Case Summaries

Nicholas Stonor KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, made a return order under the inherent jurisdiction for a three-year-old child abducted from the UAE by her father, holding that the grant of humanitarian protection to the child and father did not engage an automatic prohibition on refoulement.

HHJ Marin held that the subject child who was living in Lithuania was not habitually resident in this country and therefore the court did not have jurisdiction to determine applications for child arrangements.

Lieven J, over two judgments, dealt with an application by Mr Donovan Sappleton (Lieven J made an order to name Mr Sappleton in her later judgment) to pursue contempt proceedings against the respondent; the application appears against a backdrop of abusive litigation and Lieven J goes on, in the second judgment, to make an Extended Civil Restraint Order against Mr Sappleton and to consider costs.

This is a case demonstrating the Court exercising its discretion to refuse an application made by a father without parental responsibility for party status within care proceedings (with a care plan of adoption).  

District Judge Parker dismissed the wife’s application for non-molestation and occupation orders, having found that the property concerned was never intended to be the family home.

Poole J considers the interrelationship between occupation orders under section 33 of the Family Law Act 1996 and consequential interim child arrangements.

A decision of Mr Justice Harrison domestic abuse, abusive litigation and the limits of parental involvement in private law children proceedings.

Appeal by a mother and maternal grandmother against a special guardianship order made in favour of the child’s foster carer at the conclusion of care proceedings. Appeal allowed. Where an SGO in favour of a non-family foster carer is proposed as the outcome of care proceedings, the court must undertake a proper necessity and proportionality evaluation and should typically determine whether the section 31 threshold criteria are established before deciding whether the child should remain permanently outside the birth family.

Application by husband for anti-suit injunction restraining wife from taking proceedings in Russia. Interim injunction made by Nicholas Allen KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge.

Mr Justice MacDonald published this judgment on an appeal against a District Judge’s decision to dismiss an application for child maintenance. The issues for the court were whether the English Court has retained jurisdiction under the EU Maintenance Regulation following the UK’s departure from the EU and whether the lower court was justified in dismissing this application for alleged breaches of case management directions.

Deputy High Court Judge Catherine Cowton KC published this judgement on an application to transfer public law care proceedings to Romania under Article 8 of the 1996 Hague Convention.

Three-day fact-finding hearing within concurrent Children Act 1989 and Family Law Act 1996 proceedings. The court determined allegations made by the mother against the father and members of his family arising principally from events in X in December 2025.

Application by the mother (AZ) supported by the guardian to vary existing child arrangements order for a six-year-old girl (CX) to implement no direct or indirect contact with her father (BY). Despite a historically positive relationship and extensive successful supervised contact, the Court concluded that terminating contact was necessary to secure CX’s medium- and long-term welfare.

District Judge Hadley published a judgment on the approach to allegations of domestic abuse in private law children proceedings where parallel criminal proceedings exist. The issue for the court was the extent to which not guilty pleas in criminal proceedings following findings of fact in in family proceedings should influence the court’s assessment of current and future risk.

This was a private law children case concerning an eight-year-old child and arrangements for her to spend time with her father.

The Court of Appeal allowed an appeal by the mother and set aside a ‘pool finding’ that there was a real possibility that the mother was responsible for inflicting three areas of bruising on her son. It held that a rehearing was unnecessary, as the only proper conclusion was that it was more likely than not that the bruising injuries were caused by the intervenor.