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Father who persistently breached child arrangements order must have contact supervised

October 4, 2024

In some child arrangements cases a parent may persistently fail to obey the terms of a court order by, for example, failing to return the child to the other parent at the designated time.

How the court may deal with such persistent disregard for court orders was demonstrated by a recent case concerning the arrangements for a three year-old child, who the judge referred to as ‘Kate’ (not her real name).

Kate’s parents’ relationship ended in around August 2021. On Kate’s first birthday the father failed to return Kate to her mother’s care and relocated with her to his mother’s home, approximately 120 miles away from where the family were living.

Proceedings commenced shortly thereafter, when the mother sought a non-molestation order and the father applied for a child arrangements order providing that Kate should live with him.

In November 2023 the court ordered that Kate should be based with her mother, but should live with her father every third week from Wednesday to Sunday, plus half of the holidays.

Unfortunately the father did not accept that decision, as evidenced by the fact that he regularly breached the order, by failing on numerous occasions to return Kate to her mother when she was due to be returned at the end of her time with him.

On the last such occasion Kate was due to be returned to her mother on the 7th of April 2024, but was not returned for over a month.

In the light of these breaches of the order the mother applied to the court for the order to be varied to provide that Kate should live with her and that the father should have no contact with Kate at all.

The father, on the other hand, sought an order that Kate live primarily with him.

After considering all of the evidence the judge took the view that Kate’s welfare interests demanded that she should make a child arrangements order providing for Kate to live with her mother.

However, the judge felt that contact could safely be achieved with supervision, and that no contact would therefore not be proportionate. Accordingly, she made an order for the father to have supervised contact only, initially at a contact centre.

She also made an order that Kate should be returned to her mother promptly at the end of contact. This order was endorsed with a ‘penal notice’, meaning that the father could be committed to prison if he failed to comply with it.

In addition to that, the judge made a prohibited steps order making it absolutely clear that the father must not take matters into his own hands by removing Kate from her nursery or school, or from any other person or place in whose care she is entrusted, without the mother’s written agreement.

Finally, the judge made an order barring the father from making any further application in relation to Kate for a period of two years, without the permission of the court.

The full report of the case can be found here.

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