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- The father appealed from the dismissal of his application under the 1980 Hague Convention. The judge had decided that the child was habitually resident in Australia rather than France at the date of the retention in England and Wales, and thus in her view the Hague Convention did not apply. The Court of Appeal determined that the child had been habitually resident in France, but, since it was an issue in other pending cases, Moylan LJ addressed the issue of principle: whether there was power under the 1980 Convention to return a child to a state other than that in which they had been habitually resident. In Moylan LJ's view, "the 1980 Convention applies whenever the child is habitually resident in a Contracting State, other than the requested state, at the date of the alleged wrongful removal or retention", and "there is power under the 1980 Convention to order that a child be returned to a third state". This question had been expressly considered at the time of the convention's drafting and a proposal that the return should always be to the state of habitual residence had not been adopted. To confine Article 12 as suggested would fail to protect children from the harmful effects of their abduction. While Baker LJ and Phillips LJ agreed as to the child's habitual residence in France, they declined to express an obiter view on the issue of principle. Baker LJ warned of the danger of judges thinking that the degree of integration in a second country had to be equivalent to that enjoyed in the first for a child to acquire habitual residence. Judgment, 18/09/2020, free
- An order had been made for the nine-year-old son to be returned to Russia. The father had arranged for the child to make an application for asylum, and one of the questions to be resolved was now whether this prohibited the enforcement of the return order. Mr Darren Howe QC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge, adjudged that the commencement of an asylum application by or on behalf of a child did indeed prohibit the enforcement of a return order made under the Hague Convention 1980. No exception was available under the law even if the court had concluded that the asylum application was a sham and a tactic to delay the return order. He ordered a stay of the return order until 15 days after the tribunal's decision upon the asylum application. But if there were thus to be a significant delay, the issue of contact between mother and child in the meantime would need to be addressed. A further hearing as to this would follow. Judgment, 09/09/2020, free
- The mother appealed from a return order made under the 1980 Hague Convention. She contended that the judge had been wrong to decide that the children were habitually resident in Germany at the date of her wrongful retention of them in England. It was submitted on her behalf that the judge had focused on whether the children had lost their habitual residence in Germany, rather than on the relevant question of whether their residence in England had acquired the requisite degree of integration and stability. In Moylan LJ's view, the appeal had to be allowed. On a proper application of the appropriate test, the children had been habitually resident in England at the date of their retention, and thus the father's application under the 1980 Convention had to be dismissed. Simler LJ and Sir Stephen Richards agreed. Judgment, 25/08/2020, free
- The proceedings concerned a father's application for contact with children aged two and five. The mother opposed contact on the basis that the father had subjected her to domestic and sexual abuse. She now appealed from a case management decision to exclude evidence of coercive and controlling behaviour by the father towards a subsequent partner. Peter Jackson LJ, after considering the approach to be taken to similar fact evidence in civil and family proceedings, and the standard of proof involved, stated that the judge's decision could not stand. The necessary analysis concerning whether the disputed evidence should be admitted had not been carried out, and the judge had been mistaken (as had the district judge) about the stance that had been taken by the court previously. Hickinbottom LJ and David Richards LJ agreed. The appeal was allowed, the evidence reinstated, and the judge's order set aside. The case was reallocated to High Court level with case management and fact-finding hearings to follow. Judgment, 25/08/2020, free
- The father applied under the 1980 Hague Convention for the return of his three-year-old son to Australia. The mother resisted the application on the grounds of habitual residence in England, acquiescence, and a grave risk of physical or psychological harm to the child, or his being in an otherwise intolerable situation, if the court required his return to Australia. Theis J decided that the defence on acquiescence would not have succeeded, but the mother had established that the protective measures put in place would not have been sufficient to reduce the risk to a level that fell below the Article 13(b) threshold. Either way, Theis J had already reached the conclusion that the son's habitual residence at the relevant time had been in this jurisdiction, and thus there had been no breach of Article 3 of the Hague Convention. The father's application was dismissed. Judgment, 12/08/2020, free
- The mother appealed against the judge's refusal to set aside a return order under the 1980 Hague Convention. The mother lived in England and had dual British/Bosnian nationality. The father was a Bosnian national and had always lived in Bosnia. She had returned with the child to England in circumstances which had involved a restraining order being made against the father by the Municipal Court in Sarajevo. The judge had found that the son was habitually resident in Bosnia immediately before his removal, that there had been no consent or acquiescence to his removal, and that the Article 13(b) threshold of grave risk of harm or intolerability had not been crossed. This appeal regarded the latter finding. Moylan LJ found that the Article 13(b) risk was clearly established. The judge had been wrong to discount the effect of the father's breaches of his previous undertakings, and the judge's approach to the mother's mental health had been flawed in a number of respects. It was clear that there would be a grave risk of the son being placed in an intolerable situation if they were to return to Bosnia and be separated. Peter Jackson LJ and Carr LJ agreed. The appeal was allowed and the father's Hague Convention application was dismissed. Judgment, 11/08/2020, free
- An application by the father for the summary return to Australia of two children aged 5 and 8. The children had lived in Australia up until April 2019, when the family moved to England. The British mother filed for divorce in January 2020. The father alleged that the move to England had been planned with the intent to divorce him here, that he had been misled into thinking that they would be in England for only two years, and that his consent to the move had been vitiated by that dishonesty. Part of his case was that the mother had overreacted to an incident where he had hit the children with a belt in her absence. Lieven J did not accept that the mother had deliberately tricked the father into coming to England, and she cautioned against "an unfortunate tendency to try to analyse parents' relationships as if they were contractual agreements". The mother's reaction to him hitting the children had been wholly reasonable. At the time of the divorce papers being filed, Lieven J decided, the children had been habitually resident in England. She declined to make a return order under the inherent jurisdiction. She did not have the material that would allow her to determine that it was in the children's best interests to return to Australia. If the father wished, he could make an application under the Children Act and then apply for a specific issues order for their relocation, allowing the matter to be properly considered on full evidence. Judgment, 04/08/2020, free
- The mother and the Secretary of State for the Home Department brought appeals against an order for disclosure, in private family proceedings, of redacted copies of certain documents in her asylum file, to the solicitors acting for the father and the son. In Baker LJ's view, it was clear that MacDonald J had correctly identified the applicable principles of law in his first judgment and in the second had applied them in a way which was fully within his discretion and could not be successfully challenged in the Court of Appeal. His conduct of the balancing exercise required had been "unimpeachable". Phillips LJ agreed. In Peter Jackson LJ's view, the answer to questions regarding disclosure in similar cases was "not to be found in legal generalities or contestable adjectives but in a close study of the individual circumstances". The judge had reached a decision after careful consideration. Though Peter Jackson LJ had some hesitancy about the outcome, it was not open to the Court of Appeal to say that the judge's decision had been wrong. The appeal was dismissed. Judgment, 04/08/2020, free
- The mother applied for costs, arguing that the father had acted unreasonably in only conceding the application for summary return at lunchtime on the first day of a three-day hearing. The father's representative pointed out that in a matter such as this, costs did not automatically follow the event and the court had a broad discretion. In Lieven J's view, if either party had been prepared to act more reasonably and take a more consensual approach, costs and court time could have been saved, but it would not be appropriate to depart from the general approach that in family proceedings involving children no order for costs is generally made. Judgment, 29/07/2020, free
- This had been an application, made by the father and resisted by the mother, for the summary return of two girls aged eleven and fourteen to Dubai, but the father conceded that his application should not be granted. Instead, he asked Lieven J to make an order for direct contact with the children, including contact outside the jurisdiction. The issue then became the risk of him retaining the girls in Dubai. The view of the children, as expressed to a Cafcass officer, was that they were happy to travel to Europe with their father, but had concerns about travelling to Dubai with him. Lieven J made a finding that the children were now habitually resident in England. Her view was that it would be exceptionally harmful to their emotional state for them to be retained in Dubai. Safeguards were necessary to mitigate that risk, and to ensure that in such a situation they would be returned to England with relatively little difficulty. An agreement between the parents, setting out their acceptance that the children were habitually resident in England and should be returned there if necessary, should be lodged with the Dubai courts. Once that was done, Lieven J envisaged travel to Dubai as being possible. Judgment, 28/07/2020, free