Family law guide
By Iblal IqbalA very young child lived with one parent, against a background of controlling behaviour and domestic abuse by the other before child contact suspended. Two periods of contact caused the child clear and sustained distress, and a professional working with the family raised continuing concerns. Contact does not simply continue once distress and professional concerns like this are on record. Where domestic abuse is alleged, the family court must be satisfied under Practice Direction 12J that any contact order will not expose a child to an unmanageable risk of harm before it makes or continues one. Our family law specialists acted for the parent the child lived with, in a case with child contact suspended.
This account is anonymised, with the client’s consent, and it explains what the family court must be satisfied of under PD12J before it orders contact where domestic abuse is alleged. It also explains what weight repeated non-compliance with orders carries, including how a barring order can stop repeated applications. You can read more about how we prepare and review these success stories.
If contact is leaving your child distressed and you are not sure what to do next
You may have watched your child come home from contact silent, clinging or unable to sleep, and someone may have told you that you are imagining it. You may have years of controlling behaviour behind you that no one has ever written down. And you may hold two fears at once. One is that contact will harm your child if it carries on. The other is that if you ask to have child contact suspended, the blame will land on you. Both of those fears are ordinary. Neither means you have done something wrong.
What an article can do is explain what the court has to think about. It cannot tell you what will happen in your own case. Decisions of this kind turn on detail. That means what was said and when, and what a school, health visitor or support worker has recorded. It also means what orders are already in place, and what your child’s day-to-day life actually looks like. The welfare of the child comes first in every one of these decisions. The checklist the court works through appears in section 1 of the Children Act 1989. It is there if you want to read further.
A free initial consultation is a conversation, in confidence and with no obligation. You describe what has been happening. A family law specialist asks questions and explains how the family court is likely to approach your situation. They also explain what it would take to have child contact suspended. Then they set out the options in front of you and what each one would involve. No one can honestly promise you an outcome. What you can have is a clear picture of where you stand before you decide anything. If you would like that conversation, call 0330 094 5880. If you or your child are in immediate danger, call 999.
The legal issue
A very young child lived with one parent. The relationship had involved a pattern of controlling behaviour: restrictions on where that parent could go, controls over their appearance, and a requirement to report their movements and prove where they were. The other parent did not have parental responsibility.
Two periods of contact took place. The child was distressed throughout both, could not be settled by the contact supervisor, showed physical signs of distress, and their sleep and behaviour were disturbed afterwards. A professional working with the family recorded continuing concerns about contact going ahead.
The other parent then did not comply with the orders the court made, and did not engage with the professionals involved. The question was whether direct contact should continue at all.
The law this rests on
- Children Act 1989 s.1(1) - the child's welfare is the court's paramount consideration.
- Children Act 1989 s.1(3) - the welfare checklist, including any harm the child has suffered or is at risk of suffering.
- Children Act 1989 s.1(2A) and s.1(2B) - a parent's involvement is presumed to further a child's welfare unless the contrary is shown, and involvement means involvement of some kind, direct or indirect, not any particular division of the child's time.
- Children Act 1989 s.4(1)(a) - a father who was not married to the mother acquires parental responsibility by becoming registered as the child's father.
- Children Act 1989 s.8 - child arrangements orders regulate with whom and when a child is to live, spend time or otherwise have contact.
- Children Act 1989 s.7 - the court may ask a Cafcass officer to report on matters relating to the child's welfare.
- Practice Direction 12J, Family Procedure Rules 2010 (Child Arrangements and Contact Orders: Domestic Abuse and Harm) - the court must be satisfied that any contact order will not expose the child to an unmanageable risk of harm and is in the child's best interests, and that the physical and emotional safety of the child and of the parent the child lives with can as far as possible be secured before, during and after contact.
How we approached it
The central point was that a welfare report is advice to the court and not a decision. Where the evidence in front of the court has moved on from the report, a party may invite the court to depart from its recommendation, and that is what the case invited the court to do.
The case rested squarely on Practice Direction 12J. The direction requires the court to be satisfied that contact will not expose a child to an unmanageable risk of harm, and that the safety of the child and of the parent they live with can as far as possible be secured before, during and after contact. The evidence set out how the two periods of contact had actually gone and what happened to the child afterwards, and the professional concerns were described in our own words rather than reproducing anyone's report.
The application was also carefully framed. Asking the court to suspend direct contact is not asking it to end a relationship. Children Act 1989 s.1(2B) treats indirect contact as involvement, so the case rested on indirect contact meeting the presumption in s.1(2A) while the risks were live, and on it leaving the other parent a route back if their behaviour changed.
Finally, non-compliance was put before the court as evidence in its own right, not as a complaint. A parent who does not follow orders and does not engage with the professionals appointed to help is telling the court something concrete about how contact would be managed in practice.
The outcome
The court dismissed the other parent's application and confirmed that the child lives with the parent who had been caring for them. It also made a barring order, preventing further applications being made without the court's permission for a defined period.
Outcomes of this kind turn entirely on the evidence in the individual case. Nothing here is a prediction or a promise about any other case.
What to take from this
- Practice Direction 12J of the Family Procedure Rules 2010 is the starting point wherever domestic abuse is alleged in a child arrangements case.
- Controlling behaviour is domestic abuse. It does not have to be physical to matter to child arrangements.
- A welfare report under Children Act 1989 s.7 is advice, not a decision. The court can depart from it, and a party can ask it to.
- How a child actually responds to contact is evidence. Keep a record of what happens before, during and after, including sleep and behaviour.
- Asking for direct contact to be suspended is not asking for the relationship to end. Children Act 1989 s.1(2B) treats indirect contact as involvement.
- A parent who does not comply with orders or engage with professionals gives the court evidence about how contact would work in practice.
- Where applications are repeated, the court can require a parent to obtain permission before making another one, for a defined period.
Checked and approved for publication by Garry Steedman.
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