Sarah Hopkinson successfully represented the Father at a Fact-Finding Hearing in private law children proceedings.

Sarah Hopkinson successfully represented the Father at a Fact-Finding Hearing in private law children proceedings.

09 September 2024

Just 4 weeks after a final order was made by the court which afforded the Father a significant amount of unsupervised, overnight contact, the Mother emailed the judge who had dealt with those proceedings to say she will be stopping contact, claiming she and the children had been harmed by the Father. The Father immediately applied to the court to enforce the order. The Mother responded by making allegations of domestic abuse against her and the children. On behalf of the Father, a finding was sought that the allegations were malicious.

Following the Fact-Finding Hearing, the court’s judgment was that the Mother had invented allegations of violence to justify stopping contact and had presented the Father in the worst light possible. It was found that the Mother had manipulated one of the children in order to do so and had focussed on her own needs and indignation rather than the needs of the children. The Mother was found to be unreliable, untruthful and intent on ending contact.

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