Father successfully appeals after court concluded his contact application at one-hour hearing

Obviously, every child should have contact with both parents, unless there is a very good reason why contact should not happen.

The court should therefore give detailed consideration to the matter, before it decides to restrict a parent’s contact with their child.

But in a recent case the court decided to terminate a father’s contact application at a one-hour hearing, which was not even fixed as a final hearing.

The essential facts of the case were as follows. The parents separated in 2023 and the father applied for contact with his daughter, who is now aged 7, in 2024.

The mother made various allegations of domestic abuse against the father, and a fact-finding hearing took place in January this year, to determine the truth of the allegations.

The court found some of the allegations proved, in particular that the father was coercively controlling towards the mother in various ways, including being physically aggressive towards her, being verbally abusive towards her, and causing her to be isolated by undermining her in front of friends and family.

The father refused to accept the findings.

At the end of the fact-finding hearing the judge fixed a one-hour directions hearing, to decide how the case should proceed.

The directions hearing took place in March this year.

At the hearing the judge decided that it was in the child’s best interests to make a final order for indirect contact six times a year, managed by the maternal grandmother. Further, on the basis that she had made findings of domestic abuse, which the father had not accepted, the judge ordered that the father should not be able to make any further application without the court’s permission, for 24 months.

The father appealed.

The appeal was heard by Mr Justice Harrison, in the High Court.

He accepted that, in the appropriate case, the court may make final orders at a directions hearing.

However, this was not such a case.

The judge had made her decision partly because of the mother’s claim that the continuation of proceedings would have an adverse effect upon her mental health. However, that claim should have been investigated by a court-appointed expert, rather than relying upon the evidence of the mother’s clinicians, which was largely based upon the mother’s self-report.

And Judge Harrison could not accept a submission by the mother’s counsel to the effect that the court should not waste its resources for the benefit of a father who had refused to accept its findings – the child, not the father, was the court’s focus.

Judge Harrison said that he did not in any way seek to minimise the serious findings of domestic abuse made against the father, but he did not consider that they fell into the category of severity whereby, without more, the court should inevitably conclude that any form of direct contact would be contrary to the child’s interests.

He went on to say that the father’s inability to accept the findings against him may well limit the court’s ability to make orders for direct contact which were safe, but on the facts of this case he did not consider that to be a sufficient justification to write off on a summary basis the potential for the child to benefit from any form of direct contact.

Accordingly, the appeal was allowed, the judge’s order set aside, and the case remitted for reconsideration.

You can read the full report of the case here.

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