Case Summaries

Mr Justice Cusworth handed down this judgment on 2 September 2024 following a preliminary issue hearing regarding the interpretation of a pre-nuptial agreement (“PNA”) between parties.

His Honour Judge Hess handed down this judgment following a four-day final hearing in the financial remedy proceedings between H and W. The dominant feature of the case was a business owned by H; the case illustrated the ‘well known caution which the courts have often expressed about company valuations’ [20].

H’s application for financial remedy before DJ Dinan-Hayward. Notwithstanding H being the applicant, his failure to engage resulted in W responding to an application which had not been presented to the Court. H’s serious litigation and financial misconduct resulted in adverse inferences and costs consequences.

District Judge Parker considered whether to make a 12-month supervision order for two children, S (aged six) and A (aged one), or to conclude proceedings without an order in circumstances where the mother’s mental health was the primary concern. The case provides an analysis of the necessity and proportionality of supervision orders in the context of risks associated with parental mental health, notably Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder.

Re SB [2024] EWHC 2964 (Fam) is a decision by Mr Justice Keehan ruled that the court did not have the jurisdiction to determine whether SB was detainable under the Mental Health Act 1983 Act or to review decisions made by clinicians under the Act, but the court will continue to authorise SB’s deprivation of liberty at the adolescent unit pursuant to its inherent jurisdiction.

Sir Jonathan Cohen heard a mother’s urgent appeal against an order that a child should move to live with her father.

Care proceedings concerning a 1-year-old child, in which the mother disengaged from proceedings. In ultimately making care and placement orders, HHJ Hesford engages the relevant legal framework and comments on the importance of adopted children having information readily available to them about their early life.

The Appellant applied for permission to appeal the order made by HHJ Furness KC in February 2024, after a three-day hearing, and sought to set aside the order and sought a rehearing of the application for a financial remedy.

This is H’s application before Sir Jonathan Cohen to strike out W’s application to set aside a financial remedy order made by Mostyn J on 25th January 2022.

A father sought permission to appeal care and placement orders in respect of his daughter, T, on the basis that since the final hearing he has been diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder.

This case concerns the defence of consent under Article 13 of the 1980 Hague Convention. The mother had removed the children from America, and it was accepted that, without the consent of the father, the mother’s departure from the children in June 2023 would be a wrongful removal.

This was an appeal conducted in the High Court. The court was concerned with three children, one aged 14, the second aged 12 and the third aged 8. The judge described them being ‘the subject of prolonged proceedings which commenced as long ago as 2019, between the mother and the father following the breakdown of their marriage’ (paragraph 1).

PP v JP & Anor came before Mr Justice Hayden on 9, 10 and 24 October 2024. The proceedings concern the parties’ children, B and T who are respectively 14 and 13 years of age.

This judgment addresses the importance of specificity, precision and clarity in orders, particularly where a committal application is made. 

The Family Court explored the complexities of a fact-finding hearing regarding the source of a young child’s gonorrhoea infection, raising significant issues around inferences of abuse versus nonsexual transmission.

The High Court rules in favour of transferring jurisdiction of a care case relating to an 11-month-old child, S, from England and Wales to Norway under the 1996 Hague Convention.