The parent with the main care of the children may only be thinking about the hurt or abuse caused to them and not consider what is actually in the children’s best interests or it may be the case, as often happens, that they genuinely believe that the behaviour of their former partner will have a detrimental effect upon the children if contact were to take place.
A recent case, which deals with such issues is PA v CK. The case involved a 9 year old daughter. The couple separated in 2013 and the mother remarried a couple of years after the parties separated. She now has a child with her husband with another expected. The father applied for contact with his daughter shortly after separation. The mother alleged domestic abuse and a findings were made against the father of “bizarre and controlling behaviour”. The father would not accept those findings. Supervised contact was ordered which went well.
However, in 2015 the mother and her husband applied to the court to adopt the daughter. This would mean that the father would lose his parental responsibility and stop him from having any role in her life. A judge who heard the recent appeal felt that this course of action was appalling as it would deny the child a right to a relationship with her father, and was relieved that the mother and her husband did eventually withdraw the application. This action showed the extent of mother’s hostility towards the father.
Contact unfortunately, broke down in 2017 when the daughter refused to get out of the car to see her father. There has been no direct contact since and indirect contact only was ordered.
The father appealed against this decision. The case had now been ongoing for 5 years. Mr Justice Cohen, hearing the appeal, said that there had been huge ill will, a lot of involvement of professionals and a complete lack of progress with the daughter being caught up on the middle and eventually siding with her mother. However, despite his comments, he could find no basis upon which the judge in the lower court was wrong in their decision so the appeal was dismissed leaving the father with an order that only allowed him to have contact with his daughter by Skype or telephone and by letters and gifts.
If you have any questions or queries regarding divorce or separation, please feel free to contact us on freephone 0800 011 6666 or email legal@timms-law.com. Alternatively, our divorce frequently asked questions may help.
