W (Children)

Judgment

Lord Justice Wall:

On 21 October of last year HHJ Darroch sitting in the Norwich County Court refused an application by the mother of two children, now aged respectively ten and five-and-a-half, for permission to relocate to New Zealand. The mother seeks permission to appeal against that decision. I saw the papers on 21 January 2009 and I directed the matter should come in for oral hearing with appeal to follow if permission was granted. I made these comments:

“These cases are never easy and the mother faces the difficulty that the judge made a careful discretionary decision apparently applying the correct criteria. However, there is enough in the grounds of appeal and the skeleton argument put in on the mother’s behalf to make it appropriate for her to be given the opportunity to persuade the full court that she has an arguable appeal and one moreover which should succeed.”

I remain of the view that this is a difficult case and, speaking for myself, I would as a result give permission to appeal.

The judge was faced in my view with a very difficult decision. On the one hand he had two children who clearly enjoyed a good relationship with their father. There had historically been disagreements between the parents of the children as to contact, but on the mother’s behalf Mr Hale this morning and this afternoon has sought to argue, and has argued persuasively, that, by the time the case reached the judge and certainly for some time prior to that, the difficulties which had surrounded the separation of the parties and the breakdown of their marriage had ameliorated to the point where contact was proceeding relatively normally.

The mother has formed a relationship with a new partner who had previously been employed by the father, and it was her plan with her new partner to emigrate to New Zealand with the children, where the partner had obtained employment. His case was that he had attempted to find employment in England and Wales and had not succeeded in doing so. They had moved to Norfolk from Shropshire, where the parents had previously lived, in order to find work and had not been successful. Contact was taking place albeit at some inconvenience to both parties, with the mother and her partner driving across from Norfolk. The father was having fairly regular weekend staying contact but there was no doubt at all that the mother was the residential parent and the primary carer for the two children.

As always in these sensitive relocation cases