The Family Court has ruled that four children should continue to live with their father, in what it described as a very long-running dispute between him and the children’s mother.
The children, aged between eight and 13, had lived with their mother after she and their father separated in 2018. There had been reasonably regular contact with the father until the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, but since then it had proved ‘enormously difficult’ to establish regular contact. A number of Child Arrangements Orders were made for the children to have regular contact with their father, but that did not happen. The mother regularly failed to take the children to school on a Friday when it was the father’s turn to collect them from school and have them for the weekend. The Court eventually ordered that the children move to live with the father and have two professionally supervised contact sessions with the mother per week. The mother sought the return of the children to her care.
The professionals involved in the case were consistent in their evidence as to the children’s wishes and feelings. The two older children had expressed a wish to live with their father, while the two younger children said they would prefer to live with their mother. Both of the older children had reported that the mother had sought to influence what they said to professionals.
The mother denied that she had prevented the children from going to contact and said that, when the children had not gone to school and then not gone to contact, it was because they were unwell. However, the Court did not think any reliance could be placed on her evidence and had no doubt that she had done her utmost to prevent the children from having a meaningful relationship with the father. The Children’s Guardian had been sent screenshots of messages the mother had sent during a Zoom video call with the children, seeking to influence them against the father.
In the Court’s view, the evidence that the mother had prevented the children from seeing their father and ignored court orders was overwhelming. She had not been following what the children wanted – they had consistently told professionals that they wanted to see their father – and had caused them emotional and educational harm. The Court was sceptical that she would change unless she fully engaged with therapy and accepted her need for it.
The Court was pleased to record that the children had settled extremely well into their father’s care. They were doing well at school and there was no concern about their current wellbeing. In the circumstances, the Court had no doubt that the children should remain living with their father.
