T v S

Where a family order deliberately devolves decisions about planned medical or dental treatment to the parents, subject to informing and consulting the other parent, neither the other parent’s consent nor further court approval is required. The court should not convert such an arrangement into continuing judicial adjudication of every disagreement. Reopening settled child-arrangements shortly after a careful welfare decision requires a compelling justification. The court cannot micro-manage a persistently conflictual parental relationship without risking further disempowerment of the parents and harm to the child. Where an order states that the father or mother must personally perform specified acts, the ordinary meaning of those terms should be applied unless the order indicates that an agent may act.

The proceedings concerned a six-year-old child and prolonged litigation between his parents. Mr Justice Hedley had recently declined to make significant changes to the division of the child’s time between them and had made an order governing care, control and parental responsibility. The order permitted either parent to make decisions about planned medical and dental treatment after informing and consulting the other parent, without requiring the other parent’s consent.

The father applied to reopen the arrangements and sought directions concerning competing proposals for the child’s dental treatment. After judgment, he also sought clarification or amendment of provisions requiring him personally to collect the child and the mother personally to receive him. The issues were whether the applications should be pursued and how the existing order operated.

1. The father’s application was dismissed. The court declined to reopen the division of care and control or to embark on a further investigation of the parents’ allegations. The complaints, whether considered individually or collectively, did not justify such a drastic step so soon after Mr Justice Hedley’s decision.
2. The court’s role was not to investigate every disputed allegation or micro-manage the parents’ relationship. Such an approach would disempower the parents, increase the stresses on the child and undermine the welfare-focused arrangements already made. The parents were required to assume responsibility for deciding what should happen to their child.
3. The order’s provisions concerning planned medical and dental treatment were determinative of the dental issue. The required process was that the parent proposing treatment should inform and consult the other parent. There was no requirement to obtain the other parent’s consent, or a fresh order from the court. Since both parents had informed and consulted each other, each was at liberty to proceed with the treatment proposal they considered appropriate, unless a different order was made.
4. The court declined to make any order concerning the competing dental proposals. Judicially deciding which treatment was preferable would undermine both the express provisions and the underlying philosophy of the existing order, and would invite repeated applications whenever future medical or dental disputes arose.
5. On the later construction issue, the terms “father” and “mother” meant the father and mother personally. The order gave no indication that either term included an agent or representative. The order was not amended, because permitting collection or delivery by agents would create a further source of controversy.
6. The case was to remain in the High Court for judicial continuity and be allocated to a named judge. Transcripts of the proceedings and judgment were exceptionally to be prepared at public expense. There was no order as to costs.

Prior orders had been challenged in the Court of Appeal without success, but no citation for those decisions was stated. This judgment was a first-instance decision on the father’s subsequent application.