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- Proceedings concerning a three-year-old boy. The father applied for an extension of time to file a notice of appeal, with regard to a child arrangements order that he should only have indirect contact with the child (and the child's older siblings). He argued that the Lay Justices had misunderstood a letter from the Home Office, failed to properly apply the welfare checklist under s 1(3) of the Children Act 1989, attached too much weight to his immigration status, and had heard no evidence from the parties. HHJ Middleton-Roy considered that there was considerable weight to each of those grounds. The conclusion of the Lay Justices was shown to be both wrong and unjust. Time for the appeal was extended and the appeal was allowed. The matter would be re-allocated to a district judge. Judgment, 11/03/2020, free
- A father's application under the Hague Convention and Brussels II Revised for the summary return of his four-year-old daughter to Spain. The mother argued that the father had acquiesced to the removal and that the child would be at grave risk upon returning, due to the alleged domestic violence which had precipated the move to England. The parents were both British citizens who had moved to Spain as children. To Lieven J it seemed obvious from the father's texts that he fully understood that it was the mother's intention to stay in England with the child, and at no stage did he suggest he was seeking for the daughter to live permanently in Spain. This was a case such as those described in Re H (Abduction: Acquiescence) [1997] 1 FLR 872, where "the wronged parent, knowing of his rights, has so conducted himself vis-à-vis the other parent and the children that he cannot be heard to go back on what he has done and seek to persuade the judge that, all along, he has secretly intended to claim the summary return of the children". As to grave risk, Lieven J held that it would be totally irresponsible to return a young child in circumstances where there were very serious and credible allegations of domestic violence against the father, including that he assaulted the mother when she was pregnant. To do so would put the daughter in an intolerable situation and present a grave risk to her of significant psychological harm. The father's application was rejected. Judgment, 09/03/2020, free
- The father was HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, Ruler of the Emirate of Dubai and Vice-President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. The mother was Princess Haya bint Al Hussein, a daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan. The two children had come to this country with their mother in 2019, and arrangements for contact with the father were being considered. Upon the application of a number of media organisations, the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, had decided that three judgments in the case should be made public. These included findings of fact that the father had on three occasions ordered and orchestrated the unlawful abduction and forcible return of two of his other children, involving on one occasion an assault at sea by armed commandos. The father had not appealed against the fact-finding judgment, but appealed against the President's decision to lift reporting restrictions. The Court of Appeal (Underhill, Bean and King LJJ) dismissed the appeal. Judgment, 06/03/2020, free
- An appeal against an order for three children to be returned to Germany, following their wrongful removal to Wales and then England by the mother. This appeal was brought by the eldest child, who argued that the judge's approach had been flawed, first, as to whether the child should have had separate representation, and second, regarding the child's objections to returning to Germany. In Moylan LJ's view, the judge had reached the right decisions. The decision not to join the child was "plainly right", and the judge had not given too much weight or insufficient weight to any relevant factor. King LJ and Patten LJ agreed, and the applications were dismissed. Judgment, 04/03/2020, free
- The children had lived in England since late 2016. The mother was a national of Qatar, the father a national of the United Arab Emirates. Each parent had sought permission to take the children to their respective countries on visits, while opposing permission for the other parent to do the same. The judge had granted both of them permission but required written agreements to be lodged in the courts of the respective destinations. The mother appealed. Moylan LJ found that the judge had not failed to consider the relevant issues, and he was not persuaded that the judge came to a conclusion that was not open to him. Lewison LJ agreed and the appeal was dismissed. Judgment, 04/03/2020, free
- The mother was of the Satmar tradition, the father Modern Orthodox. The father sought an order for the children to live with both parents and stay with him every Sunday night. The mother applied to prevent the father issuing further applications for a period of at least three years. HHJ Rowe QC concluded that the children should live with both parents: "There should not remain in place an order that might be taken to imply that the mother is more important than the father in the children’s lives." The children would spend alternate Sabbath weekends and key festival days with their father: removing the children from his religious life would cause profound damage to their relationship. The mother's application was refused. The exclusion of the father from the children's education continued to be a concern, and it would be contrary to the children's best interests to limit his ability to seek the assistance of the court. Judgment, 25/02/2020, free
- The parents had split up and the boy was living with his mother. The father had applied for a child arrangements order. This was a fact-finding hearing with regard to allegations which, according to HHJ Tolson QC, would not "in the ordinary course, have had very much to say for the future" in terms of the boy's welfare. These included allegations of coercive control and that the father had raped the mother. The judge said that "the enquiry into this allegation of rape is fraught with difficulty" and that he did "not see why the mother could not, should not, have made life difficult for the father" during the events, while also noting that the mother would "often tell the father to stop". The judge's findings were that the sex was consensual, and more generally that the father was not coercively controlling. This decision was successfully appealed in JH v MF [2020] EWHC 86 (Fam), where Russell J DBE stated that the judge had employed "obsolescent concepts concerning the issue of consent". Judgment, 24/02/2020, free
- An application for the summary return to Zambia of two children of British nationality, brought to England by their South African mother. Zambia had signed the Hague Convention on the civil aspects of international child abduction, but had not been accepted by the United Kingdom as a reciprocating party, and so this was instead decided under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court. Before the abduction, one child had made allegations of sexual abuse against the father, but unsupervised overnight contact had been required to continue. With this in mind, Holman J was not satisfied that returning the children to Zambia was in their best interests, not without much fuller inquiry and fact finding. The mother had stated that she would not return to Zambia, and the court could not risk the potentially disastrous outcome of the children being returned to an unprotected situation without her. The application was dismissed. Judgment, 12/02/2020, free
- The children had repeatedly told their guardian, and through her the court, that they wanted to continue living with their mother in England. The Spanish court had ordered that they live with their father in Spain. Russell J DBE found that on any objective and neutral analysis both children were habitually resident in England. They were settled here and were fully integrated into their schools and social environment. There was no significant evidence contrary to such a finding, and jurisdiction was with and in this court. The mother's appeal against enforcement of the Spanish order was allowed. The children would live with her, and would have contact with the father, subject to him providing written permission for the renewal of the children's passports, and documentary evidence that the Spanish order had been discharged and all criminal complaints in Spain against the mother had been dropped. Judgment, 06/02/2020, free
- An application by the father pursuant to the Hague Convention 1980. The child was born in Brazil but the family had subsequently moved to England. The parents had been on an extended visit to Brazil when the mother left with the child, first to the USA and then returning to the UK. The father argued that the child was habitually resident in Brazil and that this was a wrongful removal. Judd J held that, while the family had not yet decided where they would live in the long term, the mother and child were habitually resident in England. Given the mother's long-standing residence in the UK and the plans that she and the father had made, she did not lose her habitual residence during that trip to Brazil. Though the father no doubt felt wrong-footed and insecure when the mother left, the plan to return to England had not changed and he had not revoked his consent to that. The father's applications were dismissed. Judgment, 04/02/2020, free