applied for by the Father. The Court did not allow the appeal on any ground.

This means it was a successful outcome for our client, the Mother. The child will remain in her care.

“In my view this is a classic example of an appeal which is in truth a challenge to the merits of the decision and to the weight the Judge gave to particular evidence. It is also an example of trying to pick and choose parts of a judgment and not reading it as a whole; and seeking to impose an obligation on a judge to give reasons for every factual element and disagreement, which is disproportionate to the task. It is important that Family Court judges can exercise their functions without feeling that judgments have to be overly long and detailed because of their fear of being successfully appealed”. - Father v Mother & Anor [2024] EWHC 2578 (Fam) (02 August 2024)

Please click here to read the full Judgment.

Conclusion

This was a complex Child Arrangements Order (private children law) matter, which covered aspects of parental alienation and historic domestic abuse.

There had also been a number of previous sets of proceedings, and these current proceedings had been issued several years ago.

This was a successful outcome in the Appeal for our client.

Please do contact Sian Churchill and our family team if we can assist you in your children's matter.