The family court has recently ruled on the question of time to be spent with each parent and where children should go to school.
Both parents lived in London and had two homes. They were both in stable second relationships. Existing arrangements were that the children spent alternate weekends with the father from Friday to Monday, and weekly overnight contact from Thursday to Friday. The children, aged 12 and 11, had both indicated that they would like to spend more time with their father.
In September 2023, the mother issued an application for a ‘specific issues’ order seeking permission to relocate to Surrey, Sussex or Berkshire from London and to decide on which schools the children would attend. She said the move would take the children closer to extended family, provide a larger home and improved quality of life. She favoured boarding schools, saying that they would meet the children’s needs better, although accepting that one school would not meet both children’s needs. One child is an academic high achiever, and one has sight issues and is the subject of an education, health and care plan, with various heath needs.
The father cross-applied with a ‘lives with’ order in January 2024, seeking to increase his time with the children to share care on a seven-day alternating pattern and he opposed boarding schools. He suggested three alternative pairings of day schools within London.
The judge ordered a six week stay and an independent social worker to provide a report.
The report concluded that boarding school would not be the best option and that the children were happy with the living arrangements they currently enjoyed but wanted more time with their father. The report suggested that the father be awarded a further two days a fortnight with his children and the joint ‘lives with’ order be made. The parents later agreed to the joint ‘lives with’ order, without the intervention of the court, and decided to agree holidays between themselves.
The court praised the parents on their joint ‘lives with’ agreement and agreement to share holidays and now had to decide whether the father should be allowed to spend a further two nights a fortnight with the children and which schools the children should attend. The mother opposed the extra two nights, but advised in June 2024, that she no longer thought relocation to be beneficial, although she did propose some poorly researched schools in London.
The court decided that it would be beneficial for the children to spend more time with their father – which was their expressed wish – and awarded the extra two nights to the father as suggested by the independent social worker. It also felt that the schools put forward by the mother raised concerns regarding the children’s needs and the length of commute required, and that the children would transfer to one of the schools put forward by the father in year 9. It also made orders confirming the agreements made between the parents themselves.
As is usual when making these decisions, the court prioritised issues within the Children Act 1989 and considered:
- The wishes and feelings of the children in relation to their age and understanding
- The children’s educational needs
- The likely effect of the change in circumstance on the children
Juliette Dalrymple, director of Family Matters and family and child mediator says:
“This case would have benefitted from using child inclusive mediation, which allows children, who often feel left out of the decision making process and feel that they are not listened to in these cases, would have been able to make it clear that they wanted to spend more time with their father and where their own decisions about school choices would have been considered without the need for a judge.
“In this case, it does seem that the parents were joint parenting well and were able to communicate fairly well, so they may have been able to reach agreement without court intervention, and certainly at a much lower cost, using family mediation.
“Here at Family Matters, we have several specially trained child consultants who can listen to your children, and with their consent, share the information with their parents. We have a unique process that means the children are invited to the meeting individually, seen by a different mediator to the mediator working with the parents and the parents are asked to provide their feedback, which is then shared with the children. One child in child inclusive mediation when asked what they would say to another child said…
“I didn’t want to talk about it but when I started, I realised I didn’t want to stop.”
Family Matters’ child consultants have specialist training and extensive experience in this area. All the staff at Family Matters are DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checked.
