Children

Unmarried father without parental responsibility - mother with sole custody rights remaining child's primary carer - father not acquiring custody rights even though sharing primary carer role

In re G (A Child)(Custody Rights: Unmarried Father): FD (Mr Justice Munby): 28 October 2002

The child was born in Ireland in January 1998.

The unmarried parents lived together as man and wife, with the child, in a property in England which they jointly owned until they separated in July 2002.

The father continued to have contact with the child until the mother took the child to live in Ireland in August 2002 without telling the father.

The father, who did not have parental responsibility, applied under article 15 of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, as set out in schedule 1 to the Child Abduction and Custody Act 1985, for a declaration of wrongful removal under article 3 of the convention.

Sarah Woolrich (instructed by Dickinson Dees, Newcastle upon Tyne) for the father; Thomas Finch (instructed by Mortons, Sunderland) for the mother.

Held, refusing to grant the declaration, that, while each case fell to be decided on its facts, an unmarried father without parental responsibility could not acquire rights of custody within the meaning of the convention in circumstances where the mother, who had sole legal custody rights herself, had remained the child's primary carer, even though the father had shared that role with the mother.