In a judgment handed down last month, he was told to return the child to the island immediately, pending further judgement about which parent the child should permanently reside with.
the case has been anonymised to protect the identity of the child.
The court heard how both parents had been living in Jersey since the child’s birth, and both stayed in the island until two years ago, when the mother decided to move to the UK with her current partner.
Pictured: The father claimed he was going on holiday with the child, but had then been offered a job and decided to stay while he was there.
Following proceedings at the Royal Court, the father was given parental responsibility for the child, which the mother already had, in a Residence Order.
The arrangement meant the mother was still given regular contact with the child to take place in the UK – or in Jersey if agreed – as well as over WhatsApp and other media. Online contact took place from that date onwards on almost a daily basis.
Though physical contact did not take place between the mother and child in early 2020 due to covid restrictions as originally planned, it had been arranged in principle that physical contact of three weeks would take place in the summer.
However, before then, the father left the island with the child without the mother’s knowledge for what he maintains was initially a holiday. Later in the month, he then texted the mother to say that he had been offered a job in the jurisdiction, and would be staying permanently with the child.
This led the mother to initiate legal action before the Royal Court, which granted an interim injunction ordering the return of the child. However, the child was not returned.
In September, the mother filed an application seeking leave to remove the child from the jurisdiction and have him live with her in the UK, saying the father’s actions were wrongful within Article 3 of the Convention on Civil Aspects of Child Abduction.
In the same month, the father applied for retrospective permission to take the child to live abroad with him.
However, in his answer to the court in January of this year, the father apologised, acknowledging that he was mistaken in thinking his rights under the Residence Order had allowed him to take the child abroad, and that he should have sought written consent from the mother prior to doing so.
The court concluded that by “retaining the child in [the jurisdiction], the [mother’s] rights of custody have been breached.”
Pictured: The Royal Court, alongside the Jersey Family Court Advisory Services, will decide who the child lives with between the two parents if the father does not return with him to the island.
They have ordered that the child be returned to the island, where in the event his father does not return with him, he will stay with his maternal grandparents.
Similarly, in the scenario that the father stays abroad and doesn’t return to care for the child in Jersey, the Court will judge both parents’ applications, and then decide whether it is best for the child to remain in the UK with his mother or wth his father.
However, they declined to issue any order for the father to pay back legal costs, stating: “…from what we can glean from the information before us, [the father] is a man of limited means.
“Whilst the retention of the Child [abroad] is wrongful, in the particular circumstances of this case we decline to make an order for costs.”
