dongles
You yourself admit that you have not practised as a solicitor for 6 years - and based on your advice I am glad you are not in the field.
Your advice stinks. You are coming onto this board and doing nothing more than stir the situation up and trying to stir up business for more of the bottom-feeders such as yourselves.
Who would 'win' in all of this? Not the child, or mum, or dad - only the ilk of you lot would. This case is hopeless as a sole res application by mum and you should admit it.
You say the Courts do not 'like' share res for a child of such an age.
Absolute piffle. My daughter was 4 when a shared residence order was made.
You should also know (although probably doubtful now because your knowledge is so out of date) that there is substantial psychological research, publications from DfES, numerous well respected academic psychological studies, and most importantly a huge raft of case law from the Court of Appeal on shared residence.
I know this because I used it, I didn't use the terrible services of a parasite such as a solicitor who is there to make money.
I went LIP with an experienced McKenzie friends and we wiped the floor with the other party. As this dad will.
The child's welfare is paramount, the 'paramouncy' principle.
As per the welfare checklist of the Children Act, you should of all people know that the Court should have regard to the current status quo. There has been a shared care arrangement in place for 5 months (a long time from a child's point of view).
This is the reality of the child's life. She has two homes of equal value. There should be no change in the circumstances (another welfare checklist point) unless it would be in the child's best interests... the child has a blended family with numerous sibling. There is another child on the way - even more important that there should be no change of circumstances.
There is a hell of a lot of case law (many of which I used) on the above points.
There is case law for shared residency over a large geographical distance.
There is case law that says that the parents do not have to "get on" (as they wouldn't be in the court arena in the first place and the no order principle would apply) - this was a common misconception until the Court of Appeal dismissed this.
There is case law that there should no presumption of which sex should be the 'primary carer'.
There is fluid transition between both homes (backed up by case law).
Shared res does not have to mean 50:50. All shared res means is that the child has 2 homes of equal value and both parents are equal in the eyes of the child. i.e. there is no 'good' parent and no 'bad' parent (or one parent who does all the 'work' and the other that has all the 'fun' time).
Heck, even CAFCASS in their latest leaflets for information for parents (on the cafcass website) recognise that children should feel that they have 2 homes ... from this shared care and shared naturally flow.
There would have to be clear benefits to the child of moving to another school (what is it's ofsted report like?), what about splitting up of the existing family structure for schools?
This case is hopeless as an application for sole residency and you should be ashamed to even try to suggest it.
It would NOT be in OP's best interests (or the child's) for this to go to contested hearings.
By all means have a shared res order by consent - but as this arrangement has already been drawn up and mutually agreed at Mediation then it's going to be damn hard to convince a Court and CAFCASS that anything else should happen.
All that will happen is that mum will lose loads of money and it will get converted into the BMW fund for the parasitic solicitors.
btw having gone LIP I now act as a McKenzie friend and your advice not only stinks but is hopelessly out of date.