G v A

Lord Justice Thorpe:

This is an application for permission to appeal a tiny part of contentious proceedings between the parents of a child. The area of dispute that I review is a financial application brought by the mother under Schedule 1 to the Children Act 1989, which resulted in an order of a district judge on 10 May 2005. Paragraph 1 of that order required father to pay to the mother, for the benefit of the child, the lump sum of ₤20,000 by 29 July and, by 27 July, to settle for the benefit of the child the sum of ₤220,000 for the mother to use to purchase a property until the child attained the age of 21. The judgment of the District Judge apparently identifies the purpose of the ₤20,000 as having been to cover the mother’s costs of removal and furnishing.

Those two sums of money were not paid in July 2005, and on 7 April 2006 the mother applied for a charging order against two properties allegedly owned by the father, with a view to enforcing what she said was the judgment debt of ₤240,000 arising from the District Judge’s order. That application resulted in an interim charging order against one of the properties made by a district judge on 2 May 2006. The application for the interim charging order to be made final came before Munby J on 15 May 2006. He doubted whether, as a matter of law, the sum of ₤220,000 from the trust fund amounted to a judgment debt capable of enforcement by a charging order. He accordingly adjourned for the mother to consider her position. The matter came back before him on 26 April 2007, without much effect, and the judge re-timetabled to 4 July 2007. By that date, three further applications had been made: two by the mother for enforcement and one by the father for amendment of the terms of the order of the District Judge.

On 4 July the judge gave directions and then conducted a hearing on 12 November. He conducted a second hearing on 24 July 2008 and handed down a reserved judgment on 20 January 2009. That timetable suggests unacceptable delay, but in reality the delay was purposeful because the judge had to conduct at the same time welfare investigations in relation to the child, and so it was that his adjudications on finance were deliberately postponed pending determination of the welfare issues.

The application that the father issued on 15 June 2007 sought specific variation in relation to the obligation to settle ₤220,000 on trustees. The original order of the District Judge had been quite bereft of essential deta