The Custody Coach Case BookIt is very rare, but occasionally all our cases converge on one week, and we can be in Court every single day. That happened in the first week of June, but despite the intense schedule, zig zagging across the country, it was a successful week. The week started with a directions hearing in the east of the country, to determine whether a Fact Finding Hearing was required. We were arguing that it was not required because the parties had separated over 5 years ago, all the Mother’s allegations were dated prior to separation, and since then she had agreed to, and facilitated, contact. As is often the case, contact had broken down, because the Father had started a relationship with a new partner and the Mother, who had not moved on in that time, reacted badly to this. The Court agreed with us that a Fact Finding was not required and any issues the parties had, could be covered by Cafcass in their Section 7 Report. On Tuesday we moved to a Court a little nearer to home for another directions hearing in a more complicated case, that also involved social services. In an unusual case, where social services had recommended the child lived with the father and the Mother was having supervised contact, we were asking the court to continue the supervised contact; re-allocate the case to a District Judge rather than Magistrates, due to the complexity of the case and to re-list the matter after social services filed a Section 47 Report. Again the Court agreed with our position and we return at the end of August where the District Judge will review the case to see if the court has enough information before it to move to a Final Hearing. A quick change mid-week and a re-pack of the case and we started a long journey north. On Thursday we were before a District Judge asking for a Part 25 Family Psychological Assessment. Courts have very clear guidelines on the use of expert witnesses, due to these reports adding additional time to a case and because they can incur significant costs for the parties. The reason we had asked for this was because the Cafcass Section 7 Report had recommended no contact with the Father, but the report was devoid of any reason, assessment of the emotional and psychological impact on the children of such a decisions and they had failed to consider any alternatives such as their own ICFA programmes to see if they could re-establish contact. It was a bold move, but it clearly made the Judge look at the issues more closely and the Judge came to hearing immediately raising the same questions as us, with Cafcass. Instead of accepting our application at this stage, the Judge ordered Cafcass to re-do their report addressing the concerns we had raised along with other concerns of her own. Our application was not dismissed and would be re-considered if the Cafcass Report did not provide the information the Judge wanted. It was then a long drive west, through the rain and awful roadworks around Birmingham. The Malven Hills were a welcome sight. The final hearing of the week was meant to be a 1 hour directions hearing, but turned into a five hour Final Hearing, because the Judge decided the parties were close enough on their positions to push this one through. In an unusual move the Judge spent considerable time in court going through the proposed Order and contact schedule we had drafted finalising each point herself. It was clear she was not going to let this case run on any longer and was going to get finality. The approach worked and we all left with a Final Order based around the proposal we put forward.
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