Family court appeal

[TheLilacZebra]

Hello,

im going to try and condense this as much as possible.

I have a 5 month old son. I left the father due to abusive behaviour at 39 weeks after another episode of him drinking. He was horrible throughout the pregnancy, threatened to kill/kick/punch me, wouldn’t go to scans, wouldn’t take me to hospital when no movements due to drinking etc. I did admittedly go through his phone towards the end of pregnancy where I found out he was taking drugs again (I had my suspicions). All of this led me to leave.

roll on the birth, I invited him down to visit his son, I invited him into my house after th birth to stay and “help” and bond with his baby. He was of no help, was nasty, would disappear everyday for hours (he only stayed 4 nights). He shouted at our baby, shook him during the night when he wouldn’t stop crying (I have no evidence for any of this).

I begged him to step up as a dad for the first 5 weeks. Invited him in continuously, he did not avail of this and would pick and choose when. He paid nothing in the pregnancy towards any of baby’s essentials and gave no money until I went to a solicitor at 6 weeks old and he now pays £25 a week.

the first hearing I was ordered to pay £600 for a drug and drink test. He was granted to see his son for 1 hour a week supervised with ss. Due to ss waiting time etc he only got to see him once between that hearing and the second hearing. Between this time he always tested positive for drugs and it came back as chronic excessive alcohol.

at the second hearing the judge asked him about this and he admitted to taking drugs only the once and said that the alcohol part was not true. In short the judge dismissed the case and told him to reapply when he gets himself sober.

my question is how likely is it that he will win an appeal if he goes that route?? I already think he will as this is all more for his mum to get access. He basically wants his mum to have time with our child and for his mum to look after our son. I know he will have little to do with actually being a father.

I’m panicking about money, I’ve had to leave maternity leave early to go back to work to pay off solicitors and barristers. And now I’m so worried about going again. It’s draining my bank and as a single mum who’s worked hard to have savings, I feel it’s all just dwindling away. He’s also claiming he can’t work as a self employed plumber so that he can claim legal aid. So I know he’ll have no fear in keep taking me back to court that way

I'm afraid I can't answer your main question (though maybe this will bump it for someone who can), but there was something you mentioned in your post that I felt compelled to highlight just in case anyone else is reading this in a similar position, as I know people do searches for posts similar to their situation.

If anyone believes that their baby has been shaken, please seek immediate medical help. This is partly because there may be initially difficult to detect serious injuries that need treatment. It is also because the presence of any such injuries would be incredibly powerful evidence that could be used to protect the baby, and maybe prevent another mother feeling so helpless. Or, indeed, potentially even save a baby's life.

I hope you are able to continue to protect your little one. Stay strong.

You sound really overwhelmed and confused which is understandable. Have a look at some breathing and grounding techniques. It sounds like he had no case. He didn't even address the drugs and alcohol between hearings. Then he didn't even admit the results were true. I say try and ground yourself as you will get more replies if people have a clearer idea of what happened. Has your ex actually made an application to appeal? He needs permission to even do that and there needs to be an error in the law made in the decision of the last judge. It sounds like the Judge told him to get sober before applying again which would indicate the Judge couldn't advise of anything for him to do to change the situation in the short term. And don't promote any unsupervised contact as it is a worry you report ex shook your LO but you didn't get any emergency help

I am aware I did wrong by not reporting the incident. Honestly the months towards the birth dealing with him, then the shock of the birth having a section, and dealing with his behaviour and a newborn - admittedly I was a mess and didn’t know how to handle the situation. All of which has been addressed with court and social workers now which I know is a little too late.

I am not aware that he has made an application yet as it is still within the 2 week time frame. I know him as a person and how brazen he is, he will laugh at the court telling him to sober up and see he has done no wrong. Therefore it makes me think he will try to appeal. I have posted on another thread before. I will attach it here if I can so you can get a better background to what is going on.

thanks

Have you applied for legal aid?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/pregnancy/5030649-39-weeks-pregnant-and-feel-so-stuck?page=6&reply=137535033

I hope this thread posts okay

i haven’t been able to, I have some savings and due to the teacher back pay which I received in maternity, it has meant my earnings are too high.

Honestly just tackle it if he does appeal. The judge may simply refuse permission to appeal on paper (most likely). Right now you are wasting emotional energy on nothing. I'm confused how children's services have got involved in supervising though it's not their usual responsibility. Is that definitely white is supervising?

Even though there was domestic abuse in the relationship?

I don’t have any proof, I never went to the police. My solicitor isn’t the best tbh, I’ve just been told I need to sign on to universal credit to get the legal aid, but I don’t qualify for universal credit. And especially won’t now with returning back to work.

When we went to court the first time, it was in July, by this stage our son was 3 months. The dad had spent very little time with him, and has never spent alone time with him. I had raised my concerns due to this, his drinking/drug abuse and his behaviour towards our son in those beginning days.

the court ordered that the court social worker (I hope I have the is right) was to supervise him and then write a report for the next hearing. This did not happen as he only got one visit due to the volume of people needing the same service and we would have been the bottom of the waiting list I guess.

social workers are no longer involved as he is now not getting any contact due to court order. But I would say they will be involved again when he takes this back to court.

Judges aren’t stupid. He won’t get anywhere without proof he’s been clean for 6 months.

Even then it’s dodgy. So don’t panic unless he’s been sober a while. Unlikely.

Legal aid is only available for private family law cases if there is domestic abuse or the child is at risk of abuse. It is still means tested. If OP doesn't meet the financial eligibility criteria, she won't get legal aid even though there has been domestic abuse.

Ah that makes a bit more sense. Ss people usually use to mean social services even though it's not been called that for ages. So I would think of children's local authority social workers who the court can't order to supervise contact. People usually just call the court social workers cafcass. And the court can't really order them to supervise a while series of contract unless it's a commissioned intervention. So makes sense cafcass said no to a series of sessions. It doesn't sound like they were against the court case finishing either. Try not to worry

He's highly unlikely to be successful in appealing the decision that was made to dismiss his case.

He can reapply when he's sober.

If he continues to make applications to court you can ask for a section 91-14 which means he is prevented from making any applications without the courts permission

I have received a letter today stating that the father has made the decision to appeal the courts decision.

does this automatically mean we are back in court for retrial? Or do we have to wait and see do court agree to the appeal?

thanks

Who made the order, judge or magistrates?

Sounds like he has zero chance on appeal, try not to worry. (I work at the court)

The judge made the decision at our second hearing. father has now put in to appeal to a higher court.

he has listed 8 reasons for his grounds to appeal.

a few being:
he wasn’t given a fair trial.
it went against the welfare checklist
they didnt take into account the best interest of the child.
the court failed to assess the effect of their decision on child.

i know that was his solicitor sorting that, but when addressed in such a way it seems he will get the appeal?

despite the judge saying in our hearing he would not put the care of a 5 month old baby in his hands due to his results and that he needs to get himself sober first.

Are you in a Union? They may give you legal assistance.

There are set grounds people can try and appeal under. These are pretty standard ones to suggest. What do you actually have? Is it a court order or a copy of a letter making an appeal? If it's an order it should say the next steps. It might not even go to a hearing

Normally there has to be a permission hearing before he can appeal.

You can't just appeal. You need a judges permission to appeal and the test is whether he has an arguable case or not

So it may fail at permission stage

He may get permission - he then has to
Convince a judge that an error was made.

In my experience appeals generally fail.

It's considered on paper first. If he's still not happy with that then he can request oral hearing.

I don't know for sure but he might get supervised contact because it's generally felt better for a child to have some contact with both parents, (I mean at a contact centre), providing he's cleaned his act up.
Granny could apply in her own right but family courts don't usually grant contact to grandparents unless there's an agreement for contact via the parent.

I just have a letter making the appeal.

I do think he will get the appeal. As much as there are concerns there and his results coming back so high, I’ve been told by my solicitor that he does think the judge was being harsh on the day. I would say it was more the fathers attitude in court with regards to telling the judge the results weren’t true, that perhaps that swayed the decision to dismiss the case.

I do know generally court does want to see both parents have contact. At baby’s young age and as his mum who knows what the father is really like supervised is the only way forward for now until he cleans up his act. My question to him would be why now? Why did he choose not to be involved in the beginning ?

answer being pretty simple… he knows he can fake it for supervised contact for a few sessions until he gets our son out to his mums house, where he knows he won’t have to do any of the work and she will do all. He won’t be there half the time and will let granny do the work.

Right now the letter is for information just look out for how the court deals with it. If a hearing is allowed you can look at a solicitor then. They should take into account the drug and alcohol readings before considering anything unsupervised. It's rare not to order any contact but also is there is going to be supervised arrangements there needs to be safeguards and ways to move forward from this. So I guess without the acceptance of the results its arguable the judge couldn't identify another way forward

my solicitor called back today. We are in court in 3 weeks.

he has to make a statement first and then I will reply to it after I have been told.

i made a statement with regards to the last hearing (not sure if this was read by the judge before court?) so is it the same statement or what else could I have to say?

or is it a statement on why he feels he needs to appeal?