Despite Pleas To Stay With Their Father Judge Orders Children To Live With ‘Poor’ Mother In Australia

A judge in the UK has ordered that 4 siblings aged nine to 13 move back to Australia and stay with their mum despite their pleas that they prefer living with their dad.

The judge ruled the youngsters must move to Australia to be with their ‘penniless’ mother who is English but has a part-time job in a supermarket there even though she has recently been evicted after falling behind with mortgage payments. The family who cannot be named for legal reasons are all English, but they moved to Australia eight years ago.

The parents separated after the father had an affair, and he returned to Britain.  Last Christmas, the children flew to England to spend the two-month Australian school summer holidays with their father. At the end of the holidays, he informed their mother, also 38, that they would not be returning.

She launched ‘child abduction’ proceedings and yesterday, after a six-month custody battle, it emerged that a judge has now ruled in her favour.

The father, a 38-year-old financial consultant, had recently taken his children on a £15,000 skiing trip and a £28,000 Middle Eastern holiday, the High Court heard. The court referred to the children using the pseudonyms Harry, Peter, Clare and Simon.

Judge Clifford Bellamy interviewed the siblings personally and concluded they were delightful children who clearly wanted to stay in Britain.  The court heard Harry had written his mother a letter saying: ‘You won’t listen when I try to talk. I don’t want to go back to Australia because I have friends and family here.’

Peter said he wanted to live in the UK ‘as he feels like a part of a big family in England’, whereas in Australia ‘it was just them and his mum’. Simon said he would feel ‘awful’ if they returned to Australia, adding that ‘he did not want to sound mean, but being around his dad had a sense of everything [being] better and somehow easier’.

The judge said: ‘Simon and Clare have directly expressed the view that they will hold their mum responsible for their unhappiness if they must return to Australia, but he added: ‘Although I am satisfied the children are of an age and maturity at which the court should take account of their views, I am not satisfied that their wishes, feelings and preferences amount to objections to returning to live in their country of habitual residence.’

The judge said the children’s views had been ‘coloured’ by their ‘comfortable existence living with their father’, who the court heard earns up to £300,000 a year and has a hot-tub in the garden.

The father told the judge he had made applications for the children to attend a UK private school, but that they had all failed the entrance exams ‘due to the very poor educational standard that they have reached in Australia’.

The father who used to send almost £4,000 a month to support his family had stopped paying the mother’s mortgage leaving her ‘homeless and penniless’, the court heard.

The judge suggested the father had exploited his financial advantage to win over the children.

Source: Daily Mail