Internal relocation and costs in litigation misconduct

The Court is concerned with the welfare of Q, a boy now approaching his second birthday. This determination is given at the end of a three day hearing to determine child arrangements for Q, specifically whether he should be prohibited from relocating to Town A in the area of Northumberland with his Mother and maternal grandparents as his Father contends, or whether he should be permitted to relocate there with his Mother. I must determine this specific issue within the broader determination of Q’s child arrangements pursuant to his welfare interests. Since both parties agree that Q should live with his Mother and spend time with his Father whatever my decision, the practical effect of refusing the Mother’s application would be to prevent her from moving to Northumberland where her brother, sister-in-law and nephew live and where her parents will shortly relocate.

Q’s parents met online in February 2020, began dating later that year and were married in March 2022. The Father and his three sons from an earlier marriage moved into the Mother’s property in Town B, Oxfordshire. The parties separated in December 2024. Q and his Mother moved out of the family home and went to live with the Mother’s parents in Town C, Buckinghamshire. Q’s half-brothers live with the Father and spend time with their mother. The older two have complex needs albeit they are currently educated in the mainstream.

Q lives with his Mother and spends time with his Father every other Saturday overnight and on alternate Tuesday evenings. He has a particularly close bond with his maternal grandparents who have been involved in his care on a daily basis since his birth and with whom he has lived along with his Mother since December 2024. He also has a strong bond with his paternal grandparents, who live about 40 minutes from Town B and who have been on hand to help with his care when they can. Although he has had overnight contact with his Father on alternate Saturdays since May, his Father has not ensured that he has had direct contact with his three half-brothers during this time. The Mother only learned that this was the position just ahead of this final hearing and questions why the Father did not raise this and ensure a swap so that Q could spend time with his half-brothers.

Q is a bright boy who is becoming bilingual. His Mother is originally from another country although she has lived in England since she was 14.

On 4 April 2025 the Father issued proceedings seeking a prohibited steps order to prevent Q “being moved from his current home” and for a child arrangements order to regulate the contact between Q and his Father and half-brothers. The circumstances of issue require close analysis at the outset of this determination in light of the evidence that I have now heard and seen tested.

The application was issued urgently; no good reason has been put before the court explaining why this was so. There was no question of the Mother imminently or covertly moving to Northumberland with or without Q given that the plans that she had sought to discuss with the Father were predicated on her parents selling their home in Town C. Indeed, in a detailed letter sent on 24 March 2025, the Mother had offered a number of constructive proposals for contact, had set out the reasons for the proposed relocation and had informed the Father in terms that if agreement couldn’t be reached then she would make application to the court (Bundle p99). Therefore, despite his protestations in his oral evidence before me to the contrary, the Father was well aware that the Mother intended to follow due process and that consequently there was no urgency.

Further, by issuing the application in the manner in which he did, the Father improperly avoided the legal requirement on him to attend a MIAM on the alleged but fictitious basis of ‘urgency.’ He did so by claiming an exemption that was not open to him pursuant to section 3c of the Form C100, namely he falsely represented that the delay caused by attending a MIAM would risk Q’s unlawful removal from the United Kingdom (Bundle p13). This assertion was wholly untrue; its purpose, as I find, was to subvert the Family Procedure Rules. Its consequence was to circumvent necessary – and legally mandated – mediation. This is particularly extraordinary behaviour on the part of the Father given that the parties had at the time been engaging in mediation and the Mother had made detailed proposals in writing to which the Father had chosen not to respond.

Further still, the Father sought a without notice hearing on the basis that the Mother was “imminently [within 7 days] planning to move with Q some 309 miles away… if notice is given to the respondent she will relocate in advance of any hearing date” (Bundle p22). The Father has provided no evidence of this serious allegation either contemporaneously or since; in fact, the evidence has demonstrated the wholesale lack of any basis for the Father’s assertion. In my judgment the Father himself did not believe in it; he made a deliberately misleading averment in an attempt to blindside and intimidate the Mother by obtaining an interim PSO without notice to her.

The Father’s application was considered by HHJ Gibbons on the papers on 7 April 2025; the learned Judge directed that the hearing be listed on 10 April as a result of the Father’s assertions. The Mother was given notice but had only two days to consider the application and instruct solicitors. The Father, in issuing his application on an urgent basis, therefore succeeded in blindsiding and placing strain on the Mother, Q’s primary carer. Whether deliberate or reckless, it was unnecessary, and I consider that he knew it was unnecessary. It was likely a pre-emptive strike to try to gain litigation advantage. Certainly it was not a child-focussed way of starting proceedings concerning his son’s welfare.

On 9 April 2024 the Mother issued her cross-application for a child arrangements order that Q live with her and spend time with his Father, and for permission to relocate with Q to Northumberland.

At the Hearing on 10 April the Mother gave undertakings not to relocate with the child until the conclusion of proceedings or until further order (Bundle p54). By agreement an interim ‘lives with’ order was made in favour of the Mother and there was an agreed interim contact schedule, with contact increasing to overnight on alternate weekends. The matter was timetabled to Final Hearing before me commencing 8 July 2025, with an interim contact hearing listed for 4 June 2025. Such was the level of agreement between the parties that they were able to dispense with that hearing.

The child arrangements relating to contact are broadly agreed, subject to pace of progression; the substantive disputed issue is relocation, the timing of which is dependent, as it has been since proceedings were issued, on the sale of the maternal grandparents’ home.

At this final hearing, the Mother’s application is to relocate to the Town A area of Northumberland, which is an hour’s flight or five hours drive from Town B where the Father lives with Q’s half-brothers. She states that she relies heavily on the support of her parents with whom she currently lives in Town C, Buckinghamshire, but who are in the process of selling their home in order to move to Town A where the Mother’s brother, sister-in-law and infant nephew are settled. It is an area that the Mother knows well and which she believes can offer her and Q an enhanced quality of life. She avers that a move would enable Q to remain with his maternal family, would enable her very stretched finances better to meet Q’s housing needs and would enable Q to be educated at an excellent school with small class sizes.

While she accepts that a move 300 miles away would of course affect Q’s contact with his Father in the week, the Mother says that the distance is not so great as to preclude the alternate weekend contact and division of the school holidays that broadly mirrors the level of contact he would have with his Father should her application be refused. The Mother says that she has no practical, emotional or financial support in the Town B area and so, were I to refuse her application, she would have to juggle being Q’s primary carer with the employment necessary practically to support him, with no local friends or family to help her and with a co-parent who expects his lifestyle to be accommodated first and foremost. She says that the Father’s parents been cold and distant since the separation; while she accepts that emotions are likely to settle once court proceedings are concluded, she queries the level of practical support that she might reasonably expect from a 75 year-old grandmother who already helps considerably with the Father’s three other sons and her other grandson, particularly where two of the boys have complex needs and whose schooling has been neither straightforward nor uninterrupted.

The Mother points to the Father’s current animosity towards her as being unconducive to a positive coparenting relationship, but, more than that, as leaving her further isolated in his local area. The Mother says that the strain of her current circumstances has become significant and has affected her mental health such that she is in therapy and has had to have some time off work. The Mother has set out a coherent plan for Q to spend time with his Father and his half-brothers in Town B, and in Northumberland or County A where Q’s half-brothers spend a lot of time with their maternal family. She says that the move is manifestly in Q’s welfare interests, not least because the pressure on her currently is causative of levels of stress in Q’s primary carer that are likely adversely to affect her parenting if mandated to maintain in the long-term. At this final hearing the Mother is represented by Miss Rhiannon Lloyd of counsel.

The Father agrees that there should be a final child arrangements order under which Q should live with his Mother and spend time with his Father. He opposes the Mother’s relocation to Northumberland with Q.

Although he heavily criticises the Mother through his witness statements, through the pleadings filed on his behalf, and then through his oral evidence, he says nonetheless that there is a positive co-parenting relationship such as would enable his co-parenting plan to work in Q’s welfare interests. He says that once her parents have sold their house and moved to Northumberland, the Mother should live near him in Town B to best facilitate his contact with Q. Alternatively he says that the Mother has the means to provide herself and Q accommodation in a two bedroomed flat in London. He has not set out any plan for Q’s nursery or childcare arrangements in either location, seemingly preferring to leave those details to the Mother. He says that his parents can offer practical help, but has provided no evidence to that effect beyond his bare assertion, nor has he set out details of how and when they might help. Through cross-examination of the Mother he raised for the first time the prospect of Q attending nursery provision at X Hospital, 25 minutes away from Town B, but has provided no evidence of any availability there, nor how placement there might be in Q’s welfare interests. The Father is represented by Miss Indira Ramsahoye of counsel.

I am grateful to both counsel for their respective highly competent conduct of this hearing and for their clear and comprehensive written arguments, amplified by their skilful oral submissions. There is broad agreement on the law as it applies to the issues, with slight nuances in how each party invites me to apply it to the facts in this case. As to the evidence, while each counsel has urged upon me their competing submissions on the conclusions they ask me to reach, ultimately the assessment of the evidence and the proper inferences to be drawn from it are mine to determine.

This is in reality a single issue case – should the Mother, with whom Q lives, be permitted to relocate 300 miles north to Northumberland with him or should she be required to remain near Town B to facilitate the time Q spends with his Father and half-brothers.

While child arrangements are otherwise broadly agreed, there remains a subsidiary issue of how quickly holiday contact should progress to an even split, with the Father seeking the same straight away and the Mother agreeing the principle but seeking a staged progression up to when Q has started primary school, which will likely be deferred in his welfare interests given his birth date at the end of August.

Where the future division of the child’s time with each parent is in dispute irrespective of any relocation proposal, the court should not resolve that dispute first before considering relocation; all issues should, rather, be considered as part of one holistic evaluation of the child’s welfare as per L v F [2017] EWCA Civ 2121.

There is no difference in the basic approach as between external and internal relocation; in both cases the welfare of the child is paramount (Re C (Internal Relocation) [2015] EWCA Civ 1305). The principle of proportionality applies. Since the Mother makes the application, she bears the burden on the balance of probabilities of establishing that relocation would best serve Q’s welfare interests.

Williams J most recently summarised the relevant principles as they relate to relocation decisions in Re K (A Child) [2020] EWHC 488 (Fam)from § 45. In short, we are reminded that the only authentic principle is the paramount welfare of the child, and that the court must evaluate that welfare through holistic and comprehensive evaluation of the plans proposed by each parent according to the welfare checklist. The court must be cognisant of Article 8 rights and additionally factor in the right of the child to maintain personal relations and direct contact with both parents on a regular basis, unless contrary to his interests. While the child’s Article 8 rights take precedence, the court must also have regard to, and weigh in the balance, the competing Article 8 rights of the parents, and, to a lesser extent, the rights of other family members where the same may be infringed by either competing plan.

The Bundle comprises 225 pages. It contains witness statements from the parties, together with various exhibits from the Mother evidencing her plans for Q’s future living and educational arrangements, and from the Father evidencing minor differences between the parties over interim contact and its rate of progression. It contains a short Cafcass Letter to the Court.

I have heard from both the Mother and the Father, who were each skilfully and robustly cross-examined for around two hours.

Both parties are eloquent and intelligent; both deeply love their son.

I found the Mother’s evidence to be considered, compassionate and child focussed. Her witness statement focusses on the children of the family – not simply Q, but his three half-brothers too. I am impressed that she devotes paragraphs to each of her erstwhile stepsons; her sadness at her reduced relationship with them as a natural result of her divorce from their Father is palpable. She sets out necessary background concisely. Her focus is properly on the future.

In her oral evidence she was similarly thoughtful, measured and empathetic; she was wholly child-focussed. This is a witness who has thought very carefully about her future, her son’s future and her son’s future relationship with his Father and half-brothers. While of course the timing is dependent on the sale of the maternal grandparents’ home, the Mother’s plan is to be commended for its comprehensiveness and its care.

Despite their differences she is not overly preoccupied by her issues with the Father, rather she is clear in her desire to promote her son’s relationship with him, with Q’s half-brothers and with the wider paternal family. This is apparent from the thoughtful proposals she has consistently put forward to the Father about contact, even in circumstances where he is non-responsive or rebarbative. It is curious that the Father seeks to paint the Mother as “controlling” and as someone determined to frustrate contact. I refused to allow the Mother’s counsel to adduce a supplemental bundle of evidence which she said comprised ten pages of evidence that would contextualise and rebut the Father’s curated exhibited messages between the parties. This was because the Father’s evidence, taken at its highest and in the context of the evidence as a whole, does not show a controlling or difficult Mother. Rather the evidence demonstrates that the Father believes that a refusal to bend to his will and accede to his requests without question equates to controlling behaviour. He is wrong in that belief.

The Mother was criticised in cross-examination for not agreeing holiday contact for this approaching summer holiday. Yet it became apparent that she has put forward suggestions including that Q spend extended overnights with his Father when his Father takes annual leave, only for the Father to refuse to engage or even to let her know his annual leave dates. The Father only revealed his annual leave dates for August during his cross-examination; I view with circumspection his assertion that he did not know them until a day or two before this hearing. Criticism of the Mother is therefore misdirected; it is the Father who should be encouraged to cooperate.

There is then a pattern of the Father refusing to engage in constructive conversation about contact, refusing to answer the Mother’s reasonable questions about his availability and then framing this before the court as the Mother being unreasonable or “controlling”. This started with the misrepresentations made by the Father to the Court in his Form C100 dated 4 April 2025, the filing of which I have found was a knee-jerk and wholly disproportionate response to the Mother’s careful letter of 24 March 2025.

The Mother has shown herself to be reasonable, flexible and open to compromise; if anyone is seeking to dictate arrangements it is the Father. It is regrettable that he seeks to do so by refusing properly to engage with, and then choosing to denigrate, the Mother.

All of the Mother’s exhibits evidence her well-thought out plans for where she and Q would live, where he would go to school, where she might work so as best to juggle the economic and the practical demands of motherhood, and how she would facilitate Q’s time with his Father and half-brothers.

As will be apparent, I found the Father’s evidence less persuasive; in his oral evidence he was often disingenuous; on occasion he was untruthful.

His first witness statement dated 20 June 2025 is not as child focussed as that of the Mother; sadly, and unhelpfully, it is more focussed on his criticisms of the Mother than on any well-conceived plan for his son’s care. The first 26 paragraphs amount in reality to little more than complaint about the Mother and her parents, which becomes a recurring theme throughout the remainder of the 87 paragraph statement. The Father’s proposals for Q whether under his plan or the Mother’s are poorly considered; they lack detail, they lack cogency and his reasons for objecting to the move are on their face inconsistent. For example, his primary objection to relocation is the fact it would mean long round trips from Northumberland to Town B for Q to see his Father, which he submits would be antithetic to Q’s welfare (paragraphs 65 and 66, 68-70). Yet in his paragraph 39, in a seemingly throwaway line after having dismissed the medical needs of Q’s infant cousin, he observes “Whilst I am sympathetic to the fact that it is dreadful that he has this condition, I cannot see that it can be a persuasive factor in a relocation case when the mother could take Q to visit him during the time she has with him.” He reiterates his lack of objection to Q having regular long round trips to Northumberland at his paragraph 81 where he asserts that the Mother “would be able to visit Northumberland with Q during her weekends and holidays.” When the inconsistency of this position was put to him in cross-examination, he rowed back and said that in fact he would not support the Mother visiting Northumberland with Q regularly.

While he objects to the Mother’s plan, he puts forward no real plan of his own should I refuse it. His proposals for Q should the Mother be permitted to relocate with him to Northumberland are in fact none – his paragraphs 61 through 79 offer no proposals, instead they simply set out further objections to the application. These seem to be based primarily on an unevidenced suggestion that should I refuse the application the maternal grandparents would not move from Town C: “In circumstances in which the mother portrays that she is heavily reliant upon her parents’ support this would be very surprising” (paragraph 62). He maintained this position in his oral evidence. He gives no thought to the fact that, if he really this believes this to be the case, the effect of his position prevailing would be not only to prevent the Mother from moving to a place where she wants to be, but would also to be to trap her parents in the local area against their needs and wishes and to prevent them from offering necessary day-to-day respite care for their other grandson who is currently very unwell. It is a selfish observation as well as an unsupported one. In this respect the Father appears to see those around him as ciphers, playing supporting roles in a story in which he is the central character.

The Father’s stated concerns that the Mother would fail to honour the detailed contact plan she has set out are similarly unevidenced. The Mother has not only abided the interim order of 10 April 2025, which was made by consent, she has agreed and facilitated additional midweek contact. This is strong evidence of her ability objectively to assess her son’s welfare needs and place those ahead of her own feelings, as well to abide court orders. She told me that she agreed to the additional midweek contact as she could see how Q was benefiting from the contact with his Father. This is not a Mother about whom it can properly be said would frustrate contact; criticising her for reservations she may have expressed along the way and for her desire to progress contact at a steady, child-centred pace seems petty on the part of the Father, and more opportunistic than genuine.

The Father’s proposals for Q should his application be preferred to that of the Mother are set out in eight short paragraphs from 80 – 87 and are thin. As I have already observed, notably they put upon Q the regular journeys to Northumberland with his Mother that the Father insists would be harmful to Q the other way around and thus should be a barrier to relocation (see paragraph 81). While in his oral evidence he reversed that position, stating he would not support such regular journeys, he gave no thought to the fact that a consequence of this would be further to isolate the Mother in the south from her family – and sole support network – in the north.

This difficulty in maintaining a consistent or coherent position derives from the Father’s failure to consider and propose detailed plans for either contingency, which itself derives from his refusal to entertain at all the Mother’s plan. It is an unhelpful approach, and one which does not place at its centre Q’s welfare interests.

Nowhere does he address why, if Q relocates, the travel burden should always fall upon the Mother and Q. On alternate weekends the Father’s older children are with their mother. There is no good reason why the Father could not, on those weekends travel to Q rather than expect the child to come to him. Indeed the former is palpably in Q’s welfare interests. Further, the overnight contact he currently has with Q coincides with the weekends when he does not have his three older sons. Whether or not this is because he would struggle to manage the four boys together I do not know, but it was the Father’s decision to arrange contact according to this pattern therefore he must consider it to be in Q’s welfare interests currently to have time with his Father alone.

He seeks alternate weekends and alternating midweek contact, and half the school holidays, with Christmas, Easter and birthdays to be alternated. This proposal, set out in five lines at paragraph 85, is the full extent of the Father’s plan. It is an oddly sparse and rigid plan for such a young child, placing the Father’s desire for an even split above an infant’s need for consistency of care and incremental growth. The Father has referenced his role more than once in his application and his evidence and yet he has been seemingly unable to apply his professional expertise and experience to his own family dynamic.

Midweek contact apart, the Father’s brief proposals are broadly similar to the proposals made by the Mother upon relocation. The Mother makes suggestion as to how the costs might be shared; the Father does not.

The Father does not seek a lives with order nor a shared care order, recognising the Mother’s primary care of Q. He makes no suggestions as to where the Mother and Q might live under his plan beyond suggesting she could find somewhere close to Town B (paragraph 80). Earlier in his witness statement he suggested that the Mother could afford a two bedroomed flat in London and that this “would meet her needs” (paragraph 51). He has not set out how the Mother and Q moving to London would affect Q’s welfare and contact arrangements. He has not apparently researched nurseries, schools or childcare locally, where he says the Mother should remain, or in London where he would apparently permit her to move. He has not contradicted the Mother’s evidence that there is a dearth of nursery places in Town B. Instead he floated via his counsel the prospect of Q attending X Hospital nursery, which is apparently childcare available for NHS professionals who work at the Hospital. He has not provided any evidence surrounding this provision; he had not raised it with the Mother prior to her cross-examination during this hearing when the suggestion was made to her for the first time. He has not indicated how any childcare for Q would be financed, whether in X hospital location, London or Northumberland.

He does not really dispute that the separation has taken a toll on the mental health of the Mother, and yet he remains critical of her in his evidence and in his pleadings, and does not point to any support networks she might have locally. He says, as does the Mother, that his parents were very supportive practically and emotionally during the marriage, but has not detailed the level and nature of the support they would be able to provide moving forward under either plan.

It is notable that all of the Father’s exhibits relate to his assertions that the Mother has been difficult about contact; not a single one relates to Q’s welfare, his current and future care, or his housing and education whether in Town B or Northumberland. His is less a plan than a demand for his will to prevail and essentially for the Mother to be forced to live her life to accommodate his. In the event of relocation he puts forward no plan, simply he puts up barriers.

In his oral evidence that approach continued. However, the inconsistency of those barriers to the Mother’s relocation plans was exposed through cross-examination. I have already referenced his pivot on the issue of Q travelling to Northumberland with the Mother on her weekends should she remain in the south. A further example is his assertion that it would be impossible for him to travel to Town A on a Friday afternoon when he does not work because he is responsible for his three other sons. It was pointed out to him that on his own evidence the boys spend every other weekend with their mother who picks them up from school. He said that this wasn’t the position with R who is currently home schooled. He was taken to paragraph 33 of his statement where he stated that R is “being reintegrated into his mainstream class with great success.” Indeed, the Mother had been cross-examined, presumably on instructions, that from September R would be back at school fulltime. The Father cavilled for a while and then reluctantly conceded that from September he might have availability on Friday afternoons. It is difficult to disagree with Miss Lloyd’s assessment in closing that in reality the Father is less concerned about the burden of travel on Q than he is about having to travel himself if he relocates.

Similarly, the Father has presented his parents as present and available to help out with care of all four boys should the Mother’s application be refused, albeit without setting out the detail of that availability. However when it came to his parents looking after R or the other boys on a Friday after school to facilitate him travelling to Northumberland he was non-committal: he said that this would require discussion with his parents which he had not had, despite the order of 10 April 2025 that he come up with a detailed plan for contact. Although he hadn’t discussed the possibility of his parents stepping in if necessary with the older boys one Friday afternoon a month, in his oral evidence he blithely asserted that if the Mother was living in London and was running late from work or Q was sick and couldn’t attend nursery, she could count on his parents to step in and help.

The Father’s bitterness towards the Mother was palpable throughout his oral evidence; he took every opportunity to answer questions in a manner redolent of criticism of her. It is difficult to see how the Mother might manage this level of animosity towards her, trying to co-parent locally and without support.

The Father became very tearful in his evidence when pressed on the assertions he made in his Form C100 that an urgent, without hearing notice was necessary to prevent the Mother imminently removing Q and thereafter preventing him from ever having contact with Q again (p19). While I don’t doubt that he loves his son deeply and is resistant to him moving 300 miles away due to the consequent impact that will have on his day to day contact with him, I agree with Miss Lloyd that his assertions in this application were deliberately hyperbolic. Further, I reject the Father’s explanation in his oral evidence that when he asserted in his Form C100 that he was MIAM-exempt due to a risk that the Mother would imminently unlawfully remove Q to Country A, he genuinely believed that to be the position. With that assertion he was not merely being hyperbolic; he was being dishonest. He did not believe for a moment that Q was at risk of imminent abduction to Country A; he dishonestly claimed an exemption to which he knew he was not entitled to in order to subvert the Family Procedure Rules and avoid his legal obligation to attend a MIAM prior to issuing proceedings. In so doing he seriously maligned the Mother before the court.

In the context in which it came, the Father’s emotional outburst in evidence seemed to me both a deflection from the exaggerations and untruths that he was being asked about, and more rooted in distress at the prospect that the Mother’s application would succeed and that consequently he would need to commit to some changes in his lifestyle to accommodate this, than in any reasonable or genuine belief that relocation 300 miles away would herald the end of his relationship with his son.

I have the benefit of a short (four page) Cafcass Letter to the Court dated 30 May 2025. Its author Becky Matta confirms that there are no safeguarding concerns surrounding Q. Ms Matta acknowledges that a move to Northumberland is a significant one and that travel to and from the area for contact will be time-consuming and tiring. Ultimately Ms Matta does not make any recommendations save to observe that the proposals from both parents will need to be explored by the court prior to any final order being made.

Qis not yet two and is therefore too young to comprehend the proposed move. He can reasonably be assumed to want stability, safety and loving relationships with both his parents as well as with his brothers and wider family members throughout his minority.

He is used to living with his Mother and maternal grandparents and spending time with his Father overnight on alternate weekends and for an afternoon each alternate week. He is happy with his current living arrangements and thriving under them. Although the move would mean a change of location within England, in fact there would be little change to Q’s household – he would remain living with his Mother and maternal grandparents in a large house for the foreseeable future and he would see his Father every second weekend. He would miss the recently introduced midweek contact but would have an additional night with his Father on alternate weekends instead. Conversely, a refusal to relocate would mean him moving out of his grandparents’ home upon their relocation to Town A and moving into a small flat with just his Mother. He has shown that he can well tolerate trips to Northumberland to see his maternal family; while more regular trips to see his Father in Town B from Northumberland would place a greater burden on him, that can be mitigated by his Father sharing that burden. In reality, pursuant to the Father’s plan Q would be travelling to Northumberland and back as least as frequently as under the Mother’s plan.

Q is a bright nearly two year-old boy of mixed heritage. He is bilingual and is yet to start nursery school. As an infant, he relies primarily on his primary carer who is his Mother and that will maintain for the foreseeable future. She therefore has to be in a position properly to support him. She will be less able to do that without a strong support network and if forced to remain in an area to which she has no ties, no support, and which exhausts her financial resources. In due course Q will need a good educational provision. The Mother has evidenced a very good local nursery in Town A and a very good school that follows on from that nursery. There is no nursery provision currently available in Town B. The idea of nursery provision at X Hospital has been floated but not evidenced. I am satisfied that Town A is an area that can meet Q’s physical, emotional and educational needs at least as well as Town B. The Mother’s plan will necessarily slightly reduce Q’s contact with his paternal family in term time, but allows for him to spend significant amounts of time with them in the holidays. The Father’s plan, such as it is, would mean that Q would have midweek term time contact with his Father, but it would also significantly reduce the amount of time he spends with his maternal family which is an important consideration not just in terms of his familiarity with them, but also in terms of maintaining that side of his heritage.

Q has no additional needs.

I have touched on this when considering Q’s wishes and feelings. Whether or not I sanction relocation, Q will have to leave his primary home in the coming months; a further consequence of the divorce is that his Father will shortly have to move out of the former matrimonial home when it is sold. If I were to refuse relocation Q would have to move to a two bedroom flat and his Mother would try to continue to make the co-parenting relationship work while maintaining a London-based job without any practical or emotional support in her local area. The inevitable stresses will be to the detriment of the Mother’s ability to parent Q. The Mother’s plan for relocation is well-thought out, covers all the bases and is most likely to provide financial, educational and emotional stability for Q. The pressure will be removed from the Mother in that she will have the practical and emotional support of the grandparents. She has carefully thought through contact arrangements that mean that Q would continue to spend quality time with his Father.

The Father’s plan does not go beyond his bare assertion that his parents can support the Mother in London if necessary, and is postulated on his theory that if the Mother’s application is refused her parents will take their house off the market, abandon their retirement plans and their wider family commitments (which include an infant grandson with acute medical needs) and remain in Town C to support the Mother. That is not a realistic or well-considered plan. As Miss Lloyd pointed out in her closing submissions the Father hasn’t even set out how Q’s midweek contact would look should his position prevail and the Mother and Q live in London. This contact requires careful thought given that the Father works in X location and has mid-week caring responsibilities for his other three sons, and it would potentially require Q to undergo a three hour round trip from London to Town B and back. There is no evidence that the Father has given this any thought at all; I agree with Miss Lloyd, this is a Father who is unused to having to organise his own domestic arrangements and who expects others to do so for him, to his specification.

This is not a harm case beyond the harm inherent in change of circumstance. Wherever he lives Q will live with his Mother and spend time with his Father. Under the Mother’s plan Q’s primary physical home will change but his primary household will remain the same. Under the Father’s plan both his primary home and primary household will change.

While there may be a slight reduction in the quantity of the time he spends with his Father in term time if he moves to Northumberland, the time he does spend with his Father and his brothers will be high quality time. Further, the Mother is going to be in a better position to promote and facilitate his high quality time with his half-brothers from a strong and stable base in Northumberland which is much closer to his half-siblings’ grandparents’ home in County A than is their Father’s home. While the Father has stressed the importance of mid-week contact which would be unfeasible under the Mother’s plan, as I have already set out he has not detailed how this would occur under his plan. There is no cogency to the Father’s position.

Were the Mother to be effectively forced to remain in the south for no reason other than to accommodate the Father’s preferred lifestyle and base, in circumstances where she has no support and where the Father does not seek shared care but nonetheless is quick to criticise and undermine her parenting preferences rather than to support the same, and is equally quick to characterise her motivations as malicious and ill-considered, then the risk of emotional harm to Q would increase. His primary carer would be practically unsupported, emotionally exhausted and financially stretched. The quality of her care would inevitably suffer. It is of note that the Father’s plan would place a significantly heavier financial burden on the Mother, not least because of the cost of living in London compared to Northumberland, and because she would have to pay for childcare; yet the Father makes no mention of that in any of his evidence. He has given no apparent thought to how his plan would be funded. His plan is entirely uncosted and devoid of any commitment to meet the additional costs.

I have dealt with this extensively already. Both parents are well able to meet Q’s basic and emotional needs. The Father is primary carer for three older children, two of whom have significant additional needs, and in respect of whose care he relies heavily on his aging parents. Through his choice, and unbeknown to the Mother, Q’s interim overnight contact with the Father has been absent his three half-brothers. Despite the Mother being clear that she whole-heartedly promotes Q’s contact with his half-brothers, the Father told me that he did not ask to change the weekends to coincide with his weekends with Q’s brothers because he didn’t want another battle with the Mother. This explanation did not have the ring of truth. Despite the Father’s assertions to the contrary, the Mother has consistently and reasonably sought to promote Q’s contact with his Father and his brothers in a wholly child-focussed way. I find it more likely than not that the Father chose the contact pattern he has because he preferred not to have to manage four boys together unsupported. His ability to manage all four boys together overnight or over a weekend is yet to be evidenced, since I accept that the Mother was the primary carer within the household during the marriage.

The Father accepts that he cannot be Q’s primary carer. The Mother is the primary carer and has been throughout Q’s life to date. Although the Father has not to date been prepared to recognise it, she is a highly competent parent who is cognisant of the complex blended family dynamic and who places her son’s welfare interests well above her own, and above those of the Father. It is that latter prioritisation that I judge the Father currently struggles to accept. I consider that when the separation is finalised and parties have had time to heal from the brutality of divorce and of these proceedings, the Father will come to respect the Mother’s steadfast prioritisation of their son and her highly competent parenting.

Although the Father is not yet in a place where he can see it, the Mother’s motivation for relocating is the pursuit of her own and Q’s best interests. Any suggestion that her application is knee-jerk or ill-considered, or designed to interfere with the father-son relationship is unsupported and, in my assessment of the evidence, wrong.

The Mother’s evidence was thoughtful, without malice and clearly considerate of not only how to promote Q’s relationship with his Father but also with his half-brothers. She would like to try to foster a friendly relationship with the boys’ mother so that when they are in County A the brothers might spend meaningful time together in the North. Notably, this is something that the Father does not support such is the toxicity of his relationship with the mother of his older children.

While the Mother was tearful at times in her evidence and has touched upon the toll that the marital breakdown and these proceedings have taken upon her, she has not sought emotionally to blackmail the court, rather she has shown considerable resilience. She was criticised in closing submissions for failing to provide evidence that refusal of her application would devastate her such as would significantly impact her care of Q. At this juncture I am reminded of Mostyn J’s repetition in GT v RJ [2018] EWFC 26, of an observation he made first in 2010. He counselled the court not to place disproportionate weight on assertions that a refusal to allow relocation will emotionally devastate the putative relocator: “The problem with the attribution of great weight to this particular factor is that, paradoxically, it appears to penalise selflessness and virtue, while rewarding selfishness and uncontrolled emotions. The core question of the putative relocator is always "how would you react if leave were refused?" The parent who stoically accepts that she would accept the decision, make the most of it, move on and work to promote contact with the other parent is far more likely to be refused leave than the parent who states that she will collapse emotionally and psychologically.”

This Mother is pretty stoic; I have no doubt that were I to refuse her application she would knuckle down and do her best to make it work notwithstanding the Father’s rigidity, disdain and didacticism, and as hard as she would find that mentally and emotionally. Nonetheless the holistic evaluation of the competing options demands she be given leave to relocate to the North of England with Q in his welfare interests.

Both parties agree an order is necessary in this case. Since relocation is within the jurisdiction there is no issue as to enforcement.

In my judgment the global assessment of the competing positions strongly indicates that Q’s welfare interests will be best met by permitting his Mother to relocate to Northumberland with him when circumstances allow.

Q will live with his Mother and spend time with his Father. That time will be largely according to the Mother’s plan as set out in her position statement which has proper regard for Q’s age and stage of development. The Father will, if he chooses, travel to Northumberland at least every second weekend, thereby reducing Q’s traveling time to no more than once per month during the nursery and school term. The Father has at least six full weeks annual leave and there is no reason why, if he discloses his dates to the Mother, Q mightn’t spend up to a week at a time with his Father from Easter 2026 during those periods of annual leave. Assuming that goes well then there is no reason why Q shouldn’t spend up to two consecutive weeks with his Father during the summer holidays from 2027, again predicated on that time corresponding with the Father’s annual leave.

The costs of Q’s contact with his Father will be shared equally between the parties: the Mother will pay for her and Q to travel to and from Town B; the Father will pay for him and his older children to travel to and from Northumberland. There is no reason why the Mother should forgo the statutory child maintenance to which she is entitled.

The Mother has permission to relocate to Northumberland forthwith or as at such time that her parents effect their house sale and purchase.

The Mother is hereby discharged from her undertakings not to remove Q from Buckinghamshire.

The parties have permission to share the order with the maternal and paternal grandparents and any nursery or school at which Q is registered. They further have permission to share this judgment with any counsellor or medical practitioner they see for therapeutic purposes, and disclose it into the financial proceedings if apt.

These proceedings were initiated and necessitated by the Father’s urgent application which sought to avoid – and did prevent – the MIAM required under the FPR – through the false assertion that Q was at imminent risk of being removed from the jurisdiction by his Mother. That false assertion resulted in an urgent hearing with the consequent enhanced litigation costs to the Mother. In this final hearing the Father has failed to file any detailed or reasonable plan, rather his evidence has focussed on attacking and maligning the Mother. Mediation would have pointed out the weakness of the Father’s position, and helped him come up with constructive proposals; on the other side, the Mother was denied a chance at persuasion through mediation of the reasonableness of her position by the Father’s litigation strategy which has been first to blindside and then to attack.

There are costs implications that arise from the Father’s litigation conduct which I will now consider. I propose to rise to enable parties to digest this judgment and for counsel to take instructions on costs, which I propose to consider and determine on submissions this afternoon.

Having heard submissions on costs, I now determine whether and to what extent I should order the Father to pay the Mother’s costs. The Father agrees that he should be liable for the Mother’s costs of the Urgent Hearing of 10 April 2025 in light of my findings as to the circumstances of his application. He says he should not be caused to contribute to the Mother’s litigation costs thereafter, since the issue of relocation is a binary one unlikely to have been resolved other than by the court, and he points to the fact that interim contact was agreed during proceedings through negotiation. He submits that whatever his conduct in the litigation, his principled opposition to relocation was not unreasonable and deserved to be heard. Further, he was entitled to test the Mother’s case.

For her part the Mother accepts that the making of a costs order in family proceedings is unusual, and accepts that even had the Father not instigated these proceedings through subversion of the Family Procedure Rules, given the binary nature of the issue there was a real chance it would have had to have been litigated at a Final Hearing. However, she says that by issuing in the manner in which he did, the Father effectively brought a guillotine down on mediation. There had been four hours of productive mediation in early March 2025, followed by a Teams call between the parties on March 12; the Mother then sent her letter with reasons and proposals on 24 March. Not only did the Father’s precipitate and procedurally deficient application to the court of 4 April 2025 cause unnecessary costs in the urgent hearing, it set the course for this final hearing.

The Mother further submits that the way the Father conducted himself thereafter stymied opportunity for proper debate outside the courtroom. On the substantive issue, on the court’s findings, he tried to divert the court’s focus from the relevant principles by asking the court to find fault with the Mother, and failed to abide the order of HHJ Gibbons dated 10 April 2025 to file cogent plans for either contingency. Instead, he made no positive case, posited no constructive proposals, rather focussed on tearing down the Mother’s proposals. This unreasonable litigation approach both increased the Mother’s litigation costs in having to deal with irrelevant but personal attacks, and removed from her the opportunity, however remote, of resolution through mediation.

Pursuant to section 51 Senior Courts Act 1981 and Family Procedure Rule 28, I may make such costs order as I consider just. By FPR 28(6), “The court may make an order requiring one party to pay the costs of another party at any stage of the proceedings where it considers it appropriate to do so because of the conduct of a party in relation to the proceedings (whether before or during them).”

Having regard then to the factors set out in FPR 28(7), by (aa)(i), the Father failed to attend a MIAM and dishonestly claimed the urgency exception on a fallacious assertion that the child was at imminent risk of removal from the jurisdiction. By (7)(a) he did not comply with the Order dated 10 April 2025 in that he failed to file any reasonable or cogent plans for the child under the competing positions. By 28(7)(c) and (d) he unreasonably focussed on attacking and maligning the Mother’s conduct and motivation, first by the suggestion in his Form C100 that she was liable to relocate with the child if she was given notice of his application, and subsequently by suggestions in his evidence that the Mother is controlling, contact-resistant and likely to fail to abide court orders in the event of her application succeeding.

As to 28(7)(f), the financial effect on the parties of any costs order, I remind myself of the three categories of reasons why costs are only exceptionally ordered in family proceedings as adumbrated by Lady Hale (then Mrs Justice) in R v R (Costs: Child Case)[1997] 2 FLR 95. The first is that orders for costs between the parties will diminish the funds available to meet the needs of the family. In this case I should have regard to not simply Q but his half-brothers who are also children of the family. The Father has to meet their needs, but since the separation in December 2024 it is the Mother who has been bearing the bulk of the financial burden for their housing. The reality is that both the Mother and the Father are liable for considerable litigation costs, both have to provide for the needs of the family. I have been given no detail as to respective financial means save that the Father earns considerably more than the Mother.

The second, often described in subsequent case law as the ‘major reason’ is that the court's concern is to discover what will be best for the child. People who have a reasonable case to put forward as to what will be in the best interests of the child should not be deterred from doing so by the threat of a costs order against them if they are unsuccessful. The exception to this is where there has been unreasonable litigation conduct. One must not confuse unreasonableness in relation to the child – because one might say that we are all expected to be unreasonable in our attitudes to our children – and unreasonableness in the attitude to the litigation. While I accept that the Father had a reasonable and principled objection to relocation, my findings make it plain that he did not commence or conduct his litigation in a reasonable or principled manner. This is perhaps a paradigm case as to the difference between unreasonableness in relation to the child, which does not pertain here, and unreasonableness in the attitude to the litigation, which does.

The third reason is that in effect a costs order will add insult to the injury of having lost in the debate as to what is to happen to the child in the future; it is likely therefore to exacerbate rather than to calm the existing tensions and this will not be in the best interests of the child. Here the Father has exacerbated tensions through his litigation conduct, while the Mother has tried to remain focussed on the child. If the Father consequently must bear some of the consequent costs to the Mother, then that will likely focus his mind on the relevant welfare issues moving forward; further it will ameliorate for the Mother some of the financial strain and the sense of unfairness she will feel at having been put through these proceedings in the manner in which she has. After a while, when emotions settle, this is likely to ease rather than further inflame co-parenting tensions.

For all of these reasons the Father shall bear the full costs of the Urgent Hearing of 10 April 2025, summarily assessed as £6768 plus VAT. He shall further bear half the Mother’s costs in the Final Hearing, which figure is summarily assessed as £23,275 plus VAT. This gives a total of £30,043 plus VAT, payable within three months of today’s date.