This judgment was delivered in private. The judge has given leave for this version of the judgment to be published on condition that in any official or news report or summary the child may not be named. All persons, including representatives of the media, must ensure that this condition is strictly complied with. Failure to do so will be a contempt of court. For the avoidance of doubt, in any such report the parties may be named.
Neutral Citation Number: [2022] EWFC 118
Case No: FD15F00053
IN THE FAMILY COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Date: 18/10/2022
Before :
MR JUSTICE MOSTYN
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Between :
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Catherine de Renée |
Applicant |
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Jason Galbraith-Marten |
Respondent |
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Nicholas Wilkinson (instructed by Direct Access) for the Respondent
The Applicant acted in person
Hearing dates: 4 October 2022
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Judgment Approved
Mr Justice Mostyn:
a) the application by Jason Galbraith-Marten (“the father”) issued on 18 October 2021 to extend an extended civil restraint order (“ECRO”) made by me on 21 October 2019 (“the extension application”), and
b) the application by Catherine de Renée (“the mother”), dated 28 July 2022, for permission pursuant to the ECRO to issue an application under Schedule 1 to the Children Act 1989 (“Schedule 1”) for financial provision for the parties’ daughter, A, who is now aged 15¾ (“the permission application”).
a) a divorce;
b) financial remedy proceedings resolved by the parties entering into binding agreements;
c) an application by the father for parental responsibility and contact;
d) applications by the mother to vary the agreements, alternatively to set them aside, on the grounds of duress, fraud, unconscionable conduct and non-disclosure.
The latter applications by the mother had generated swathes of written material from her, most of which was ruled to be inadmissible. Ultimately, Federal Magistrate Scarlett, sitting in Sydney, dismissed the mother’s applications.
“127. She appears to have spent large amounts on private schooling for A in Australia although there was no provision in the 2009 agreements for any payment to be made by the father. It is the father's evidence that he would never have chosen private schooling for A , his two other children attend state schools and he could not afford private school fees for three children on his income. I accept this evidence.
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142. Capitalised education fund. Private education is not affordable in this case. The father's two other children attend state school and I accept his evidence that he never intended any of his children to be privately educated”
The father’s extension application
“It is important to note that a civil restraint order does not prohibit access to the courts. It merely requires a person who has repeatedly made wholly unmeritorious claims or applications to have any new claim or application which falls within the scope of the order reviewed by a judge at the outset to determine whether it should be permitted to proceed. The purpose of a civil restraint order is simply to protect the court’s process from abuse, and not to shut out claims or applications which are properly arguable.”
“It is one of the most powerful civil restraint orders I have ever seen”
and on 24 March 2022 thus:
“This type of order is far stronger than a section 91(14) Children Act order and one of the most powerful orders I have ever seen.”
In fact, my order was expressed using the standard order language. There was nothing remarkable or exceptional about it.
a) the background facts which led to the grant of the original ECRO;
b) the findings made by Judge Oliver (which the mother is to be treated as having accepted when she withdrew her appeal against them);
c) the nature and terms of the mother’s written material that she has placed before the court in support of her permission application; and
d) the content of her oral submissions which were made to me with great articulacy but which were extremely emotional and melodramatic, such that they were neither reasonable nor accurate.
The mother’s permission application
a) Non-disclosure for the last 14 years (paras 1, 3, 4, 10, 13)
b) Making an “unprecedented and threatening” application for contact (para 5)
c) Inciting care proceedings (para 8)
d) Withholding maintenance after the ECRO was made (a new and false allegation)
e) Using the ECRO to unjustly prevent her from issuing an application for a non-molestation order in response (para 9)
f) Unabated wholesale denigration of her as a mother and litigant (para 10)
g) Abuse of the ECRO privilege to engage in “slander and damming prejudice” against her character…so as “to indulge his unscrupulous financial agenda” (para 12)
h) A “16 year-long wholesale denigration of her as a wife and mother” (para 13).
All of these allegations were untrue, and all had been found to be untrue on previous occasions.
Expert evidence adduced by the mother
a) The filing of the report was in breach of section 13(1) of the Children and Families Act 2014 which provides that:
“A person may not without the permission of the court instruct a person to provide expert evidence for use in children proceedings.”
b) Subsection (2) provides that:
“Where in contravention of subsection (1) a person is instructed to provide expert evidence, evidence resulting from the instructions is inadmissible in children proceedings unless the court rules that it is admissible.”
With considerable hesitation I agreed to read the report as I did not want the mother to think that I had shut my eyes to anything that she wished to adduce. However, I place no weight on the contents of the report not only because of its filing in blatant breach of the law, but also because of the following matters.
“at the end of an experts report there must be a statement that the expert understands and has complied with the expert’s duty to the court”.
No such statement was appended to Mr Harding’s report.
d) Mr Harding appears to have been shown documents which had been disclosed in earlier proceedings by the husband to the wife, without the court’s permission. Such disclosure would be a contempt of court by both the discloser and the recipient of the documents.
e) Mr Harding put forward his opinions based on the most flimsy of materials, without seeking the husband’s contribution or clarifications. This failure to seek any clarifications from the husband is egregious, and flies in the face of the most elementary rule governing an expert. It is basic, if you are going to put forward an expert’s report, that it must be objective. And objectivity requires, where there are lacunae, that clarification is sought from the other party before going into print. This obligation applies just as fully to an application where permission is needed as to one where it is not.
f) In the absence of up-to-date and reliable evidence from the husband, Mr Harding’s conclusions are largely conjectural. His was a highly partial exercise.
g) I am surprised that Mr Harding, holding himself out as a partner in a firm that focuses on forensic accounting, should be apparently entirely oblivious of the legal obligations that attach to people who hold themselves out as experts in court proceedings. It is not as if proceedings under Schedule 1 are some remote and obscure outlier. They are definitely mainstream and I find it very difficult to accept that Mr Harding was unaware that the permission of the court was needed to instruct him in such proceedings.
School fees
“I am writing to seek permission from the Court to file short (no more than 2 pages) statement with evidence to rebut factually incorrect closing submissions and arguments that were made by counsel for Mr Galbraith-Marten at the hearing .
I regret that when I had the opportunity to correct such inaccuracies, my struggle to overcome my anxiety and stress towards the end of the hearing, interfered with my short term memory/ recall and my ability to "hold my nerve" and respond promptly to those inaccuracies. To my frustration, just five minutes later as I left the Queens Building, I immediately remembered.”
“During A’s tenure as a student of Greycoat School ("GCH”), A’s cognitive, linguistic and social disposition (that she clearly possessed excellent proficiency and strength in) were falsely denigrated, in what was a blatant move by RBKC to try and sabotage A’s “Gillick” competent status and suppress the weight of her own independent feelings and (maternally aligned) views in the proceedings. The GCH senior staff who assisted RBKC in this, betrayed A’s educational interests in the process. Following the collapse of RBKC’s case against me, I resolved to continue supporting A’s attendance at GCH, hoping that relations with GCH would improve now that the court proceedings were over. However, by the end of 2021, A was desperately unhappy to continue attending the school and begged me to let her home school until I was able to secure a private school place for her. After much careful consideration, I agreed.”
“I am not in a position to contribute any more to your and A’s support at the moment. I think we should look at this again when A starts school proper and when the level of maintenance I pay reduces.”
In the second he writes to the mother’s Australian solicitor:
“I write in reference to your recent letter. The only email exchange I have had with Katie about payment for educational fees is attached, below. Your letter was the first I had heard of the Kambala school or that Katie was in fact asking me to commit to payment of school fees for the next 12 years or so at a cost of up to around $30,000. As you may imagine your letter therefore came as quite a surprise.
It is also not entirely clear what I am being asked to pay for… the email from Katie requested payment of $4000 to cover current costs. The schedule attached to your letter lists far greater costs. I do not know when these are meant to start. As indicated in my email to Katie I am not in a position to pay anything in addition to the maintenance payments I currently make. Only when the payments reduce around A’s fifth birthday do I anticipate being in a position to contribute towards school fees. At that point in time I would want to be much more involved in the decision about which school is appropriate for her and what a fair level of contribution might be. In the circumstances I am certainly not willing to enter into any new binding arrangements. As for the suggestion that you will commence proceedings in the UK, I will clearly have to take advice about this when I return home.”
“2. At the hearing before Mr. Justice Mostyn on 4 October 2022, Ms. De Renee indicated that she had an email from me in which I agreed to pay for private school fees for A. As is clear from the two emails she has now disclosed, that is not the case. I have never agreed to pay for private school fees. I merely indicated, over a decade ago and when A had just turned three years old, that I would be willing to discuss the issue at some point in the (then) future. I also made it clear in the same email that I would want to be involved in any decision about which school would be appropriate for A. As the court is aware, I have not been.
3. The emails also need to be seen in context. To the best of my recollection, whilst I was in Australia to visit A in March 2011, Ms. De Renee asked me, out of the blue, to attend an appointment with her solicitor, Mr. Michael Conley … Ms. De Renee wanted me to meet Mr. Conley to agree an amendment to the Binding Financial Agreement we had entered into in relation to child support. I subsequently (and whilst still in Australia) received a letter from Mr. Conley explaining the purpose of the appointment and attaching a schedule of school fees for the Kambala School (a Church of England school).
4. I felt completely ambushed by this. I wrote the email in a state of some confusion as to why I was being asked to pay for school fees. Whilst I have always taken the view that I would not want any child of mine attending private school in the UK, I had little understanding of the Australian education system and knew nothing about the State’s provision of education. I did not know whether it was normal or usual for children to attend private school. Furthermore, I was trying not to be unnecessarily difficult or obstructive, as the primary purpose of my visit was to spend time with A and I did not want to jeopardise that.
5. I declined to agree to a variation of the Binding Child Support Agreement to cover school fees. It was as a result of this that Ms. De Renee made it clear to me she was not willing to facilitate me having further contact with A. For example, she refused to allow me to telephone A when I returned to the UK and refused to allow me to have any face-to-face contact with A when I next visited Australia in March 2012. It was because she took this stance that I commenced proceedings in Australia on 22 September 2011 for parenting orders, the equivalent of a Child Arrangements Order. This is the application that led to the order of Judge Scarlett dated 19 October 2012.”
a) As the emails produced by the mother make clear, there has never been an agreement, plan or understanding between the parents that A should be educated privately. The emails show that the mother wanted such an agreement, but they make equally clear that one was never reached.
b) There has already been a finding in this case on 21 June 2018 by District Judge Aitken that private education was inappropriate in this case. While such a finding does not constitute res judicata, because circumstances inevitably have changed with the passage of time, I do not consider that a departure from the status quo set by that judge is justified.
c) I am satisfied that the proposal would be contrary to A’s interests. It would represent a form of education which is unknown to her. In my judgment it would be in her best interests for her to attend a state secondary school. I cannot accept that the local authority or the staff at Grey Coat Hospital school conspired to sabotage A’s educational interests. Equally, I think it unlikely A herself has independently formed the uninfluenced view that she would not be happy until she left that excellent state school and was placed in a private school, a position which coincidentally exactly reflected the views of her mother.
d) Even if the father now has the means to pay for private education for A it would in my judgment not only be contrary to her interests but fundamentally unjust were he to be ordered to do so. As stated above, the father himself was not educated privately and his other children aged 13 and 9 are not educated privately. The mother has emphasised to me repeatedly that the father was deprived of parental responsibility in Australia (but not here) and that accordingly, in her opinion, hers is the only parental voice that should be heard on the question of education. The father should have no say or other input, according to her, other than to pay. In my judgment to force him to do so would be a gross injustice which I am not prepared to contemplate.
General maintenance
Conclusion
a) I extend the ECRO to 18 October 2024.
b) I refuse the mother permission to bring a school fees application or a lump sum application.
c) I grant the mother permission to bring a variation application for an increase in the general maintenance (presently set at £1,315 per month), and to claim backdating to 28 July 2022 (but not earlier).
a) The mother is exempted from filing a Form A; she is deemed to have done so.
b) No later that 16:00 on 4 November 2022 the parties are to exchange Forms E2 together with the prescribed documents. In addition to the prescribed documents the father must produce under paragraph 6 of the Form E2 his most recent practice accounts, and the most recent full accounts of Assurety Ltd. The Forms E2 and the prescribed documents are to be prepared as PDFs and shall be exchanged electronically.
c) No further disclosure may be sought. If either party considers that the disclosure given by the other party’s Form E2 and the prescribed documents is insufficient for me to be able to determine the variation application fairly, then that party shall set out in no more than 200 words, within seven days’ of service on him/her of the other party’s disclosure, the further disclosure that is sought. I will then deal with that application without a hearing as box work.
d) This being a fast-track application, no FDR is mandated, and I confirm that one shall not take place.
e) The application is to be fixed to be heard by me with a time estimate of one hour on the first available date after 5 December 2022. The hearing shall be on written evidence and oral submissions. There shall be no oral evidence. The electronic bundle shall comprise only this judgment, the order giving effect to this judgment, the two Forms E2 and any further disclosure authorised by me.
Costs
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[1] Allegation 19 pleaded that the father had been arrested. This was admitted by him, and his arrest was duly noted by the court, as was his release without charge.