The High Court has permitted a father to take his three young children on an overnight trip to their paternal grandfather’s holiday home, subject to two undertakings: he would not drink alcohol while he had sole care of the children, and his father would be present in the house that weekend.
The order was made at an interlocutory hearing on a motion concerning one proposed weekend trip. The parents were living under the same roof but, the court accepted on uncontroverted evidence, were living separate lives. Judicial separation proceedings were expected to be heard within six months of the judgment.
The mother opposed the trip, alleging that the father continued to drink excessively. She relied on his earlier alcohol use, a five-week residential treatment programme and an incident in which she said he fell asleep on a couch smelling of alcohol. The father accepted that he had previously had an alcohol problem but said he had addressed it. His GP and a consultant psychiatrist had provided supportive opinions, though the judge cautioned that they relied on information supplied by the father. Because the hearing proceeded on affidavit evidence, the GP could not be cross-examined.
The judge said the evidence about the father’s current alcohol use conflicted and that the court could not make a finding of fact on that issue. The decision therefore allowed the trip with conditions; it did not resolve the alcohol dispute or determine longer-term access arrangements.
The court also rejected the mother’s argument that no access order could be made while the parents lived in the same house. It held that they were not “residing together” for the purposes of the relevant legislation because they were living completely separate lives. It added that, even if they were residing together, the legislation would make such an order unenforceable while they continued to do so, rather than preventing the court from making one.
The judgment criticised the time and expense devoted to the dispute, which occupied almost a full day in the High Court and involved eight affidavits and extensive solicitors’ correspondence. The judge said the level of detail in the parents’ allegations should not have required that court time, while acknowledging that both parents felt strongly about their children’s welfare. The court made no finding about responsibility for the failure to settle, given the interlocutory stage, and noted that mediation had been unsuccessful.