His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum v Her Royal Highness Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein & Ors.

When determining parental responsibility, the child’s welfare remains paramount. The court may restrict a parent’s exercise of parental responsibility by a prohibited steps order where that is in the child’s best interests and proportionate to the identified risk or harm. The court must rely on objective evidence, give reasons, and consider the duration of any restriction.

Domestic abuse between parents must be assessed through the lens of Practice Direction 12J, including its effect on the children and on the abused parent’s capacity to care for them. In exceptional circumstances, sustained coercive and controlling conduct may justify giving one parent sole authority over significant medical, psychological and educational decisions, while requiring appropriate information to be provided to the other parent.

The proceedings concerned two children who had become wards of court after their mother brought them from Dubai to England in 2019. The father initially sought their return but later accepted that they should remain living in England with their mother.

Following extensive fact-finding hearings concerning abduction, coercive and controlling behaviour, property surveillance and phone hacking, the welfare hearing addressed parental responsibility, indirect contact, education, medical care and communication between the parents. The central issue was whether the mother should have sole authority to make decisions concerning the children’s health, psychological welfare and education.

1. Legal framework. The court had to treat the welfare of each child as paramount and consider all relevant circumstances, with particular regard to the welfare checklist in Children Act 1989, s 1(3). Although both parents had parental responsibility, the court could restrict its exercise where the children’s welfare required it by making a prohibited steps order under s 8.
2. The approach described in H v A [2015] EWFC 58 was adopted. A restriction must be proportionate and supported by objective evidence. In exceptional cases the power may extend to prohibiting a parent from taking any steps in exercising parental responsibility, as recognised in P v D & Ors [2014] EWHC 2355. The court must give reasons and consider duration, consistently with Re C (Due Process) [2013] EWCA Civ 1412 and R (Casey) v Restormel Borough Council [2007] EWHC 2554 (Admin).
3. The father’s conduct amounted to domestic abuse. The court was required to assess it under Practice Direction 12J, including its effect on the children and on the mother’s parenting capacity. The sustained coercive and controlling behaviour had materially harmed the mother and children, and the father’s failure to acknowledge or accept the conduct meant that the court could not have confidence that it would not recur.
4. The co-parenting relationship was wholly dysfunctional. Requiring the mother to obtain the father’s agreement to significant decisions would prolong the harm caused by the litigation and abusive conduct. The mother was therefore granted sole responsibility for the children’s medical care, psychological and therapeutic treatment, and education. She was required to inform the father of significant welfare matters and serious injury or medical conditions.
5. The existing arrangements for indirect contact were continued. No evidential basis had been shown for changing them. The court also made consequential orders concerning travel, communication, applications in foreign courts, service and costs.

This was a first-instance welfare judgment. The judgment records earlier fact-finding and procedural decisions in the same proceedings, including appeals concerning publication, foreign act of state, phone hacking and related matters, but no appeal from this judgment is stated.